The Affiliate Master Plan

What Are Affiliate Programs?

Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!

So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do?

The affiliate marketer acts as a “middle man” between merchant and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer’s cost.

Affiliates do not mark up or resell products.

Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a product, and they receive a percentage of the sale in commission from the merchant.

The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant by bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant.

The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of products that he does not own. They don’t pay for product creation, don’t have to ship anything and don’t deal with customer service issues or returns.

The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers, the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential buyers without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase.

It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

It's also one of the toughest types of business to earn a significant income from. Competition is fierce and almost 95% of affiliates earn little or no income.

For the lucky few, the ones that know how to do it the rewards can be amazing. This course has been created to help you become one of the few and to perform at the very highest levels of Affiliate Marketing...


Choosing an Affiliate Program

Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is necessary to choose the right program for you. There are almost as many programs out there as there are products! When you first start out, it’s easy to go overboard signing up to as many programs as possible, but this isn’t the right way to go about it.

First, you need to decide on a area of particular interest to you. What products do you know the most about and think you could do the best job of selling?

Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through the available merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate programs.

Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid?

Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don’t receive your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period.

You’ll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct deposit, Pay Pal or any combination of the three.

2. How much do you make per sale?

Remember you’ll be investing your own money into advertising and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. You’ll also want to seek out high-value products. A fifty to sixty percent commission on a $100 product is very good, but it’s not so hot if you’re promoting a $15 product.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company?

Larger companies usually have “affiliate managers” devoted to maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mismanaged programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble.

The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you.

Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek out products you can promote:

http://www.clickbank.com
http://www.cj.com
http://www.linkshare.com

Commission Junction (CJ) and Linkshare provide affiliate hubs for major brand corporations and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is generally on tangible products and services. Clickbank is the leading source online for affiliates of information products like e-books, software and membership sites.


Four Approaches to Affiliate Marketing

As a new affiliate, one of the first things you’ll want to know where and how to promote your affiliate link. We’ll cover several options and discuss the merits of each method.

1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising

If you use PPC advertising, you can embed your affiliate to the ad and send the prospect directly to the merchant’s site. This is a **really** lazy thing to do though. You might make a few sales, but it’s far better to approach the process as outlined in tactic #2.

2. Build Content Focused Sites

This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine optimization. You’ll need to publish content related to the type of product you’re trying to sell. Searchers will be drawn in by informative articles. Your affiliate links will be sprinkled discreetly across the site.

3. Advertise in E-Zines

This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your product. E-zine ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other cases you can snatch them up for free by bartering with the list owner. Remember, rather than link directly to the affiliate site use your affiliate page to capture subscribers and build your list. Not only will this allow you to follow up and convert more sale (for free) but it will also enable you to shield your affiliate link.

4. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites

This type of advertising isn’t quite as popular as it used to be. It is most effective when you can find high traffic sites for smaller niche subjects. These sites tend to focus heavily on content and run only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and rates are likely to be at a premium.


Beating the Odds

This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the facts. The majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to break even. Some people will earn thousands in this business, while others will struggle to generate even a few hundred in sales per month.

Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You’ve got to stay on your toes to win in this game. While I can’t guarantee your success, I can provide you with some fundamental knowledge that just might help you beat the odds.

Get ready to learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.

#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords

Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if you endured hours sweat producing research to find your target keywords, keep on searching out new ones and adding them to your list.

#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking

If you aren’t testing and tracking absolutely everything – and I mean everything from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web site copy and any thing else you can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked against you.

Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every detail of their campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of their collected data to refine their entire system on a day to day basis.

You might want to take a look at an amazing software tool called MyClickSpy for more info: http://www.infoclicks.co.uk/mcs/

#3: Innovate and Update Constantly

Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If you rely on PPC engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine advertising into the mix. If that doesn’t produce the desired results, investigate banner ads, classified ads, message boards, offline media and anything else you can think of to get your
message across.

Don’t rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects direct to the merchant, change up your campaign and start sending leads to your special capture page created with our Affiliate Enhancer software and start collecting email addresses. Experiment with your content and your web copy. Try out different headlines. Never settle for the familiar. Tweak everything until you’ve squeezed the maximum conversion power out of it.

#4: Pay Attention to the Industry and Communicate with Other Affiliates

The world of affiliate marketing changes every day. There is always a new tactic to implement, a change in the rules at one advertising service or another, a serious technology failure at one of your merchant’s sites and so on.

Even though affiliate marketers are rabidly competitive group, they are also quite helpful and willing to trade information and tips with one another.

You should bookmark the following sites and make a point of visiting them weekly if not daily:

http://www.associateprograms.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/


The Importance of Building a List

Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead capture and list building represents the smartest and most effective option.

Why?

A lost visitor is a lost sale. A lost visitor is the loss of potential repeat sales. Think of it this way: you’re putting time and money into your advertising. If you aren’t capturing your visitor’s email addresses, you’re basically throwing all of that traffic right down the drain.

When you capture your visitors to your list, you open a whole new world of profit opportunities – not just for the short term, but for the long term as well.

The Benefits of List Marketing

You can educate your prospects. This will increase your conversion rate by giving you the opportunity to turn hesitant prospects into enthusiastic customers.

You can market to your prospects over and over again. Your long term profit potential exists in repeat sales. Never work for “just one sale”.

You can double your return on investment while lowering your advertising costs. Once you’ve got a list in place, you don’t have to limit your offerings to just affiliate product. You can bring in any additional, related products of interest to your list and make sales immediately without going through the same advertising process all over again.

Can you see the benefits yet? Why spend money over and over again sending people to the same page and “hoping for a sale”, when you can capture them to your list and have full control over the conversion process?

Any other approach leaves you at the mercy of the merchant’s web copy and the customer’s mindset at first contact. You’ve got to lure your prospects in and expose them your message multiple times. This will save you so much time and money you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way.


Link Theft

The dark side of affiliate marketing: Link Theft. It’s not ethical, but it happens.

You should know that there are people out there who, for whatever reason, absolutely hate the idea of someone earning a commission off their purchase.

These are the cranky, paranoid customers of the online world. There are also fellow affiliate marketers who would deny you your hard earned commission as well.

The term “link theft” isn’t entirely accurate, though it’s what you’ll see used to refer to this phenomenon. The accurate term, in a nuts and bolts sense, is “link altering”.

Quite simply, the link thief does one of two things:

1. Erases your affiliate link from his browser window, deletes any cookies set by the link, and then proceeds to the merchant’s site via the main www url.

2. Erases your affiliate I.D. and replaces it with his. He then purchases through his own link and takes his commission as a rebate.

The solution to link theft is “link cloaking”. Essentially, you turn an obvious affiliate link such as www.clickbank.com/hop?=affiliate, into an encrypted link or you mask it behind a short domain name.

There are pros and cons with each method. Link cloaking software such as Affiliate Defender and others use javascript to encapsulate your URL into an indecipherable scramble of characters. This prevents anyone from seeing the real affiliate link at the bottom of their browser window when they mouse over it.

The only problem is that your link can still end up exposed once the user clicks on to the main site. The link often “unscrambles” and appears naked yet again in the address bar.

Domain masking, when done properly, allows you to use your own short url which redirects to the merchant site while keeping your url in the address bar. You can use domain masking with any address you choose. For example, you could register one domain name to devote to your affiliate redirects.

You can use subdomains (subdomainname.mysite.com) and also directories (www.mysite.com/product).

The downside to domain masking: the technique involves what’s called an “invisible frame”. The frame pulls in the affiliate site within the main window. Imagine your site has a set of navigation links down the left-hand side, and clicking those links causes the main window to pull up content, while leaving the left column unchanged. This is the basis of the technique – it’s just set up on one link and hidden from the surfer’s view.

Unfortunately, sites like Clickbank frown upon this practice.

There’s a good chance that your redirect link will break frames and wind up exposing your affiliate URL anyways. Nothing wrong with that other than the fact that you went through a lot of work for nothing!

A greater concern: frames have a bad habit of confusing affiliate tracking applications. Your referral ID might not be recorded and you wind up losing the sale.

Obviously, you are free to test out any of these “solutions”. Just keep in mind that they aren’t fool proof. Ultimately, the link theft problem occurs much more frequently in the Internet Marketing niche than it does anywhere else due to the large number of fellow profit-motivated customers within the niche. Link theft occurs infrequently, if at all, in other niches.

