Taking Your Blog To Super Blog Status

So many people start blogging with the dream of getting thousands of daily visitors to their blog and making a ton of money.

But the majority fail.

So is it possible to take a blog to super blog status as an individual one man band?

Now this blog, Niche Traffic Sale is nowhere near super blogdom.

But I asked myself could I reach these lofty heights if I wanted to?

And after a shed load of research and analysis the answer is a definite yes.

And this is the result of my research

Characteristics of blogs that have attained super blogdom

Branding
The blogs are all branded. Be it shoemoney, uberaffiliate, problogger, huffington post or matt cutts these blogs have branded there name.

For some reason, probably because of the emphasis on SEO we tend to name our blogs based
on the keywords we are going after. Take this blog for example.

But shoemoney? I suppose it has money in the name. But the point is short, easy to remember names and they spend time branding these names.


Posting
Majority of the really successful blogs post everyday.
Some post several times a day.

And not just any old stocking filler post.

They post articles that are informative, unique, useful and authoritative. Some refer to these as 'Pillar posts'
Some of us write pillar posts some of the time. But you will find that in the authority blogs, ALL their posts are pillar posts . Each post is thoroughly researched with tons of information and nothing left out

Niche.
I have not come across a super blog that was not niche specific. Huffington post is politics, shoe money is online marketing.

Name the super blog and you are looking at a specific niche.

So what should you be doing on your blogs. Perhaps staying niche focused is a good place to start


Personality.
I was reading an article on one of these blogs and I thought 'That's odd! It doesn't have the usual feel to it'
I looked at the top of the post and read 'guest post' 'Aha, that
explains it' I thought.

You see each of blogs that have achieved great status have personality. There is a certain manner of speaking, a way of expressing their views. You could see a post from these blogs on any other site and be almost certain, this is a shoe money post or uberaffiliate entry.

You blog needs to have a personality of it's own. Regular readers should get a sense of familiarity when reading a new post on your blog. Relating to your readers is like relating to your friends. You don't change your personality with every new encounter with a friend so why should your blog?


Focus.
The focus mainly appears to be researching and putting out useful information on the niche. They give you the impression they are passionate about their topic and aim to share as much information about their chosen subject as possible.

These blogs do not post pitch after pitch after pitch. Yes they monetize their blogs and certainly they seem to make a lot of money from these blogs. But they realize that the best way to get people to trust your recommendations is to first get them to trust you.


Comments.
All the super blogs I visited have a comments box and have tons of comments per post. I suppose the ability of a visitor to air their own opinion ads to the perceived value of a blog but it seems to go beyond that.


Opt in box.
The majority have an opt in form somewhere above the fold of the page with a really nice incentive that is usually created by them.

None of this PLR ebooks that you can find on a dozen other blogs.

But informative ebooks or videos that are unique to that particular blog


Social Bookmarking.
We know that social bookmarking can help generate traffic to our blogs and we sometimes bookmark some of our posts.

But ALL of the super blogs have bookmarking icons on there blogs. The popular bookmarking icons are digg, sphinn, stumble upon and technorati.


A ginormous network.
These guys are EVERYWHERE.
Be it article directories, dmoz, digg, you tube, craigslist. Name it, they've been there and done that


So is it possible to take any blog to super blog status?
YES

The question is have you got the time and dedication it takes to do this?

I don't know about you but for me, well I only do this for the fun of it
Till next Time

Adsense Account Disabled? He sued Google

A lot of adsense publishers or I should say ex adsense publishers complain in the forums about having their accounts banned because they 'pose a significant risk to Adwords advertisers'
And the standard responses are

• Sorry mate find another way to monetize your sites
• It is impossible to get your account back
• It is impossible to get moneys owed paid i.e the balance in the adsense account
• And similar answers

So it is with interest that I read this post at the Huffington post

The long and short of it is Aaron Greenspans bought a domain that was already getting traffic. Probably from backlinks built by previous owners. They proceeded to put put adsense ads on the domain with good results

And then ..bang.. the adsense account was banned

Now we often assume that when people have their adsense accounts banned it is because they are involved in some sort of black hat SEO. But these guys searched themselves and found they were not doing anything wrong. No black hat, no fraudulent clicks nothing.

