Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Affiliate Marketing

There are very few home based business opportunities that are easier or cost less than affiliate marketing. You can work at home and make money online without having your own product to sell. You get paid for bringing customers to your client which is the website you are an affiliate. There are thousands of men and women earning thousands of dollars each year doing affiliate marketing. The advertisors are already established online businesses selling a wide array of products and services. You then get paid either a set fee or a percentage of what the customer buys. Some affiliate programs also pay for every time someone clicks through or leave their contact information.


The great thing about doing affiliate marketing is that you are not limited to doing only one affiliate program. You can sign on with as many programs as you want as long as you have room on your website to place their advertisements.


It is not that difficult to find affiliate programs because it has become so profitable and popular as an internet marketing tool that almost everyone seems to be doing it. This does not mean you should settle for just any affiliate program. It is important to choose a program that is at least somewhat relevant to your website or business. This way you have the best possible chance of your customers clicking through to the affiliate website. For example, if you sell golf clubs or golf equipment you might join an affiliate program that sells books and items related to golf.


Most affiliate programs provide residual income which is income that keeps coming in month after month, year after year, from work you do just one time.


Be sure to read the affiliate agreement carefully. While there are many legitimate affiliate programs there is always somebody trying to make some quick money. You can avoid these scams if you carefully review the affiliate agreement and seek references to find out whether a website or program is legitimate.


Here are some useful tips for finding affiliate programs.

1. Will the product being sold be of interest to your customers?
2. What percentage of the sale does the merchant pay and for what do they pay? Click throughs? Purchases? Leads?
3. Do you get a percentage of all future purchases made by your customers?
4. When are are commissions paid? This information should be in the affiliate agreement.
5. Are you provided access to view your account in order to check your stats?
Do some good research in order to find the right affiliate program for your home based business and in no time you will be making money simply for referring customers to your website.
Paul Jesse is an author, private pilot, and lifetime student of internet marketing. He created SheaMarketing for those interested in working from home. He invites you to visit his website at http://www.sheamarketing.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Jesse

Monday, January 29, 2007

How Do I Start An eBay Business

You may have thought to yourself how do I start an eBay business? You've heard all the talk about how starting an eBay business can not only bring in an extra monthly stipend for you, but could possibly end up replacing your present income and allowing you to quit your day job. At least, that's the hype. But is there any truth to the hype? The answer is; it depends. Like anything else worth getting, your own eBay business can bring huge benefits, but you'll have to do some work. My only question is, would you rather work for yourself or for someone else your whole life?


So how DO I start an eBay business? Well, there are more ways than you might think. Most people when they think of selling on eBay they only envision cleaning out their garages of unwanted (by them and probably everyone else!) of useless trinkets. While this is a good way to get your feet wet and learn the ins and outs of eBay, as far as buying and selling, there are far greener pastures to graze! So the question remains: how do I start and eBay business? I'm going to mention several of the more effective ways and then you can pick out the one that suits your time, commitment and style.


How do I start and eBay business? Well if it was me, (and it was!) you can sell your own unwanted merchandise, that of friends (for a piece of the action, of course), items you find at garage sales, estate sales, etc., items through a dropshipper, your own information products, other's information products that you have resell rights to, or as an affiliate of eBay itself. There's even a business model now that lets you put active auctions on your site, and collect commissions when the auction sells! How cool! All these methods are different and I wouldn't advise trying them all at once. Pick one and see how it works for you, then add another to the mix as you can. The point is, there are many ways to make either a part or full-time income from eBay. eBay itself says that over 750,000 people now claim eBay as their primary source of income. None of these people started with anything except a question like "how do I start an eBay business?"
Take your time, do your due diligence, find a good fit for you but get started! Then when someone asks you "how do I start an eBay business" you'll have a great answer for them!
Keith Thompson is the owner of eBay Goodies If you'd like exciting information on how to How to Put eBay on AUTOPILOT! Earn a serious income with a part-time effort. visit today!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keith_Thompson

Sunday, January 28, 2007

6 Important Tips For Wordpress Success

If you are using Word-press to blog, I am sure by now you are familiar with plugin and some basic search engine optimization. I won’t be covering what most authors have covered under the Word-press usage do and don’t. But taking a new perspective into how successful you want your Word-press blog to be.
Bloggers if you want your blog to be successful. You got to plan your success blueprint. As you know Word-press have many advantages over conventional online blogging software. Make full use of the plugin available to help you move your blogs to the next level. Do pay attention to the below important tips.