Those customers are less likely to know (or care) what affiliate marketing is – and less likely to take notice of affiliate URLs in general.


Advanced Topics

It’s time to tie up the loose ends and cover some advanced topics.

As you know by now, affiliate marketing can be incredibly rewarding when done properly. There are also a lot of pitfalls you need to watch out for as well. One of these is merchant fraud.

Merchant fraud, unfortunately, does happen. Merchants can use any number of clever tactics to cheat you out of your commission. One of these methods is to offer multiple payment options to customers without linking each one to their affiliate tracking software.

For example, let’s say that a merchant offers credit payments, payment via Paypal and payment via check to the customer.

The merchant tracks your affiliate ID up to the point of sale and credits you if the customer chooses to pay via credit card through the merchant’s main payment gateway. However, if the customer chooses Paypal or check, your affiliate ID is immediately tossed.

The only way around this clever trick is an exercise of caution on your part. When you evaluate a potential affiliate program, check to see how many payment methods the merchant offers. Secondly, after you sign up for an account, examine you referral links. In fact, if you have the budget to spare, follow your own link and choose one of the alternate payment options and purchase a product.

Did you get credit for that sale? Great! If you didn’t receive credit, though, it’s time to can that merchant and move on to more ethical waters.

Here’s another ‘advanced’ tip to consider: use affiliate networks like Commission Junction to evaluate potential merchants. Joining programs via a network is often a better choice than signing up at individual, non-networked sites. The reason is simple: membership in an affiliate network imposes stricter standards on merchant behavior.

You also have access to a wealth of data on the overall performance of other affiliates in that merchant’s program.

Last but not least, you need to focus on building trust among potential customers. If your merchant site doesn’t do a very good job of this, then send your visitors to your web site. Make it clear what products and/or information you have to offer.

Also, be vigilant about posting your contact information in a prominent place. Anonymity might be fun in a chat room, but it turns off consumers very quickly.

For an extra advantage, consider having your site evaluated “net cop” programs like the one at http://www.i-cop.org/ and get your site listed in the online section of the Better Business Bureau’s web site.

Make Sense (And Money) Of Google AdSense!

You’ve seen the nutty claims by so-called “internet experts” that strategies and programs they have devised enable surfers to earn thousands of dollars within a matter of days! Or minutes!! No such thing.

However, there are several lucrative programs that can provide an extremely generous income with comparatively little effort – Google AdSense is absolutely one of them.

But it takes some time, and it takes some planning, like anything real does. The rest of our report is all about unlocking that potential. Our goal is to equip you to get started on the road to making money with
AdSense.


Part 1: Join the AdSense Program

Understanding Google policies

We discussed earlier how rewarding the Google AdSense program can be. However, joining the Google AdSense program is not that easy or everyone in the world would do it (which would defeat its purpose, ultimately). You have to be approved by Google in order to create your AdSense account and start earning
money from it.

How do you get approved? Google famously has never publicly published details of its approval process, there are tips you should follow to ensure a high possibility of getting approved.

The good news is that Google does publish its policies and you do not need to be a member to read them. You should read them and be certain that you are in 100% compliance with them, not only when attempting to start your AdSense account, but once you are already a member. They update these policies
regularly and a violation will get you suspended. A list of Google AdSense policies can be seen at: http://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Content – The Key to AdSense!

As stated earlier, we cannot say exactly how Google decides to accept or reject a site. However, one thing is for sure – the main criterion for approval is always the content of the website!

Most sites get rejected simply because they do not have any – or enough – good content. What constitutes “good” content? We can say what it is not. The types of websites that only have links and “filler” content aimed at attracting Search Engines, and sites that do not offer any informational content but solely focus on their own products and services. Google is one of the smartest companies on the Internet, and they can easily tell “junk” content from “real” content, even if many web surfers themselves can’t.

Google approves websites that have significant real content. These could be in the form of informational articles, analyses of various topics, and much more. For business websites that solely focus on selling their products and services through their website, including informational articles about their industry is smart, and this data is usually pretty easily available.

Another reason why most business websites do not qualify for the program, is that most businesses are specialized, and these websites are most likely to get Ads from their competitors, as only those ads would be relevant. As discussed, competitor ads would be blocked by you, filtered by Google, or both, so an AdSense program that serves no ads makes no sense!

Similarly, websites that focus only on links for generating search engine traffic do not have any content at all, according to both common sense and Google. These sites may rack up fairly high traffic scores and so forth, but they do not qualify for AdSense.

One of the best and simplest strategies is to include at least 30 to 40 informational articles of 400 to 450 words each and update them from time to time. Writing these articles yourself may be a daunting task. However, the good news is that there are considerable websites that offer articles for free, and plenty of professional writing resources who can not only write high quality material for you, but can especially optimize that material to work well with search engines and the “qualification” processes for systems like AdSense.

We’ve developed a 5-Step plan for success.


Part 2: The 5-Step Plan to Success

Once you’re accepted, you want to maximize the opportunity. In this section, we look at some of the most effective strategies for generating optimum revenue from the Google AdSense program.

Step 1 - Formatting Ad Blocks

You can let Google decide for you the type of ads that will be displayed on your web page, but as the website publisher, you may be in a better position to decide what ads suit the content of your website and how you would like them displayed. To the extent possible, whether chosen by Google or you, make the ads seem like part of the site itself.

Most internet marketing experts believe that the ads on your website have a high probability of getting clicked if they blend in with the rest of the content of your web page. Factors such as color scheme, font size and type, and the appearance of your ad should match your web page. Borders are optional and
we think often you should opt out – why put a box around the ad that says “Hi! I’m an ad!”?

Also, regardless of other design choices, text links should be blue. Why are text links blue? For the same reason Henry Ford said of the Model-T “They can have any color they want so long as it’s black.” They just are.

Though we think text ads are generally better than graphic ads, also known as image ads, Google does offer them with the program.

Actually, you don’t need to struggle much with whether graphic ads or text will be better on your pages, as Google’s technology will suggest whether an image ad or a text ad will be more suitable and which will earn you maximum revenues (since you earn part of they earn, they have motives to get this mix right).

However, it remains totally up to you whether you wish to run image ads or text-based ads. You can select only image ads, or text ads or a combination of both these formats on your entire AdSense account or on one page at a time based on your discretion.

Step 2 - Ad Placement

“Location, location, location.” It is true in real estate and true in advertising, including web advertising. Since the “location” of the user is your site already, the “location” of the ad in this context means on which pages, where on the pages, and so on. As noted, the less an ad looks like an ad, the more effective it is likely to be.

Then there are general design and usability factors to consider.

If your webpage is cluttered and you can’t dispense with any content, you may want to break it down further into sections or more pages to provide easier reading. This also gives you the potential benefit of placing additional ads.

As noted, we generally recommend text-based ads. However, text-dense sites may actually do better with image ads. If your site has very few graphics, you may want to balance it out by putting image-based ads. In the monotony of a lot of dense written information, image-based ads and graphics provide what’s called visual relief. This can also prompt clicks.

Where should you put the ads? The chances of your ad getting noticed by the visitors to your site increases greatly if you place ads as close to the top of your webpage as possible.

If you choose to place so-called ‘skyscraper’ ads – in magazines these would be called columns – on the sidebars of your webpage, it would be wise to place them on the right side of your principal content areas. The reason for this is the visitor to your page (in most languages) will read from left to right, he or she will chance upon the ad ultimately, if not consciously then at least out of habit. Their eyes will go there. From the left, they can visually “skip” the ad when they start reading next to it.

Your ads should be placed in such a way that it matches the links to other websites on your site. If you already have a links section on your site, put the AdSense links in that section or list. This is not dishonest – if it were Google would not allow it.

Obviously if you have a “most popular” area on your website, such as a page that is updated daily with some kind of material that people bookmark to revisit often, place your ad(s) there instead of somewhere else that may get less traffic. For many websites the home page is not actually the most accessed area. If you don’t know what the traffic pattern is on your sites, it’s easy to find out – ask your hosting provider about usage logs.