So unlike the advice given to people in similar situation in the forums, they decided to chase this down

After several emails and phone calls and all what not, they decided to sue Google adsense for the money left in the adsense account, over $700. Which is not peanuts by any standard

The outcome? They won. The outstanding amount plus court costs were awarded

So a little glimmer of hope for those who have been banned by the adsense program and feel they have worked within the terms of service

What do you think?

Some Free Methods To Promote Your Website

"What are some free methods to advertise my site" is a question that comes up frequently in the forums, yahoo answers, askville and virtually any web 2 site visited by Internet marketing newbies.

So lets just go through a few of the free methods that actually work

On website

Factors You should implement on your web pages

Great content.

Nothing really beats this. You must have genuinely useful and unique content. I recently reviewed the website of an affiliate marketing beginner which was on [no surprise] making money on line. [I don't know why newbies seem to go for the Internet marketing niche. How can you teach it when you have yet to make any money with it?] Anyway this poor blokes site was so dull and just did not speak to me. You need to avoid making this error.

Master your topic, and generate great content on your site. There is no boycotting this crucial step. You may be wondering how having great content can attract visitors. it's all about search engine optimization. The more unique and useful and relevant your content is the better you will do in the search engines.

On page search engine optimization.

Again really important if you are going to get anywhere in the search engines. We are not talking here about invisible text or keyword stuffing or such black hat methods. The focus now is on naturally generated content and latent semantic indexing [LSI]. Read basics of on page SEO for more on this.

Visitor Participation.

In the current era of web 2, Internet users expect to be able to "have there say" on the majority of websites. Comment boxes are a goldmine for any website or blog. Apart from satisfying your visitor's need to be heard and have an opinion, your comments box has two really useful functions

1. Ideas for new content. They tell you what they want to read about. Seems like good fodder for new posts
2. Increased content. Doing well in the search engines is very much about content. Content on your pages and the content of the sites pointing to you. By allowing visitors to comment on your articles or posts you are naturally updating your content. How is that for updating your site without having to lift a finger.

Frequent Updates.

Be it a blog or a traditional website, the search engines want the pages with top ranking to have updated content. You need to go into your sites and update your content from time to time. Edit articles, add new posts, edit a profile.

No longer is it enough to build the site and then forget about it, while it continually generates money, hand over fist for you. Just does not happen these days.

An option to ensure that your websites have frequently updated content is to put an RSS feed on it. Feeds are frequently updated so it will appear that your site's content is being updated if part of it's content is via an RSS feed

Off your web site.

These are things you do elsewhere on the net to help increase the visibility of your website. Unfortunately there is so much focus on this that on site factors tend to get neglected

Back links.

These are links that point form other websites to pages on your site. The idea is to get as many back links as possible from relevant websites to boost your website's position in the search engine results pages [SERPs]. Again the higher your site is in the SERPs, the better your chances of getting free traffic from the search engines

Social bookmarking sites.

Our post on social bookmarking and niche marketing websites goes into some detail on this. But the short version is build a network on bookmarking sites and then submit your URL to these sites. The bigger and more targeted your network, the better the results

Free Classifieds.

Not a favorite of mine. The free classified sites are just over run with really poor quality ads. So one wonders what sort of people use them. At the end of the day you want to promote your site to people who are ready to buy. There are a few free classified sites that are worth looking into. They are Gumtree [if you are targeting a UK audience], Craig's list [probably the largest of it's kind], and USfreeads.

Free directories.

Directory submission has become less popular lately than it used to be. Questions have been raised about it's SEO value especially with regards to google. Having said that directory submissions are still a free and easy way to get word out there about your website. If it's a blog you are trying to promote, there are free blog directories online, just perform a google search

Blog participation.

This is not the same as blog spamming. The relevant word here is participation. Blogs are great for interaction because the majority of them allow readers to leave comments.The comment box often requires you to enter your name and email address. Some go further by inviting you to enter your website's address. This could result in a link to your site. This comment boxes are great for helping you build a reputation for your website.

Find blogs in your niche that have a large following and frequently participate in discussions [I have participated in a 200 comment discussion on one blog post recently] on these blogs. Be sure to make your comments factual and useful. Let readers of your comments get the feeling that you are someone who knows what you are talking about, an authority on the topic. Your own sites will soon get a reasonable readership based on the comments you have left on other blogs.