1. Strategic Approach. You need a strategy to add quality content to your blog. Do you prepare you quality content 1 month in advance? Can you go for holiday while your visitors still got new content to read everyday? If not, you are not utilizing the scheduling feature inside Wordpress which save you the endless manual work of posting article every day.


2. Forging Alliance. Are you commenting on other people blogs? Do you visit blogs that are related to your niche? You need to show interest in other people blogs before they will return you a favour. Build friendship with similar site and link them before asking for a back link.


3. Blog community. Do you have a community of people who visit you each day? You need to have a community that actively talk about you everyday. They go to your blog not because you got good quality content but for the community participation in commenting what you have written. Are you able to create a topic that keeps people talking or arguing about. All successful blogs have this success trail.


4. Building Your List. Are you building a list for active communication with your visitors? You need to write unique content in the form of e-zine or newsletter or e-book for you visitors. Read up on articles on list building. If you got no subscriber list, it is equal to not wearing any clothes.


5. Credibility. How credible are you? Why should I listen to you? The good news is you can borrow credibility from experts in your niche. You will be surprise on how easily it can be done only if you have tried. Trust me there are helpful people out there. Find them and you will find your success.


6. Promote like crazy. Do you have the conviction for success? Most people who are successful are convicted to their success online. They take charge of results. You need to promote your blog whether online or off line. You need to always remember as a marketer you do the most important thing first and that is to promote your blog.


Like a ship in the ocean, you will reach your destination only if you have a map of where you are heading. Word press is the ship you have chosen; you have the responsibility to bring it the designated location.
Adwin Ang is a ezine author, affiliate marketer and adsense publisher. He has been actively helping newbie Internet marketing both online and offline to make their first buck. Did you find those tips on Wordpress useful? You can learn a lot more about "5 Steps Quick Launch Guide To Affiliate Marketing” and how you can start generating monthly passive income at www.affiliateslittleguy.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adwin_Ang

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Seven Strategies For Successful Blogging

What makes some blogs more successful than others? Here are seven strategies that will contribute to every blog's success.

What's Your Niche?
When people start to blog, they often have little idea what they're going to say today and less idea what they'll be talking about in five years' time. That doesn't matter much at the beginning, but if you're going to stick to blogging, you need to find something you enjoy writing about and can stay current on. Something that's a big part of your life will make a good blogging niche. For me, that's writing; for you, it could be something else.


Keep Your Focus
Once you've found your niche, stick to it, most of the time at least. When your readers get used to the content you provide, your readership will dip if you go off-topic for too long. You need to find a way to make your content relevant to your readers. Sometimes all you need to do that is a good title. Choosing a title that relates to the theme of your blog or post will help readers realize what your topic is and how this post relates to it.

Read Or Dead?
If you want people to read your blog, you've got to give them something to read - and you've got to make it regular. For some people, this means posting at least once or several times a day. For others, it means posting a couple of times a week. If you're a WAHM or part-time blogger, you may not have a lot of time to sit down and think of posts, let alone write them. But as long as there's activity on the blog, there'll be people reading it. Stay away too long and people are likely to abandon your blog for one that's got fresh content. Since people have lives that are offline (as well as online) getting a guest blogger is a good way to make sure your blog is updated if you have to be away. And with some blogging platforms like Wordpress, you can submit blog posts by email.

Tell The World
Sitting around waiting for people to find your content can take a long time. Instead, take the content to them with headline animators from Feedburner, email alerts from Feedblitz, RSS feeds from whoever you choose. Submit your blog to directories and try to think of a description that will make people want to visit. This is especially important if your blog is just one of many in a crowded field. What is the unique selling point of your blog? What makes it stand out from the rest? That's what you need to put in the description. Use pinging services like Pingoat to let people know you've updated your content. Also use the social bookmarking services to take your blog posts to a wider audience.

Read All About It
Read other people's blogs, not just on your own blogging plarform, but everywhere. This will let you know what people are thinking and talking about and may give you inspiration for blog posts of your own. This article was inspired by a post on Problogger, for example.

Talk To Others
When you read other blogs, be sure to comment if you've found the post interesting or useful. If you have something to add to the discussion, that's even more useful. The best blogging has a community feel and you have to keep talking to maintain that community. That also means that you should respond to all comments on your blog. If you get a lot of visitors, you don't have to respond individually, but it's nice for people to know their voices have been heard.