One more thing: While some affiliate marketing programs encourage host sites to encourage clicks directly, it is not appropriate to expressly ask your readers to click on the ads served by the Google programs. Not only is it unprofessional and arguably unethical, it also annoys people and moreover Google AdSense actually prohibits any such activity. You can neither directly solicit clicks nor can you do anything considered deceptive to encourage clicks.

In conclusion, the emphasis is always on quality of content on your web pages.

Good and interesting content makes your site better, more acceptable to Google, more likely to win with AdSense, and therefore more profitable for you!

Step 3 - Researching Keywords

After you are done choosing the right format and location for your AdSense ads, don’t sit back and wait for the money to roll in just yet. The next important step is to choose the right keywords for your web pages. These will influence both who visits your site, and how AdSense assigns ads to you.

The number one mistake most website publishers make is to constantly choose high-paying (i.e. expensive!) keywords assuming that it will yield them more income. While it is tempting to choose such keywords to get higher rankings on search engines, be prudent when it comes to selecting the right keywords that go with the AdSense ads that are to be displayed.. Remember the goal here is clicks, not SEO rankings. This is a case where you often do not get what you pay for.

Consider this scenario. Your web page talks about wine tasting courses. You review search phrases and keywords with “wine” in it and you find “wine rack” is in the top three and available, so you buy it. The corresponding ads also focus on buying wine racks online, wine storage and building your own wine racks. After a week when you check on the statistics of your webpage and AdSense account, you see that you are losing visitors and your income is dipping! The keyword selection is faulty in this case even though it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why? The visitors to your web page were actually looking for wine racks and have landed on your web page talking about wine tasting courses instead. The wine course types want to sign up for the courses, maybe buy a book on wine, or a wine of the month club. They don’t want to build a wine rack. Think strategically, not tactically.

Just because a keyword is high paying and is seemingly related, does not mean it is totally relevant and you need something relevant. Relevance is more important than value! In the above case, you could have – and should have – chosen wine tasting tour, wine tasting party, wine tasting event, wine tasting class, wine tasting school, course tasting wine and so on. You are interested in relevance more than popularity. Tasting is a match. Racks are not.

Let’s look at some of the ways in which you can research your keywords for AdSense ads:

• You can check out the popularity of various keywords if you already have an account with Google AdWords. This way you will get an idea of the popularity of various keywords as well as the cost and returns that entail.
• Google AdWords also has a tool known as the AdWords Keywords Tool which can sometimes help you search for alternate keywords and variations.
• Another tool known as Keyword Analyzer can generate numerous key phrases that are typed by Internet users in different search engines.
• Consider getting a WordTracker account. They have an excellent tool that suggests top 1,000 most popular keywords. This tool can also help you create a list of relevant keywords for your webpage. You can learn a lotfrom a small investment here.

Your clickthrough rate will be boosted tremendously by including the right keywords in your web copy, of course. Keywords occurring in your ads are usually highlighted on the search engine results page. This also helps in drawing additional attention to your ad.

The URL of your webpage is also an integral part of achieving success on Google AdSense program, as it is on the Web generally. Current wisdom holds that the keywords in the URL are equally if not more important than the ones featured in the actual webpage content or in metatags. If you change your ordinary URL to a keyword rich URL relevant to your market, it is possible to raise your CTR as much as 200% or more without doing anything else.

Obvious domain names with the keywords that you want might be expensive to purchase from a broker, but you can also buy used domain names that are no longer active, often for just a few dollars per year.

Step 4 - Developing Content

Let’s assume you have good ads, good placement, and good traffic.

This step is all about how to tweak your pre-existing content to support the most effective profitability from your new AdSense program.

One major mistake many web publishers make now is to lard up their pages with a bazillion keywords for so-called “search engine optimization.” Do not fall into that trap and clutter your web page with high-profile buzzwords that do not contribute to the value of your web page or the experience of your intended audience. Remember, we’re focused here on clicks, which means bringing relevant readers to your site and giving them a good experience that puts them in an inquisitive or buying frame of mind.

As a general rule, all content shifts should make some kind of sense. You may well be able to make connections between articles on sports, to articles on sports medicine, to articles on herbal supplements which feature ads for those products. On the other, a web page on bicycles should not have ads for other kinds of pumps, if you know what we mean.

Before you decide to add that magic Google AdSense code on any page of your website, you should have dealt with the following two important steps:

* High quality textual content: Ensure that your web pages have enough textual content so that the AdSense program can set up ads that are relevant to the content on your pages. If you have very little content, it will be difficult for Google to determine the focus of your page and end up displaying only public service ads that do not earn any revenue.

* Use different page titles for different pages: Have unique page titles based on the specific content of each page. Avoid generic or vague page titles such as ‘Untitled Document’ or ‘Page 1’. Be crisp and precise and avoid using long phrases and difficult words in the page titles. If your page has a very long title, it might get banned from some search engines, so be pithy.

Step 5 - Tracking and Reports

Tracking the results of your marketing efforts can help you focus your efforts and make adjustments to win.

Google offers a great free tracking feature known as ‘Channels’. You can use these channels to track ads on specific URLs or to categorize ads based on their formats, keywords, location on web page and so on.

You can choose from two channel types offered by Google.

* URL Channels: This will help you track the performance of your web pages without altering your ad code. All you need to do to track your performance is to enter a full or partial URL in the channel and you’re done. A full page URL will track the performance of the specific page having that address. If you want to track all the pages on a specific domain, you need to enter a top-level domain name.

* Custom Channels: Custom channels are used to track the performance of your webpage based on the criteria that you specify. You can choose what specific factor you would like to track and customize the channel according to your requirements.

As the name suggests, custom channels are very flexible, and if you have ever used any kind of data reporting tool you will find setting them up easy and logical. You can have up to 50 custom channels!

You can compare the performance of different ad formats and the relevancy of ads. You can also compare how ads on one page are performing when compared with ads on other pages. You can do so by assigning each group of pages to a specific channel and eventually comparing results in your customized channel reports. You can also see where your clicks are coming from by assigning a channel to each of your separate pages. Also, it is a good idea to name your channel in such a way that it is easy to identify different channels in reports, especially if you are using a dozen or more.

Server Logs

In addition to the ‘channel’ program offered by Google to track your AdSense ads on your web pages, you can also use any of the various high quality external AdSense tracking software packages to track your performance in greater detail (except actual revenues – you need to get that from Google). One major advantage of such software is that it runs locally, which enables you to access specific information that Google doesn’t track. Be aware that none of these third-party software solutions are “endorsed” by Google currently but most of them guarantee to operate within AdSense guidelines. Just make sure they do,
because you don’t want to lose your account status over a technical violation by a third party.

Some of the information you can obtain by using tracking software:

* Referring website of all your visitors.
* The type of web browser they are using.
* Where the actual ad-clickers are coming from.
* Search keywords typed in by the visitors to your website that eventually brought them to you.

You should use a combination of Google channels and a reliable AdSense tracking program so as to get comprehensive information about your AdSense account.

Part 3: Summary and Additional Resources

AdSense Do’s and Don’ts

Now that you know what AdSense is all about, we can offer the following do’s and don’ts – which more or less summarizes everything we’ve said so far.

Do’s

The first rule of using AdSense is to follow their terms of service. Google has exceptional monitoring ability, and if they find any violation of their TOS, your account will be suspended, rendering all your efforts moot.

Consider having a number of informative pages about varying topics but with a consistent theme for your website. That way you will have more ads to choose from and can possibly maximize your CTR.

Use keywords to your advantage. Higher paying keywords will usually but not always yield more rewards. Think relevance. Also use variations of keywords for added advantage.

Provide unique information on your web pages. The more specific the content of your website is, the more targeted your ads will be, and the more effective. Always focus on providing good quality information!

Experiment with various ad formats on your web page and choose those that suite your website. You can choose to display ads with different formats on one page.

Position your ad block in such a way that the ad is visible and yet it does not put off the readers. Ideally, place your ad in the top section of your webpage which can be viewed without scrolling down.

Use the Google AdSense preview toolbar to your advantage and see how the ads will appear on your website. Get a hands-on feel of how the visitor to your website will view your web page.

Use Google channels and other external tracking software to evaluate your performance on a routine basis.