There is a ton of other methods you can use to promote your websites free but the handful described above should get you well on your way

Are Blog Carnivals Any Use

Blog carnivals are not new to most of us online marketers but for the newbie, a blog carnival is an article referencing blog posts as sources of information on a particular topic. It is a major blog event.

The carnival host decides on a topic to host a carnival on. Submissions are invited from the public. Webmasters who have blog posts on the topic submit their posts to the carnival host. He then reviews all the submissions and picks a handful that are considered high quality. The host then posts an article with citations from the accepted posts.

A carnival in any niche reflects the pillar blog posts on that niche, or at least that's the idea

So say there is a blog carnival on Niche marketing. Blog owners who have posts on niche marketing can submit there blog posts to the carnival for consideration for inclusion in the carnival

When the blog carnival is published it usually contains a little introduction followed by snippets of the accepted posts with links to the full post at the authors blog

So what does this mean. In a word, backlinks

But are blog carnivals worth investing in to help promote your blog?

Again, in a word, yes. Blog carnivals are very popular and tend to get a ton of traffic when published. Getting one of your blog posts cited in a carnival is like putting your link right under the noses of your targeted visitors.

If your post is decent, a single inclusion could take you from average blogger to super blogger status.

The down side is competition. Getting a blog post accepted in a blog carnival is similar to getting your site into dmoz.

Writing pillar posts that are well thought out with excellent information is a must but unfortunately does not guarantee inclusion

To find out when next a carnival in your niche is scheduled for go to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/

Google Insights. Great Keyword Tool

Great free keyword research and niche discovery tool. We are talking about Google insights for search which is at http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
It's free and from Google and it gives you the trends of search for any word or phrase you type in.

Why is it great?

Imagine you are trying to do some niche research. Your possible keyword is say 'dog collars' for example.

For most keyword research tools, if you type in Dog collars, they will return a recent search volume and maybe the search volume for related words. And that's great

But how do you know whether this is a keyword term with a search volume in decline, for example. Yes the numbers look good but are they the worst they have ever been and declining.

Or is it a keyword with seasonal popularity and you just happened to be doing your research during the keywords 'Boom' period.

Or is it a keyword or niche on the rise or just about to break out. So although there is little search volume currently, the trend indicates possibility of an emerging niche.

The usual keywords really cannot answer these questions at the click of the mouse

Enter Google insights for search. A mouthful but never mind.

This tool shows you the trend for the keyword you are querying. You can format it to show the trend over the past week, a month or 4 years. there are other options, you just got to check it out for yourself.

Also it allows you to check trends for specific regions. If your market is in Mexico, then you really are interested in your keywords search volume in Mexico. Insights allows you to do this

So take a look at Google Insights for search. It's a free tool by Google and I am finding it quite useful

Till next time

Forums For Backlinks And Traffic

Forums marketing is something that a lot of Internet marketers are aware of but not many are using effectively. And the key term here is effectively. Forums are great for niche marketing sites in a number of ways

• Online Reputation. By participating actively in forums in your niche you can actually establish a reputation of being the guy in the know. It really all depends on the quality of your postings on the forum. There is a forum that I visit everyday where one of the members has really caught my attention. The chap just posts some amazing stuff. I find myself scanning threads for his responses because there is bound to be something useful in it. This is the kind of reputation you want to build in your niche forums.

• Human visitors. In most forums you are allowed a signature which most marketers use by including a link to one of their sites or a site they are promoting. Not all forums offer this feature and some forums insist that you have a certain number of posts before they allow you a signature. All this being said, once you are able to get a signature, put an anchor text link in it to a website you wish to promote. I suggest your own site, preferably a page with an opt in form on it. If you are someone that posts accurate and useful answers, your forum signature can result in a ton of traffic to your site, simply from people clicking on that link in your signature. You have to have captured their interest with the quality of your answers before this will occur. I think this may be why a lot of marketers say forum marketing does not work. I think they do not understand that just putting up any old rehashed shpill and adding a signature does not do it anymore. There are hundreds of signatures with thousands of links in each of the forums online. You have to start thinking, In what way can I make my signature the one to click on?
• Backlinks. The SEO lifeblood of any niche marketing site. We all know that to win the SERPs war for our chosen keyword, we need a ton of relevant backlinks pointing in to our web pages. And forums are a great way to get in coming links. But not all forum links are created equal. Some forums, actually the majority of forums, have started using the no follow attribute. I know this because my backlinks analyser tells me which links are do follow or not. So if you are using forums purely for backlinks for search engine optimization, you will need to do a little research to find which forums in your niche do follow and which do not.