Work Those Links
Use blogrolls and bookmarks to keep track of the bloggers you read. You can also link to interesting posts in your own posts and use the trackbacks feature to let those people know about the link. If you're lucky, those people will also link back to you and you'll get new readers for your blog. But that's only one part of the story. The best way to keep getting readers for your posts is to link to them in other posts. After all, you're the person who's most likely to know if one of your blog posts is related to another.
These strategies are a good way of building a blog readership and a sense of community with your readers. Once you've done that, your readers will come to you with questions and comments that will lead to other blog posts - and you'll be sure that someone wants to read them.
Sharon Hurley Hall gives writers advice on how to get paid to write. Sharon is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor who writes on freelance writing skills and writer promotion for InspiredAuthor.com. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Hurley_Hall

7 Tips for Successful Blogging

7 Tips for Successful Blogging by Michele Schermerhorn
So, you have a blog! Do you have traffic? Do you know how to build traffic to your weblog? There are seven proven methods for building readership of your blog. They start with defining the purpose, or life, of your blog. Then, after you have a blog worth promoting, driving traffic is crucial to your ongoing success at blogging.Here are seven tips to help you build and hold an audience for your blog:
Tip #1: Provide quality content. On the Internet, whether you are talking about websites or blogs, a lot of space is given to content. Everyone directs you to provide quality content. But, what is quality content? The quality of your blog's content is directly related to how well you have defined your ideal audience.A successful blog is written with a distinct audience in mind. In this way, you can provide content that is unique to your audience's issues, needs, or desires. If you create content they like and wish to return to read, you have quality content.The second issue is to stay true to your audience and tone of your blog. If people are reading your blog, it's because they like your topic and tone. Try not to stray from your typical topics and style too much. This will give your readers a reason to link back to your blog on an ongoing basis, as will posting on a regular basis.
Tip #2: Blog regularlyIf you don't update your blog often enough, blog readers will move on to other blogs. There are too many blogs out there competing for attention. Blog readers will go where they can get enough of what they want. Successful blogging takes a commitment of your time. When you begin blogging and wish to capture an audience, you should be prepared to blog every day. In this way, you can develop an audience who counts on you to help them begin or end their day. This means you should also try to post at the same time each day. Your readers will get accustomed to your schedule and check your blog at the appropriate time. The time of day is not as crucial as the consistency in your posting. Since you now have quality content and a regular posting schedule, it's time to drive traffic to your blog. Your readers will do a lot to promote your blog just by telling their friends. Don't count on this alone! You need to do some additional work.When you post, make sure you set your blog to "ping" blog tracking sites every time you add a new post. Think of this as a means to get their attention. The ping says "Hey, we just added a new post". An alternative to automatically pinging from your blog is to use pingomatic.com. This is a one-stop place to automatically ping everyone you should notify of your new post and only takes a couple of minutes to accomplish.
Tip #3: Mention your blog wherever you canMention your blog's address in your email signature line, in forums where you post, on your business cards, on address labels and in conversations with anyone you meet. Use a tag line under your blog address to further entice them to visit. Mine reads:Michele Schermerhorn http://www.imarketblog.com/ A sassy little marketing blogBeyond just mentioning your blog in writing and conversation, you must actively participate in the blogging community too.
Tip #4: Participate in the blogosphereGet involved in other people's blogs. Visit blogs that interest you and are in line with the general topic of your blog. Then, leave thoughtful comments. Almost every comment option on someone else's blog will allow you to post your blog URL and your email address. Help other bloggers out with traffic and they will help you.If a blogger really likes your site, they will add you to their blogroll. A blogroll is generally found on every blog which understands linking to the rest of the blogosphere helps drive traffic. A blogroll is a listing of other blogs. Think of it as a "recommended reading list". Don't be stingy with your blog roll either. Add those blogs that you read and enjoy to your blogroll too.
Tip #5: Think keywords when you postThink about keywords with your use of titles, links and blog posts. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, like keywords. The more targeted your keywords, the better the chances of your blog appearing in search results. Search results can drive that extra traffic you want. To increase the value of the key words in your content, make certain keywords are part of the hot link in your posts. Don't use "click here" as the hot link. You will be wasting valuable real estate in your post. Instead use the relevant keywords for the hot link, like "a great marketing idea. This gives the keywords added emphasis with the search engines. One last thought on keywords for driving traffic; if you want a real leg up in the traffic game, in your linking code add rel="tag". This helps Technorati, a major blog resource, index your blog for their directory. But don't stop there! It's time to submit your blog to blog directories.
Tip #6: Submit your blog to blog directoriesIn addition to submitting your blog to the major search engines, make certain you submit the blog to exclusively blog directories like blogwise, blogcatalog, or bloghub. Many people find blogs through these online directories. When you do submit your blog to these directories, remember to add a description that will entice your targeted audience to check your blog out. For instance, when I post my blog in blog directories, under description I put "General musings, rants, advice and strategies from a battle-worn veteran of the Marketing Wars, online and off". Your description should help the potential reader understand your blogging topic and the flavor of how you write.In addition to submitting your blog to blog directories, join a few of the free or inexpensive traffic exchange sites like blogexplosion or blogclicker.
Tip #7: Use free and inexpensive blog traffic exchange communities There are many sites which can be termed "traffic exchange" sites for the blogging community. It won't cost you anything to sign up. At the very least, join blogexplosion, blogclicker, and blogazoo. Once you sign up, you have two options to help drive traffic to your blog. Use both of them!The first method is to earn credits (guaranteed visitors to your site) by using the "surf member sites" function. As you surf through those sites, you will be earning credits (visitors to your blog). When you find an interesting post, leave a comment as discussed above. When you find a blogger you like, add them to your blogroll and let them know you did. The second method to drive traffic is to purchase credits. The cost is very cheap for the traffic you will drive to your blog. The more traffic to your blog, the more customers you'll have. The more happy customers you have, the more they will tell others. The more they tell others, the more customers you get. Don't you love this dance!In summary, blogging may not be for everyone. However, it can be a great method for bringing your unique perspective to the Internet. You will surely find others who think the same way you do. Some bloggers will entertain you, some will inform you, and some will drive you to tear your hair out. Decide what type of blogger you want to be and be the best you can. See you in the blogosphere!
About the Author
Michele Schermerhorn calls herself a "Corporate Freedom Fighter" dedicated to freeing cubicle prisoners. She has over 30 years experience in the business world. She is President of Online Business Institute Inc. (www.obinstitute.com), authors a sassy marketing blog (www.imarketblog.com), and regularly conducts free online seminars. Online Business Institute Inc. exists to "Create Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time".