Don’ts

Do not resort to fraudulent or deceptive means for generating clicks on the ads that are on your page. Some of the methods that are prohibited by Google AdSense are:

• Automated clicking programs
• Repeated manual clicks
• Using robots to generate clicks
• Clicking your own ads
• Tricking your visitors into clicking on your ads by using fraudulent means

Don’t have confusing layers of content. Content on your web page should not hide the ad text and URL. At the same time, it is advisable that you use same font type, size and color (background and font) for both the ads and the content on your web pages so that your ad does not announce itself as an outside ad. Ideally, your ad should look and feel like a part of your website.

Don’t have broken links on your site. Your website should not contain any broken links and should be easily navigable. Also, the content on your web pages should be informative, of high quality and the ads should be relevant to the content.

Don’t have old or illegal information on your site. Be careful about outdated information, plagiarized text and obscene or offensive material. Avoid using any of these on your web pages.

Two More AdSense Opportunities: RSS and Blogs

Adding Google Ads to your RSS feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has gained huge popularity on the Internet. RSS is an XML document format that organizes and stores news-like content from various sources into one source. Think of it like a newswire service, the kind of stuff that scrolls along the bottom of cable channels. A large percentage of the
“news” items you find on any website that is not a major news portal got there through an RSS feed.

Google has introduced a specific program known as AdSense for RSS. It offers a variety of interesting content options that most websites themselves can’t match. Google AdSense for feeds has its own set of policies. These can be accessed at: http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=20134. Like the AdSense program, you must follow all guidelines in order to be accepted for the AdSense for feeds program.

Placing AdSense ads on your Blogs

Blogs are similar to RSS feeds in concept except they usually have one author rather than an aggregate of sources of the material they contain. Blogs (short for Weblogs) are simple web pages where you can write articles and other content on a variety of topics, and both the famous and the unknown use these online
diaries to share their thoughts, post pictures, and so on. The public can view this content and even comment on it in most cases.

Due to the considerable amount – and unlimited range – of content on Blogs, it may make sense to place AdSense ads on them. In fact, it is much easier to generate revenue from Blogs as compared to other web pages, at least in theory.

* First, blogs are full of content, most of which is original most of the time. The content may not be “good” from a human reader perspective but it is usually “good” according to Google’s scans. Thus, getting approved by Google AdSense may be easier.

• The content presented on the blog, in many cases, is quite diverse which, unlike a website that needs to be “about something” can be excused by the “everything and nothing” nature of most blogs. Consequently, the possibility of Google finding targeted ads that are relevant may increase.

• Google AdSense works only with those websites that are already indexed by Google. Blogs get indexed far more easily than regular webpages. Some blogs get indexed in as few as two to three days of submission. Thus, the chances of getting approved by Google AdSense increases.

• Blogs can be created at practically no cost – much cheaper than commercial websites.

Top Affiliates Share Their Money Making Secrets at BlogWorld

Source: http://blog.widgetbucks.com/2008/09/top-affiliates-share-their-money-making.html

One of the kick-off panels at BlogWorld Expo today in Las Vegas comprised of some of the blogosphere's top affliate bloggers -- Jim Kukral (moderator), Darren Rowse (Problogger), Zac Johnson (zacjohnson.com), John Chow (JohnChow.com), Brian Clark (CopyBlogger.com) and Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney.com). Pictured are (l-r) Rowse, Kukral, Johnson and Matt Hulett, CEO of WidgetBucks. With many bloggers turning to veterans such as these to find out strategies for making money on their blogs, the group provided points of view across various topics of revenue. Here were some of the topics and trends they are seeing: What is there greatest source of revenue? General sentiment brought out and ranked a few types of revenue: 1) direct ad sales, 2) affiliate promotions, 3) ad networks and 4) Google AdSense, call the webmaster welfare by one of the panelists. The point was made that direct sales take a lot of time and the pure profit may be worth it, however, you need to have a reasonable amount of traffic and following to attract advertisers -- there's where ad networks make it easy. Affiliate promotions can be incredibly profitable, but you need the trust and following to make those work as well. In spreading the word, RSS or email newsletter? While RSS is a growing in popularity, Darren Rowse made the point that people like what's familiar, and that's email. But putting the email newsletter signup isn't necessarily enough. John Chow recommended creating a free offer to give people incentive to subscribe, such as a free e-book or t-shirt. There is one one service that automatically distributes a collection of your recent blogs last number of stories (a figure you determine). Should my personal brand represent my site? It depends. Where do you want to take it in the future. For example, Darren Rowse after admittedly messing up domains in the past, chose Problogger.net because it is representative of what he does. Copyblogger.com, which helps people with content creation is also descriptive. JimKukral.com and Zacjohnson.com are in a different position where the site IS their brand and can have huge benefits if you are working toward consulting and services. For another summary, check out the recap of Zac Johnson.

Widgetbucks $25 Sign Up Bonus, This Weekend Only!

From the official Widgetbucks blog:

If only 2500 of the 15 million active bloggers are attending the BlogWorld Expo this weekend in Vegas, where does that leave the other 14,997,500? With enough time to take advantage of WidgetBucks' BlogWorld Weekend Sign-up Special! New publishers who join WidgetBucks this weekend will earn $25 bonus when their account reaches $50. Just hit our home page -- widgetbucks.com or click here to be on your way to better site earnings in no time.

I figure that if you haven't sign up with them yet, now would be a good time to do so. You can sign up with them using the official link (given above), or through my refferal link to help me out.

Note: this offer is good through Sunday, September 21.

Make Money From Google Adsense

Introduction

There are many ways to make money using the internet, and one excellent source of passive income is to own high traffic websites which are monetized using Google Adsense. There are basically two ways of building such sites:

1. Find thousands of keywords related to a particular topic and use an automated page generating program to build a website consisting of thousands of almost identical pages, with each page being optimized for one keyword and including your Google Adsense code.

The idea being when a person searching for information on a search engine ends up at your website, the only thing of any use to them is the list of Google ads which lead to other websites. When they click on one of the ads, you earn a small commission.

The major problem with going this route is the search engines hate these websites and drop them as soon as they find them. Because there is no useful content on any of the web pages, people also really hate them and report them as soon as they find them. The search engines don’t hang around and drop them
immediately. This means your carefully created website has an extremely short life span, and so you have to make hundreds of these web sites to make any real income. As soon as a website is dropped you have to buy another domain name and put the site back up under another name.

2. Find popular keywords related to a particular topic, which have little competition, and build content websites around them which are designed to be informative and supply useful content to human web visitors. The ideal scenario being that visitors find your content so useful they bookmark the pages to return to read more. At some point the reader will leave your site and through carefully positioned Google Adsense code on each web page, will put money in your pocket...

This report will concentrate on this second method and show you how to quickly build a content website which is rapidly indexed by the search engines gets good rankings and as a result earns you a passive income month after month.

I/ Locate Money Making Private Label Rights Content

One of the most difficult parts of building any content website is writing the content; it’s a laborious task. Hours of research followed by hours of writing (or typing). So why bother doing it at all?

Are you aware that many authors who create information products also sell them with Private Label Rights? And that in most cases these rights allow you to:

− Put your name as the author and sell the product as is.
− Modify the contents to your hearts desire.
− Use the contents in other formats.
− Use the contents in newsletters or websites.

Each information product creator who sells their product with Private Label Rights will have their own ideas on how you can use their content. Sometimes they don’t make it very obvious on the sales website or in the product, so double check and make sure you have the right to use the product as content for your website. Another thing to be wary of is Private Label Rights content that is widely available; if everybody has access to content there’s a pretty good chance there are hundreds of websites using the content which will make your task of finding traffic generating keywords all the more difficult. Besides, nothing annoys a web surfer more than repeatedly coming across the same information.

Try to make sure you buy products with Private Label Rights that have been limited to only a few customers and the fewer the better – The more unique your content the more successful your website will be.


II/ Uncover Traffic Generating Keywords

The key to getting your website earning money quickly is to find keywords related to your PLR (Private Label Rights) content that people regularly type into search engines, but for which there is not much competition.

All it takes is a bit of concerted effort using the proper tools… For the small cost of using it, WordTracker is the most powerful keyword research tool available on the internet, and the accurate data it produces is vital for your website’s success.

Using WordTracker you need to uncover these three important bits of information:

1. What keywords related to your PLR content are people typing into search engines?

2. How many searches are conducted for these keywords each month? If you are trying to get this information using free research utilities, the first thing you are going to notice is the huge discrepancy between their search results and WordTracker’s results. This is because the method WordTracker uses to get its search results tends to make the information much closer to reality than the methods the others use.