Before we finish this post, forum etiquette is something you need to pay attention to as well. The large forums have forum moderators whose job it is to ensure that the forums are not used inappropriately. Forum etiquette is a big deal. The penalty for misusing the forum can vary from your post being deleted [not too hash a slap on the wrist] to getting banned from the forum. Hmmm! all those posts and links gone overnight.

Promoting Your affiliate marketing sites on forums. has a funny video on forum etiquette

Till next time

A Ton of Website Traffic. No Adsense Clicks

Ever had a website that is getting a large number of unique visitors but no-one is showing the least bit of interest in your adsense ads? This is a recurring thread in most Internet marketing forums. The adsense gurus tell us that the key is to get a ton of traffic to our adsense websites. And up to a point this is true.

If you read making money with adsense. The traffic question you will see that targeted traffic does play a big role in making a significant amount of money with adsense

But you have mastered the traffic issue and still no clicks!

There are certain things that you must do on your website to increase the click through rate of your adsense ads. Now I will say this from the start.

STICK WITHIN THE TOS OF GOOGLE ADSENSE.
BLACKHAT METHODS WILL LOSE YOU YOUR BUSINESS.

Adsense conversion tip 1: Test your ad format. You must test different formats for your ads. If you have watched any good adsense training video like adsense decoded, you will know that testing is everything. I will admit that the title of this post applied very much to me before I learned this one simple fact. There are several different formats for adsense. You could use the links unit or adsense blocks. You will need to test each format to see what works.

Adsense link unit.

This has a list of keywords and clicking on one of these takes you to a page with a list of adsense ads for the relevant keyword. your visitor need to click on one of these for your site to be credited for the clikc. SO this means you need to clicks from your visitor to make any money but in some situations this actually works well

Adsense Ad Block.

These are the traditional blocks that we are ore used to they have a description and a URL. with these you will need only one click from your visitor to be credited with the click. But these blocks come in different sizes and shapes ranging from skyscrapers to banner format. You need to try different formats of these ads to find what works on your site

Adsense conversion tip 2: Adsense code. In the old days the general advice was to blend the colors of your ads to merge with the color of the text on your website. So that the ads don't look like ads. But with some experience I have found that this doesn't always hold true. Through testing, some of my sites actually have better click through rate with ads that have colors that clash with my text. Again it all comes down to testing

Adsense conversion tip 3: Hot spots.There are certain areas on a webpage that the eyes are naturally drawn to.





Put your adsense blocks in the hot zones

Just these three tips could help improve the exposure of the adsense ads on your adsense monetised sites and increase your click through rate

Till next time

35 Backlink strategies. Do I Need That many?

Recently read a post on a forum about 35 backlinking strategies. And the list is quite good. Some of the methods do not get you a do follow backlink but hey, live visitors can follow links too.

The post got me thinking about this fevered search for as many backlinks as possible.

Acknowledged, at the moment, backlinks go a long way in your quest to 'dominate the search engines'. And as at least half of the marketers out there are 'slaves to Google', the quest for backlinks is big business.

But seriously, do you really need 35 methods of building backlinks to your site to make things work?

This business is supposed to be about passive income. You know! It's about setting it up and letting it run. And it actually does work.

Yes admittedly, the set up process involved building the site and getting some incoming links, but then it really should be self perpetuating once the initial work is done. Leaving you free to build your next campaign

With 35 backlinking strategies, wow you are going to be busy for the rest of your life, and still only have one online campaign running.

With my websites, On page search engine optimization is the major focus. Yes then I build some backlinks using 4 or 5 time proven methods. And that's it.

Your online projects that need frequent and long term attention should be your blog and your membership site be it forum or training site.