Monday, January 22, 2007

Make Money Using Ebay

Make Money Using Ebay by Kevin Patton

Today a large amount of people make money using Ebay. Ebay is a huge online auction site which offers excellent opportunities to make money online. This article will give some basic tips and ideas on how to make money using Ebay, and how to increase your sales on Ebay.
Selling on Ebay can be frustrating when you do not achieve any results. However, there are several ways to improve your performance on Ebay.
The most common problem many people have is to lack of sales on Ebay. If you want to improve your sales, here are some interesting ideas you might want to try.
Change the sales letter of your auction. If you see that people visit your auction site, but there are no sales, its time to change your sales letter. Try to focus on the benefits. Take your time to make a new sales letter and send it to five friends of yours in order to get some feedback. Ask them their honest opinion and if they would take action after reading the sales copy.
The same strategy applies too your auction title. Title has to be very effective. Do not forget that there are thousands of other titles on Ebay and you should consider them as your competition. Try to add as many benefits as possible to the headline. Some experts think it is create to use curiosity and humour in the title. If you really want to make money using Ebay, study some create headline of the history of advertising.
If you have a lot of time, review all the sales pages which are on the same section as your item on Ebay. Use your creativity and try to think how you can differentiate your offer from them even more. You may also review items on other sections on Ebay to get ideas about how a effective sales page, and title looks like.
Once you have your new sales page up and running, you may want to change the price of your item after a few days. Often times people but the price too low, and therefore the item is reviewed as low in value. See what happens if you increase the price of your item a bit.
To make money using Ebay, you have to constantly follow what is going on and whether something needs to be changed in your offer. Like with some many other businesses, it important to have patience and persistence when working with Ebay.
About the Author
Wait! Don't lose money on Ebay like so many others. Ebay can become a money making machine for you if you learn how to make money using Ebay. Find out what it is... click here http://www.health--now.com/ebay/