3. How many competing web pages for each keyword are there in Google? Why Google? Because nearly everybody tries to get their web pages indexed by Google so if there’s not much competition in Google, chances are there’s going to be less competition on any of the other search engines.

During the keyword research phase it’s a good idea to get rid of keywords which are included within other keyword phrases. For example, let’s assume you conducted keyword research on the topic “diamond jewelry” and among others these 3 keywords were part of your Wordtracker results:

− Diamond
− Diamond Ring
− 3 Stone Diamond Ring

The first keyword “Diamond” is present in all three phrases, so you can delete it leaving:

− Diamond Ring
− 3 Stone Diamond Ring

The keyword “Diamond Ring” is present in both, so you can delete it leaving:

− 3 Stone diamond Ring

This is the keyword phrase for which you will create a web page. Depending on how well your website is ranked in the search engines, a search for any of the three phrases will display the results for the 3 Stone Diamond Ring web page.

Why must you do this? There are many reasons "why", but two of the most important points to consider are:

1. Of the three keyword phrases there will be much less competition for “3 Stone Diamond Ring” and you have a much better chance of getting a high search engine ranking for a web page built around that keyword phrase.

Granted the traffic for that keyword is the lowest of the three, but optimizing your web page around this keyword gives you a much better chance of getting traffic as soon as your page is indexed by the search engines.

Part of your promotion efforts should include an aggressive linking campaign, and as soon as this kicks in you will get better rankings for the more competitive keywords and start receiving traffic from those keywords.

2. It’s a real pain trying to create content for two or three almost identical keywords and unless you’re careful, the resulting pages will be far too similar for the search engine’s liking. The programming they use to rank your website will penalize any pages that are too similar and they will be dropped (i.e. they will never be included in any results).


III/ How to Build Your Adsense Website

There is no "best way" to build a website that uses Google Adsense to earn money... The best way in your particular circumstances can only be found by testing various different ideas and choosing the most profitable. Obviously you need a starting point and so here are a few ideas to get you going:

3.1. Select the best keywords and make website map

There are three ways of getting visitors to your website, and the method you choose has a great bearing on which keywords you should select for building your website:

− Pay for your website traffic: You could purchase links on a highly trafficked web page or you could set up a
pay per click campaign on those search engines which offer them. If you go this route you don’t need to worry about which keywords you use at all, but you’d better know how to set up an effective pay per click campaign.

− Use Low competition keywords and simple SEO: If you aren’t interested in paying for traffic and don’t have the time to pursue an aggressive linking campaign, your best option is to use low competition keywords and simple website search engine optimization. When choosing your keywords, bear in mind that most low competition keywords are also low traffic keywords, and you will need roughly 100 visitors per day to a webpage to earn $5.00 from the Google Adsense ads (this is a ballpark figure to help you choose keywords with enough traffic, by the very nature of the internet, some web pages will do better, some worse and there will even be those that don’t earn a thing).

− Use High competition keywords, simple SEO and aggressive linking: In general, the more links you have pointing to a web page from other websites, the higher it will rank in a search engine for the keywords the web page is based on. By pursuing an aggressive reciprocal linking campaign, it is quite possible to get
top search engine rankings for keywords which have a fair amount of competition. In fact some webmasters have managed to get top 10 rankings for some of the most competitive keywords, but their incoming links number in the thousands requiring a huge effort.

The bottom line is the more competitive the keyword you choose, the more aggressive your reciprocal linking campaign will have to be. There is another massive benefit from an aggressive reciprocal linking campaign… You will receive considerable traffic from people clicking on the links that you place in the link directories of other websites. Don't discount the value of these links − for quite some time you'll get more traffic from these links than from the search engines.

3.2. Prepare a website template.

Using a template will considerably increase the speed it takes to put your website together. Here are a few tips for preparing a template which will maximize your Google Adsense earnings:

− Make minimal use of graphics, a simple header graphic is all you need.

− Placing your Adsense ads down the left hand side of your webpage, your content in the middle and your menu either on the right hand side or on the bottom of the page will earn a pretty respectable Adsense income.

− Use the following place tags in your template to indicate where to place your content:

< !−− Content Start −− >

< !−− Content End −− >

− Use a simple text based menu. Search engines find it difficult to read graphic based links. The menu links should be text based and include your keyword phrases.

To make a website map, simply take your list of chosen keywords and place them into the most logical order possible − Look at it from the viewpoint of somebody searching for information.


3.3. Choose content for each web page

The content on a website that uses Google Adsense for revenue serves two main purposes:

− It determines which Adsense ads will be displayed... If you optimize each web page for a particular keyword and use content to support the keyword, Google Adsense will display ads which are exactly the same as the theme of the page. If you choose keywords that have a high value on pay per click search engines, chances are you will earn a pretty good income from each Adsense ad clicked on your web pages.

− It must be just good enough to keep your visitors from reporting your site to the search engines as spam, but not so good that your visitor avidly reads the page, maybe clicks to a few more pages to read them and then closes the browser window when they are finished. The primary objective of each web page is to get your visitor to click on an Adsense ad so they can get more information. Remember this: you only get paid when they click on an Adsense ad. If your website earns you a reasonable Adsense income and also gets a few bookmarks every month, you've got the balance right.

If you have decided to target many keywords by creating a large number of pages, you may be limited by the amount of private label rights content you have. All you have to do in this case is create each page using paraphrased content from the e−book and a related article from any of the major article directories, e.g. www.goarticles.com or www.ezinearticles.com

You will have to introduce each article with some text which includes your keywords, just make it sound natural.

You could place another Google Adsense block between the paraphrased PLR content and the articles. The only purpose of the articles is to pad out your content to keep both the search engines and your website visitors happy.

3.4. Optimize your web pages for the search engines

These are no black secrets involved in search engine optimization… All you need to do is employ a few simple, sensible tips when building each web page, and these are to use your keyword phrase as follows:

1) Once in the < title > < /title > tags
2) Once in the description meta tags
3) Once in the keywords meta tags
4) Once in the < h1 > </h1 > header tags
5) Twice in the first paragraph, with the first being in the first sentence and one of them being in bold letters (< b > < /b > tags).
6) At least once in each following paragraph.
7) Once in an < img alt=”” > tag

Don’t overdo it; you’ve got nothing to gain by repeating your keyword phrase too many times. All you are doing is making absolutely certain that the search engines know exactly what your web page is all about.

A simple test for this is to check what Google Adsense ads are displayed when you view the web page online (you might have to refresh the page the first time you view it before the ads show). If the ad content matches the theme of the web page you’ve got it right.


IV/ How to Get Your Website Online

There are two things you need to do before you can upload your website:

4.1. Choose a good domain name

The most obvious point is your domain name needs to be related to your website theme, and choosing a domain name that has your most generic keyword phrase is going to depend on availability. In the example we used earlier for choosing keywords, we had these 3 keywords:

− Diamond
− Diamond Ring
− 3 Stone Diamond Ring

A quick check on GoDaddy (one of the cheapest domain name registrars online) revealed that diamond.com and diamond−ring.com were not available, but 3−stone−diamond−ring.com was available. The only problem being it’s not all that inspiring and it’s quite limiting in terms of a website theme. When settling on a domain for your website, try all the combinations you possibly can, bearing in mind the following:

− Separating the words with a hyphen makes the domain easier to read. There’s two parts to optimizing your site for the search engines:

* The domain must mean something to the search engines and be related to your website theme.
* After all that hard work getting your website into the top 10 search results there’s no point putting the surfer off with a crappy domain name − You want a domain name that’s easy to read.

− No matter how readable your domain name is, to make sure it gets the surfer’s attention it better scream “click me” and to do that it needs to offer the surfer an implied benefit, like saving money, for example: Affordable−Diamond−Rings.com – which as it happened was available when I wrote this.

“OK, OK Affordable−Diamond−Rings.com is not the loudest screamer on the block”, but you get the idea – use an implied benefit in the domain to get the surfers interest. If your domain name is interesting, the surfer will click your listing (out of curiosity more than anything else) which sends them to a page with good content and once they’ve finished reading that you want them to leave your page via an Adsense ad.