Till next time

About Adwords

Regular readers of this blog would have noticed the emphasis is on making money as an affiliate marketer using free traffic from the search engines and other sources.

Having said that pay per click is something you must consider as well. Mainly adwords although I used other less well known services as well

And Adwords rocks, but you really have got to know what you are doing to make a profit with adwords. In an earlier post, we discussed the Googlecash method i.e writing adwords ads and sending the traffic straight to your affiliate link. In the past this worked and worked well. Nowadays this method still works but you really have got to be well versed in the workings of adwords.

I'll admit, when I first tried the Google cash method, I lost money. A lot of money. But with some training came the understanding of testing and sourcing out what will work and what is not likely to turn a profit. I used this training guide. There is a free email course to try before you buy, so to speak.

If you do a google search for any big affiliate course, you will find a long list of adsense ads sending traffic directly to affiliate links. So google cash must work for some. .

An alternate use of adwords in niche marketing is to set it up and send the traffic to your opt in form. If the ad is well written, you should get a significant number of opt ins.

This means there is the possibility of recurrent earnings from one adwords click

Makes sense to me

Till next time

Facebook Privacy Issues?

Just came across this article via twitter. By the way Twitter is fast becoming addictive. If you don't have a twitter account it is worth considering

But back to the Facebook thing. As affiliate marketers a lot of us like to maintain our anonymity just because we are rather private people. And on Facebook we are assured that no one can read your profile details unless you have approved them as a friend first. So privacy ensured, right?

Imagine my alarm when I came across this story in the telegraph titled 'Networking site cashes in on friends'

And the subheading 'Facebook founder finally finds a way to profit from its 150m members' private data '

The thrust of the story is they are planning to allow multinational companies to selectively target it's members based on the details you put in your profile

Hey?

Guys, should we be worried?

The link for the story is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/4413483/Networking-site-cashes-in-on-friends.html

Please share your thoughts

Is My Website Still Indexed In Google?

'How can I find out if my website is indexed in google?' is a question that frequently pops up in the newbie forums

The simple answer is this.

• Paste your website's URL in the Google search bar. If it is indexed, it will come up with the title tag of your page and the description metatag. If more than one page is indexed then it will provide a list of indexed pages with the format as described above.
• An alternative is to type in site:yourdomainname. Again this brings up a list of indexed pages with the titles and metatags

If the message returned is says your site is not found it could be one of two things.

• New website: The site is really new and has not been crawled by the google bots yet. The solution is to try and get links to your site from authority sites or frequently crawled sites
• Banned site: Some irregularities have occurred in relation to your site and google has banned the site. These irregularities could be bad links, keyword stuffing etc. If you are aware that you are doing anything against the TOS then you really should delete whatever it is and try reapplying to Google for re indexing. Usually not successful and other marketers have reported having to start from scratch to get their content back into Google. I suppose the lesson is stick within the TOS

Online auction sites: ebay alternatives

Ebay is an amazing online auctions site. And a few people who have recently asked me where they can auction off there stuff have got ebay as the standard answer from me

But I got thinking there must be other options, surely
And there are.

The one that looks most promising to me is Triple clicks

Still doing some research on it but has a solid reputation and haven't found any glitches...yet

Click here to check it out

Oh and the listing is free, but you knew that already

RSS Feeds, Quick comment

Just a quick comment on one of the responses I got on the last two posts. A fellow blogger and a friend went the extra mile and put a button for millionrss on his blog. The idea is peopel who visit his blog will bookmark his feed and therefore increase his feeds prominence at the RSS feeds directory. Kinda like social bookmarking.

I think this is great, but as a marketer you need to be selective about which social bookmarking sites you want to achieve prominence in. Then spend time building relationships at those sites.

It really does take time to build enough followers or friends to significantly impact your links..

So what am I saying?

Great idea Andrew, as long as you limit the number of bookmarking sites you want to work with or perhaps outsource things

Some RSS Diectories Bloggers Must Consider

As a follow on to the previous post on RSS directories and niche blogs, here is a list of four feed directories that I suggest you submit your blog's RSS feeds to. Obviously as you gain more experience with using feeds, you will also discover other feeds directories that you think have good results.

RSS Feeds

RSS Mountain
One of the largest feed directories. Has over a million feeds. Submission is free but requires an email address

Feedbees
A relatively new RSS directory that launched early last year and now has over 200000 feeds. Feed submission is free and they use Adsense for RSS. This means any clicks on adsense ads in your feed generates revenue for you.

Millionrss
Almost 200000 feeds A free feed directory that is easy to use. needs an email address and some details

Feedfury
Only has about 35,000 feeds but seems to have a wide reach especially in the US





Myblog2U is a newer directory. It requires a reciprocal link for your link to be accepted but this may be an advantage as it helps weed out a lot of the dross



So what next?

Get the RSS feed of your blog and get submitting

Till next time

RSS feed Directories And Niche Blogs

So if you are using the blogger platform for your blogs you will notice an icon at the bottom of your page that says 'posts atom'. This is the URL of the RSS feed for your site. An RSS feed is simply a very simple format of your site that can be displayed on other peoples site. It is a website snippet so if someone posts the url of your RSS feed on their website then it displays some of your content on the site

Is this a good thing. You Betcha!

RSS feeds are a great way to get visitors to your site. Often the feed displays only a snippet of your content i.e the first few words or paragraph of a post.

Lets paint you a picture. Adam goes to site x a feed aggregation site that just manages to rank high in the search engines. On that site he sees an interesting first paragraph of a post on your blog. He sees this because site x has subscribed to your RSS feed. He finds this opening paragraph intriguing and clicks the read more tab. This takes him to your blog, which if well written will hold for him a lot of interesting and useful content that brings him back again and again

It would be an easy world if all you had to do was post useful content to your blog and the big sites scurry to your site and excitedly subscribe to your feeds.

The sad truth is in a world with millions of blogs and a lot of these with good content, you actually will need to be a little proactive about getting your feeds out there.

I am talking about feed directories. You need to submit your feeds to as many RSS directories as possible. It is slow and tedious but it really is well worth it.

In the next post, I will give you a list of feed directories that you can get started with

If You Must Buy Website Traffic

In the last post we talked about why buying traffic to your sites is not such a great idea. And highlighted the loopholes in buying traffic

But are there are reliable, ethical sources of traffic that can be bought. If you must buy traffic what are the options open to you?

Pay per Click: Absolutely definitely hundred percent legitimate. And you will never get penalized for this. With a well worded PPC campaign, you can start getting traffic to your site withing 15 minutes of setting it up. Obviously you pay for every single visitor that gets to your site via your PPC ad and they may not convert. PPC can also quickly become rather expensive so before doing any PPC I advice you get some training. Now there are several PPC services out there but the two major players are Google AdWords and Yahoo search marketing. I think investing some money in learning about AdWords is money well spent. I use this free course when I decided to go into PPC. Gave me the basics which gave me a good platform to build on.

Ezine Adverts: Not sure that advertising in ezines converts as well as it did a couple of years ago, but if you want to get your advert in front of people interested in a particular niche, then advertising in a popular ezine in that niche would be one way to go about things

Personally I think that free traffic via the search engines is the ultimate source of visitors that convert. Obviously It takes time to build your search engine ranking to the level where you get a significant number of visitors consistently but the bottom line is SEO should be one of your key skills as an affiliate marketer.

I guess I am supposed to recommend an SEO guide here

This article, On Page Search Engine optimization, should get you started

Till next time

Buying Traffic, Is It A Good Idea?

The more traffic your site gets the higher your chances of making a sale. Or at least so we are expected to believe
And in a bid to increase website traffic it is really tempting to buy traffic

We have all seen the ads. £30 for 10000 visitors to your site or something along those lines. And some reading this post may have actually gone ahead and bought the 'traffic'

The long and short of it is these kind of traffic brokers usually do not deliver high quality targeted traffic to your sites. Let us take a closer look at some points

Traffic conversion. What proportion of this bought traffic actually ends up taking a desired action ie clicking on an affiliate link and making a purchase, or clicking on an adsense ad, or joining your opt in list. From reports from other webmasters that have bought traffic, conversions are just about nil. So what is the point of paying money for a ton of 'traffic' that does not make you any money?