4.2. Choose a good host

Hosting is not the big bad problem it was a few years ago. The rapid advancements in technology have made it readily available, more reliable and it’s getting cheaper every year.

For any website that earns money from Google Adsense ads, your biggest issue is going to be one of cost. You’re not going to stop at one website… You’re going to build plenty of them; after all they only take a day or two to build and upload, and can be earning an income within days if you’ve chosen good keywords, but certainly within a few weeks if you pursue an aggressive linking campaign.

The issue then is how many domains can you host on one hosting account?

Sure, you need to make sure the hosting company has generator backup in case of power outages and redundant backup systems so that in the event of an Internet connection interruption, an alternate Internet connection takes over. You also need to make sure you have adequate disk space and bandwidth, but the thing to remember with Adsense sites is you aren’t letting people download big files; your traffic is just people visiting your websites and if you use the minimum of graphics and keep your logos small, your website won’t use much bandwidth at all. Because most websites don't take up a lot of resources, some web hosts have decided to offer top quality hosting packages which allow unlimited domains, for example the ProLogic package from StartLogic. When you consider that most hosting costs anywhere between $3.95 to $7.50 per website per month you don't have to be a genius at math to realize hosting is a substantial cost, and unlimited domain hosting is the way to go.


V/ Bait The Search Engines

All it takes to get a search engine to your website is a link from another website that has already been indexed. The more popular the website, the quicker the search engines will come visiting. For example, a text link on a Google PR7 website will get your site indexed on the same day, but that one way PR7 link is going to cost you a lot. Another way is the blog and ping method, although this has been so abused that it’s not quite as quick as before. It does have one major advantage… You can link to every page on your website from a blog and ping the search engines with these details. By blogging and pinging it’s possible to get all your pages indexed quicker than with other methods.

No matter what method you use, it takes time to get every page of your website indexed by all the major search engines… For the most part it doesn’t happen in one or two days like some sales hype suggests. So your options are:

1. Purchase text links (which point back to your web pages) on a popular website − A popular website will have a high Google PR.

2. Place a link back to your website from one of your own indexed web pages.

3. Learn how to start a blog and create content with links back to your website then ping the major search engines with your blog details.

4. Start an aggressive reciprocal linking campaign.


VI/ Explode Your Website’s Traffic

The amount of money you earn from the Google Adsense ads displayed on any of your websites is dependent on many factors, but one of the most influential is the amount of traffic your websites receive. The more traffic, the more money you earn… It is possible to set up pay per click advertising campaigns which send traffic to your websites and make a profit on the Adsense revenue. It may be possible, but it’s not easy to find the right combination of cheap pay per click keywords and the best content for displaying high paying Adsense ads.

By far the best method to increase your website traffic is to get hundreds or preferably thousands of links pointing back to your website which serves you in two ways:

1. The increased number of links improves your website’s standing in the eyes of the search engines and your pages rank higher.

2. You will get people visiting your website from clicking these links.

Two very effective ways of getting thousands of links pointing back to your website are:

1. As mentioned many times in this report, set up an aggressive reciprocal linking campaign; get your link into as many reciprocal link directories as you can. It is very important to ensure these directories are categorized, not only to facilitate easy searching but your search engine optimization gets a slight boost if your link appears on a page with links of similar themes.

Don't waste time creating a link directory which you have to manually update, use a reciprocal linking script to automate many of the routine admin tasks which would otherwise take up hours of your valuable time. Make sure the linking script regularly checks that all reciprocal links in your directory are active and suspends any inactive links.

2. Write short 400 word articles from your PLR content, include a link to your website in a resource box at the bottom of each article and submit them to as many article directories as you can. Using a low cost submission service like Article Marketer will save you not hours, but days of effort. These articles ultimately find their way onto hundreds of content websites and will substantially increase the number of links back to your website.

The point to remember here is that your articles will only be accepted into an article directory or for inclusion into a website if they are easy to read and make sense. If you write and submit junk they will be rejected. You goal is to write and submit at least seven articles the first week and then a minimum of two articles per month. Don't underestimate the power of well written articles for generating both links and traffic to your websites.


Conclusion

Here is a strategy to use to when setting up your Adsense sites:

1. Use WordTracker to research keywords for the theme of your websites.

2. Create a website template.

3. Prepare a web page for each keyword using simple search engine optimization and the Private Label Rights content.

4. Purchase inexpensive attention−catching domain names from Godaddy.com .

5. Purchase the ProLogic package from StartLogic Hosting so you only ever have to pay one small monthly hosting fee no matter how many domains you host.

6. Upload your websites.

7. Get one good link back to your websites from a web page that has already been indexed.

8. Install a reciprocal linking script, e.g. this script from Duncan Carver.

9. Pursue an aggressive linking campaign for each website using both reciprocal links and automatic submissions to article directories through Article Marketer.

10. As your Google Adsense revenue increases, you can either employ someone to manage your reciprocal linking campaigns or you can reduce the reciprocal linking campaigns in favor of purchasing text links back to your websites. Just make sure these are on high traffic websites as you want both the link for search
engine rankings, and the traffic from people clicking on the link.

11. Repeat for the next months PLR products (omit step 5 from now on – you only have to
set up StartLogic Hosting once).

10 Untold Traffic Secrets

Once upon a time on the web, any traffic was good traffic. If you got a lot of traffic, you could make money somehow – by selling products, selling advertising, or selling impressions. With big traffic, you were riding high. You were the proud owner of some very valuable Internet real estate.

Back in the old days, even if you didn’t get a lot of traffic, you could reasonably expect one-half to one percent of your visitors to do SOMETHING when they got to your site. They’d either buy something, click on a banner, sign up for your opt-in list, or click on an advertiser’s link.

But those glory days are gone. The last couple of years have shown that any old traffic is not only worthless, it can cost you money. There’s nothing like racking up bandwidth charges month after month without seeing a single affiliate commission check. It’s sad but true: in theory, your web site could have a phenomenally high Google page rank, be one of Alexa’s top sites, get half a million visitors a month… and lose money.

There’s only one kind of traffic worth a pixel in today’s Internet marketplace. TARGETED TRAFFIC.

So that’s what this Affiliate Classroom Special Report is all about: 10 powerful and underutilized ways to generate TARGETED traffic. As you’ll discover, many of these tips are not for marketing wimps. A few are free. But most require at least a minimal cash investment. And they all require you to develop a rare but powerful online business skill – imagination. Yes, you’ll have to wrap your brain around your site topic and the products you’re trying to sell. That’s what “targeting” requires – being selective. You have to know not only the kind of visitors you want, but the kind of visitors you DON’T want.

1 – Paying For Links

The reciprocal link principle is simple – find websites with good rankings and plenty of traffic, and trade links with them. But when you’re just starting out, why should a big important site give a little upstart like you any kind of link at all?

There’s only one way to find out – ASK. It helps if you have some kind of relationship with the site owner. But even if you don’t, you can sometimes use the time-honored principle of bribery to get a link from a well-ranked site.

Ask for a link. If you get turned down, say “Would you consider linking to me for $100?” You’d be surprised at how many webmasters will take you up on your offer!

This technique works best with privately owned sites that rank in the top 10 for targeted keywords in niche markets. There’s no point in trying to get a link from Kiplinger’s or Newsweek’s or Vogue’s web site. But if you’re selling weight loss products, and $50 will buy you a link from a small web site that’s ranked #1 for “low-carb dessert recipes,” you’re probably better off buying that link than buying $50 of PPC advertising. This also can’t hurt your own search engine ranking.

Make sure you have a simple written agreement about exactly what the link will say (you want your keywords in it) and the duration of the link – 6 months, a year, forever, etc.

A similar technique involves finding all the sites that link to your competitors, and offering them a cash incentive to add your link to their site. You can find these sites by going to Google and typing in “link:[your-competitors-link]".

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2 - Get Listed On Coupon And Special Offer Sites


There are dozens of special offer, coupon, and rebate sites online today. Simply go to Google and type in “coupon sites” and you’ll see what we mean. “Coupon” is searched at least a few hundred thousand times a month. Some smart folks are getting a lot of traffic with simple sites that are just lists of links to various sites with special offers.

How can this help YOU get targeted traffic? The people who visit these sites are looking for a discount, a deal, a freebie, a rebate, or a bargain. If you can offer some kind of special bonus – whether it’s a cash rebate, a physical or digital product, or a service – you can ask to be included on these sites.