Traffic source. where do these 10,00 visitors come from. Think about it. If you had a list of 10, 000 people that are interested in a certain product or niche, and they are real people, and they are ready to visit a site and take action. well would you be selling this traffic for 30 bucks. I think not. You would probably run out, set up your own website and send the traffic to it. And retire a rich happy man :) But more seriously, you have to think very carefully about the source of the traffic. there are paid to surf sites where people are paid to visit sites. And there is even software to automate surfing. i really do not think this kind of traffic is going to convert

So on the issue of buying traffic from the mass click brokers, I think the answer to the question asked in the title of this post is no. It is simply throwing away your money

But having said that there are other forms of bought traffic that do convert and are real visitors and we will be covering these in a later post

Till next time

Livejournal Job Cuts?

Wow.
I could not believe it when I heard the news
Live Journal is a major blogging platform and I am sure that some followers of Niche Traffic have live journal blogs of their own.

I must say that I am surprised at the news of the job cuts. As always the usual 'restructuring' phrase is given but one wonders if the credit crunch and global recession is not a contributing factor.

Hmmm and what is that about moving to Moscow?

Difficult times ahead for anyone with only one source of income, the job

Till next time

Is Twitter Useful For Niche Affiliate Marketing

So I gave in and finally took a look at Twitter. Twitter is what is known as a miniblog, i.e a blogging platform that permits you a limited number of characters per post. In the case of Twitter the limit is 140 characters

For whatever reason twitter seems rather popular especially with online marketers

So my question when I joined was does this really help?

I am a great believer in testing things out for myself so I duly signed up and did all the research necessary to improve my chances of succeeding with twitter

The results so far?

• Followers. I have managed to get a few followers i.e other people subscribed to my Tweets. I really honestly cannot tell you how they found my twitter account or why. But as long as their interest is maintained, I suppose that's the point of things really. By the way just to mention that I did nothing to advertise my twitter profile. Just set it up and added updates
• Updates. Really difficult to get a point across in a few words I find and some days I put tweets that even I would not be interested in. I think one really has to think carefully about the updates and get you main theme across within the first 4 or 5 words.

• Update Daily. Like blogging, Twitter seems to thrive on frequent posters. As my post frequency increased, the number of followers increased.

• Backlinks. I think Twitter is not really useful if you want to use it to get backlinks to your sites. Once the URL posted is longer than 30 characters, then it uses a tiny URL link. I am still trying to see how to get around this. Found a few methods which I will describe in a later post once I have tested them, but so far nothing that would create any excitement

So for me the jury is still out. I honestly believe that for marketing Twitter is just another social networking tool. The advantages are making more contacts and a platform on which you can build relationships and maybe build your online reputation. But as for any direct and immediate traffic benefits for your site, I don't think Twitter has anything special to offer

Obviously I am still testing things out and if things change as I gain experience, I'll let you know.

Till next time

Google Alert, A niche Marketers Tool

Google alerts is a service provided by google where you enter a word or phrase and google alerts you via email every time that keyword is used and tells you on what website it has occurred

Google alerts has several uses for the niche marketer

• Keyword research. If you want to know how frequently a word is searched or used on the Internet, just set up an alert for it

• Researching your site: Website traffic analysis gives you a pretty good idea of how frequently your site is visited. But does not tell you how often your website is referred to. e.g someone makes a mention of your site on their blog using a no follow link. Alerts can let you know whenever your website is cited as it happens. Useful for assessing who your supporters are and more important for putting out any fires. If you know what I mean :)

• Finding blogs to comment on. Now blog commenting is really useful for building reputation on line and also for getting links back to your sites. The aim is to comment on blog posts as early as possible. With google alerts, you can set a blog alert up that tells you as it happens when your chosen keyword is used on a blog

The problem with google alerts though is if the word or phrase you set your alert for is popular, then obviously your inbox will be swamped with alerts

I suggest you set up a different email account dedicated to your google alerts campaigns

Also if you set up an alert for a multi word phrase, then you could get alerts for the individual words as well

The website is http://www.google.com/alerts

Till next time

Social Bookmarking Sites And Niche Marketing

Social bookmarking sites are yet another tool in the armamentarium of niche marketers to try to increase traffic to the money making niche sites

And for most newbie affiliate marketers, that stampede of traffic that is supposed to occur once the sites are bookmarked just does not happen