As long as you can come up with an offer that qualifies, you’ll get accepted. If you wish, you can create several web pages, each with a slightly different special offer, and see what makes the most sales.

Very few affiliate marketers are taking advantage of this. Yes, it does mean you have to create a little something extra for the people who buy through these sites. You’ll have to track their purchases. But considering that you’ll also be getting incoming links from some very highly ranked web sites, it’s worth the little bit of extra work.


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3 – Old Fashioned Business Networking

Yes, even though we’re all buried in Spam, it’s still possible to make new business contacts online. The recent JV (Joint Venture) craze reflects the simple principle that in the end, people do business with PEOPLE – not with pixels, bits, and bytes.

Old fashioned networking is still alive and well online. And it’s the best method for getting some good exposure if you’re just starting out and have no money for marketing. By building strong business relationships, you’ll soon have other marketers offering to link to you, publish your articles, write about your site in their newsletter, and even offer you free advertising.

One of the best places to make business contacts in your field is in forums. For example, if you’ve started an affiliate web site that sells specialty dog training devices, hang out in the many dog-related forums and newsgroups. But instead of trying to help end consumers so they’ll visit your site, make friends with experts in related fields. In this case pet sitters, groomers, dog trainers, veterinary assistants, and even animal behaviorists can all be excellent contacts.

As with all business networking, look for ways to help your colleagues. If they have their own site, offer them a link on yours. If they have an opt-in list, perhaps you can set up a special web page, and give them a rebate on any commissions you make. If they write their own articles, perhaps you can turn them into a mini-ebook and offer it to all your visitors. And there’s no reason you can’t be proactive, and send an email to non-competitors – or even competitors – whose sites you admire. You don’t have to consider every competitor your enemy. In a future special report we’ll explain exactly how you can create powerful partnerships with your competitors. But for now, simply look for opportunities to be helpful.

One easy way to help – provided you do it diplomatically – is to point out a problem on someone’s site or in their ezine. If you find a broken link or some other error, drop them a note. Most webmasters WANT to know if a link suddenly stops working or if their database is generating internal server errors.

Another way to make powerful friends online is to read your Spam. That’s because ALL online merchants want to know if someone is promoting their affiliate product via Spam. It’s not just the Spammer who can suffer some stiff legal penalties – they can too. So if you see someone’s ebook or software being sold via Spam, write to them and let them know. Make sure you keep the original Spam, and send it to them as an attachment (not forwarded) so they receive all the headers intact.

How can networking help get you targeted traffic? If you make 20 strong, personal, one-on-one business contacts every month, at least five of them will end up sending you traffic. Somehow, someday, they’ll start pushing the right kinds of visitors to you.

It might be by linking to you. They may mention your site in a viral ebook or one of their articles. They might want to do a joint venture or partner on a money making project. They might do all these things – and many more. Yes, it’s old fashioned. It’s not autopilot. It’s not passive. But networking costs you nothing except time – and can be worth gold in the long term.


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4 – Exploit The Handheld Market

This one is outrageously simple, yet almost completely overlooked. Next time you create a viral information product of any kind – whether it’s an ebook, a special report, a white paper, a case study, or a compilation of articles – get it formatted for handhelds.

There are dozens – perhaps even hundreds – of sites that offer free downloads for handhelds. And most handheld users are always on the lookout for something to read on that little screen.

It will cost less than $50 to pay someone from Guru.com, Elance.com, or Scriptlance.com to format your product for the handheld market. And with over 11 million handheld users out there, that’s a lot of potential viral traffic for your site.


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5 – Combine Surveys and Polls With PPC


You probably already know that surveys are excellent for finding out what your target market wants. But if combined with low cost, quick and dirty Google PPC, surveys can also send lots of targeted prospects to
your site every month.

First, do some keyword research. You’ll need to find keywords and keyphrases that are related to your survey topic but don’t have too many Google campaigns running. You can do this very quickly with a tool like WordTracker, since it will show you exactly how many Google campaigns are running for various keywords at any given time.

Second, sign up for an inexpensive survey service like Survey Monkey. We don’t recommend free survey services, since they tend to limit the number of participants, and the whole point is to get as many people as possible to take your survey. Now design a survey that will appeal to your target market.

Next, come up with an incentive for people to take your survey. Make it a download, so you can capture the prospect’s email address. And make it viral. Even a simple white paper can be viral. You don’t necessarily have to cram it with affiliate links. Just make sure your URL is conspicuously listed on every page.

Now put up a simple web page that introduces people to the survey topic, offers the incentive, asks for an email address where you can send the download link and the survey results, and links to the survey. Finally, use at least a dozen of the keywords your researched earlier to set up Google Adwords campaigns advertising your survey. Make sure the ad uses your keyword, and that it mentions the incentive. “Take this photography survey, get a free gift.” You don’t have to be the #1 ad. You can even be on the second or third page.

The point is to capture a targeted prospect’s contact information for a very small investment. But there are some additional serious fringe benefits in addition to traffic.

First, you’ll collect valuable information on what your prospects are looking for. Second, you’ll have their permission to contact them with the survey results and the download link for the thank you gift. And third, if you make that free gift a viral report, you’ll eventually get more targeted traffic. Nice!

You can do a variation of this with a simple one question poll. Everything else is the same, except you’ll want to come up with an intriguing question for the poll – something that will pique people’s curiosity about the results.

And if you want to pass on the free report incentive and try something different, why not enter every participant in a drawing for a valuable prize of tangible goods? Make it a prize with a high perceived value, worth at least $100. Now you have an excuse to collect snail mail addresses of your targeted visitors – a perfect way to build an in-house direct mail list, so you can take advantage of the ideas in #10 of this report.


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6 – New Fashioned Link Strategies


It’s been true since the birth of the World Wide Web: people like pages of useful links. They’ll bookmark them and return to them. And today, because links are so important to search engine rank, link pages should be part of every targeted traffic plan.

Old fashioned link pages are the ones you build by hand, painstakingly, over many months and years. These are annotated links pages that include not only a URL, but a brief description of the site and its contents. These “handmade” link pages take a lot of time and a lot of effort. Frankly, they are slowly dying out on the web.

But thanks to web-based services and innovative software, you can build useful pages of links while enjoying all the search engine benefits – and without all that painstaking labor. Every serious affiliate marketer should think about creative ways to take advantage of these “new fashioned” link strategies.

One simple new fashioned strategy is to set up a links page through a service like Bravenet. With this type of page, webmasters fill in a form to “apply” for a reciprocal link with you. On this page, you can explain that the application is subject to review, and that you will only link to them if they’ve ALREADY linked to you.

You can also include required text for the link they give you – you definitely want your keywords or your “brand name’ in that link! And you can even set up a response email, which can be customized. This response email should ask everyone who applies to send you the full URL of the page where they’ve got your link.

But don’t stop there. Once a webmaster sends you the URL where your link appears, submit that link to Google. Just go to www.google.com/addurl.html, fill in the form, and add the page with your link. Submit it to any other relevant search engine or directory. You want those search engines to know that page exists so they can spider it as fast as possible.

After you’ve accepted the other webmaster’s link, it will get added to your custom link page. So make sure your links page gets added to your site map. In fact, make sure you link to it from EVERY page of your site.


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7 – Give Away Unrestricted Resale and Reprint Rights

This traffic idea is simple, obvious, and still enormously underutilized. The idea is simple:

• Create short ebooks or special reports on highly specialized topics that would be appeal to your target market.
• Add your URL to every page in a header or footer, as well as on the title page and at the end of the book.
• Then give away unrestricted, unlimited reprint and resale rights to the ebook for FREE.

“Wait,” you say, “hasn’t this been done before?” Yes, to a certain extent. It’s
been exploited by some infoproduct creators, especially the how-to-make-money-online crowd and the motivational gurus.

But your average affiliate marketer selling hard goods, software, and services to niche markets rarely uses this idea to its full potential. Let’s look at an example.

Imagine you’ve built a killer affiliate web site that specializes in bridesmaids dresses. What kind of viral ebook could you possibly create? How about some special reports on…

• 20 extra special “finishing touches” for the bridesmaids’ face, hair, nails, lips, etc.
• The most popular colors in bridesmaids dresses for each season of the year.
• A dozen unique ideas for bridesmaids gifts.
• 10 ways to make the big day special for the bridesmaids, too.
• 100 online wedding resources (from music to Victorian weddings to tuxedos etc...)
• 50 love poems and biblical scriptures you can read at your wedding (from public domain sources).

All these viral products relate to the topic of your site. They have a high perceived value, and would make excellent bonuses, freebies, or incentives on wedding-related web sites. Most can be created with a minimum of effort. And all these topics should have a long shelf life – not a few weeks or months, but years and years.

If you tell the world that they can take these viral reports and do anything they want with them – including sell them on Ebay – you may suddenly end up giving away hundreds, even thousands of copies. Can you say “viral?”


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8 – Combine Dumb PPC Advertising With Smart Virals


All PPC beginners make the same mistake. They “discover” a very popular keyword on a very popular topic that gets thousands of searches… but only three Google campaigns! They can barely contain their excitement as they write their ads and put in their bid for six, seven, eight, or even ten cents a click.

And low and behold, soon they start getting clicks – lots of them! They even make a few sales. Then a few more. And they breathe a sigh of relief when they see that their CTR (click through rate) is slightly above Google’s stated “acceptable” rate.

Until they get an email from Google’s Adwords Support, saying that their keyword is in danger of being disabled because the CTR isn’t high enough.

It’s upsetting, it’s frustrating, and it may not even be fair or ethical. But Google, for reasons not entirely known, will sometimes require impossibly high clickthrough rates for certain keywords. Instead of a CTR of .5%, suddenly a CTR of 8%, 10% or even 15% isn’t good enough. Emails to support, begging for guidance or clarification, prove futile. Bye-bye keyword.

It’s dumb to try and salvage campaigns based on these keywords. You tweak your ads over and over, raise your bids, and waste days trying to divine Google’s required CTR. Experienced PPC advertisers know that it’s almost impossible to keep one of these campaigns alive once Google starts to raise the stakes.

However, there’s a way you can grab a large amount of targeted traffic, if only for a limited time, by intentionally running these dumb campaigns. It won’t work for every niche, since these types of keywords aren’t common to all topics. And if you suddenly find yourself struggling with a campaign like this, pause it long enough to put this strategy in place.

First, you’ve got to locate a fairly general keyword that gets a lot of searches but has fewer than 10 Google campaigns. Software like WordTracker is useful for this, but it will still take some digging. The best
way to locate a good candidate is to run WordTracker and searches on extremely broad terms. The keyword “book,” for example, only has a handful of Google campaigns running at any given time, yet is searched over a MILLION times a month. “Kelly blue book” is the same way.

Next, create an unlimited, unrestricted reprint and resale rights infoproduct (see #7 above) that might appeal to people who search on a term like “Kelly bluebook.” Chances are, these folks are either buying or selling a used car. So develop an ebook of resources, tips, warnings, or other useful information on buying or selling used cars. Make sure the information will have a long shelf life.

Then run a “dumb” Google campaign on “Kelly blue book,” offering your report for free. Make sure the landing page states boldly, in no uncertain terms, that people can sell or give this book away anywhere and everywhere – even on Ebay.

Now sit back and watch the traffic come in. Google probably won’t let that campaign run for very long – at least not at .06 a click, and probably not at 20 times that. But with a little luck, you’ll probably be able to give away at least a hundred ebooks before Google disables the keyword. Even if you gave away only 20, it cost you only a few bucks.

And you never know what kind of future life that viral report will have. It may become a free bonus in a best selling package. It may end up being distributed on hundreds of car sites all over the web. Some online marketer may feature it as a brilliant example of viral marketing. It may even get talked about in a car magazine.


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9 – Get Links on Thank You and Confirmation Pages


Another technique available to almost everyone, but exploited by a mere few. You probably already know about putting links to your site or products on your Thank You pages and Confirmation pages. You may even put links to specific affiliate products on these pages. But have you ever considered approaching OTHER sites and asking for a link on THEIR Confirmation and Thank You pages? You may be surprised at how many webmasters of specialized content sites would be delighted to offer you space on one of these pages – especially if you offer them an incentive, like a cash payment, a plug in your ezine, or a free sample of your product.

A variation of this involves “404 Error” pages. If you find a site that you feel could send you good, targeted traffic, ask if they’d like a sample of your product in return for letting you create a custom 404 error page for them. It can be a simple page with just a few links: one back to their home page, one to yours, and one to some kind of special discount offer or other incentive on your site.

This technique works best with sites that are noncommercial in nature. There are thousands of sites, created and maintained by enthusiasts of all sorts, that aren’t designed to make money. Many blogs fit into this category. They may be about a hobby, a religion, a sport, or an idea. They may exist just for fun. They may be a venue for someone’s original stories or poetry.

But if their owners have access to their server, and create their own pages, you may be able to “bribe” them into sending you targeted traffic by sharing a bit of unused space with your links or offers.


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10 - Offline Advertising


Have you ever wondered why some of the biggest online businesses spend huge sums on direct mail, as well as TV, magazine, radio, and newspaper advertising? Is it because they have money to burn?

No, it’s because mass media ads and direct mail can actually draw highly targeted visitors – prospects who are ready to buy. Those big companies with deep pockets use mass media ads to create indelible name
recognition in the public’s mind. After branding their company into our consciousness, they use direct mail techniques such as postcard mailings to send offers to hand-picked prospects who are most likely to make a purchase soon.

It’s strange, but very few online marketers have discovered the power of direct mail. A handful have learned to use classified advertising – the distant cousin of expensive mass media advertising. But almost none are using other forms of offline ads. This can also give you an enormous edge. If you make your living from affiliate programs and related upsells, you can bet that your competition isn’t doing any sort of offline advertising. If you think offline advertising is too expensive, think again. Because PPC has become so popular, the cost of high quality online advertising is rising dramatically. It’s common for a PPC campaign in a competitive field to cost $1 or more per click – sometimes much more. And you don’t even know if those clicks are coming from real prospects or your competitors’ itchy fingers.

In fact, today PPC can actually end up costing as much, or more, than direct mail on a cost per sale basis. So do the math before you write off direct mail. A mailing of custom color postcards, for example, can definitely cost less than $3 each to print and mail, and that includes the mailing list.

More importantly, you must think about your projected COST PER SALE when comparing PPC and direct mail. Clicks may be cheap, but customers may not. All traffic – whether targeted or not – is made up of people. If these “clickers” are unlikely to be buyers, you’ll lose money on PPC no matter how cheap the clicks are.

For highly competitive keywords you can easily end up paying over $3 per click if you want to be on the first page of Google. If you stop and consider WHO you’re selling to, the direct mail campaign may be a better investment. You can target exactly the sort of person you want, with just the right demographics, and tell them to go to your site where you’ll show them an irresistible offer.

What about classifieds? With classified print advertising, you can advertise your URL in literally hundreds of small daily newspapers for ridiculously small amounts per ad. And classified ads in major national niche magazines can be very affordable – and usually pull extremely well.

These days, television ads may not even be out of your reach. If you enjoy the spotlight, you can purchase "leased access" time on local U.S. cable television. By Federal Law, every local cable station must allow the general public to purchase time on their channel, in blocks of 30 minutes. Since the costs are also controlled by law, even in large metropolitan areas a 30-minute segment may cost as little as $200.

These days, $200 won’t buy you much PPC in a competitive field like mortgages or debt management. You don’t even have to be selling to a local market to make a television segment pay. As long as you’ve got an easy-to-remember URL, put a special television offer page on your site. Then offer a high value upsell free to the first 20 people who respond to the “TV special.” Finally, don’t forget other incredibly simple offline methods of getting your URL out there. Instead of a traditional business card, print several thousand with your URL in huge letters and leave them anywhere relevant. Don’t forget pencils and pens, letter openers and coasters, calendars and T-shirts… Remember, you don’t need a bricks and mortar location to use offline advertising. Amazon, Gateway, Dell, AOL, and many other online businesses spend millions on offline promotional methods. That’s what’s made their brands and URLs famous.

You can do the same on a much smaller scale. It’s a big offline world. Plenty of people spend more time offline and on. Open your mind to using offline marketing to get your message in front of the RIGHT people. That way you can get your URL in front of targeted prospects. And when they visit your site, they’ve actually made a conscious decision to do so.