But social bookmarking sites do work. We just have to learn the rules of the game and then ...Result

So here are a few social bookmarking tips that I have picked up from the many ebooks and videos I have watched on the subject

• Mass submissions: To be generally avoided. In the past it as great to submit to as many social bookmarking sites as possible. Simply for the backlink value. But now the majority of them have no follow links. I know, you have seen the forum posts that have this wonderful list of social bookmarking sites that do follow. Well try submitting your bookmark to them and use SEO elite to try and analyze the bookmarked webpage's backlinks. Need I say more. So select just a handful of social bookmarking sites that you want to work with and stick to them, at least till you get the results you want

• Bookmark other people's sites: If all your bookmarks point to the same set of websites, then things begin to look a litttle fishy. Bookmark other people's sites as well as your own. It helps build relationships fast and could garner you some bookmarks in return. I suggest bookmarking sites that are not in direct competition with yours :)

• Build relationships: This is the reason why you want to work with just a few bookmarking sites rather than the whole horde. You need to build relationships at the bookmarking sites, make friends, increase your profile, that sort of thing. It takes spending time in these sites to build a large enough group of friends to make a significant ifference to your bookmarking results. [By the way, this is what I am working on at the moment] You must have heard of the concept of the power digger at digg. He posts an article and it's like magic. Within a few hours he gets double figure or triple figure diggs for his post. It takes time and a lot of networking to attain this status

So knowing all this what am I going to do?

It's straight forward really, build relationships

Using the old methods I have managed to get one digg per post on this blog. And you guessed it, that digg is mine. Occasionally you will find a post on this blog with two diggs, those days are like christmas

With following the methods in this post, perhaps I can improve on this

Heads Up! Auctionads Irregularity

Auctionads, now known as shopping ads is an ad revenue site that I have been using to generate an income from a couple of my sites

And I noticed that just recently the pay outs had completely gone

What gives!

Earlier today, I logged into my account and for some reason thought I would check my settings i.e email, paypal email etc

And what do I find?

Some strange paypal address, email address and contact details in Selangor. Which I found out is in Malasia

I cannot tell you what is going on

Most likely someone has hacked into my auctionads account and changed the payment details

You know the old trick

I do all the work and they get all the money

I fired off an email to the shoppingads support team.

I am yet to get an answer but hey it's saturday and I have only been waiting 6 hours

Lesson: Check your contact details and payment details of all your affiliate marketing accounts

Hackers are really fine tuning their skills

A slightly frustrated

Internal Links And Search Engine Optimization

So when it comes to SEO, we are told to get as many relevant backlinks, i.e links from other peoples' sites to our sites' as possible. Preferably links with our keywords as the anchor text

But what about the internal links on our sites.

To my aplomb I found out that the internal links on your site make a huge difference to your rankings

I have a 30 page website the homepage of which has been ranking in the coveted number one position in the Google SERPs for about 40 keywords, that I am aware of, for the last two years

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I did something silly

I decided to update the site. Really Silly!!!

I changed the titles of the inner pages on the website, not really changed but altered the arrangement of the words

Problem is the original titles of the inner pages had my main keyword first and then the keyword for the subniche that the individual page was targeting second

• e.g affiliate marketing backlinks

All I did was change to subniche keyword first and then the main site keyword second.

• e.g backlinks affiliate marketing

Didn't touch the home page

All the inner pages have links to my home page

Anyway, the next crawl of my pages by the google bot came along and it's like a really dark kind of magic.

My homepage disappears from the first page of google. For all of the keywords that it previously ranked for

OMG!!!

Going from position 1 to position 60, 70 or ... Does not bear stating

It's obvious what happened here.

The internal links of my site were giving my homepage a BIG SEO BOOST for the keywords my homepage ranked for.

Because those keywords were high up on my internal pages!

By pushing the keywords further down on my inner pages as viewed by the search engine bot, SEO juice kind off ebbed

The content of the internal pages linking to your home page does really matter with regard to SEO so be warned

Till next time

Own Website Necessary For Successful Affiliate Marketing?

It's a question that comes up again and again

Do you need your own website to be successful at affiliate marketing?

Probably not could be an honest answer, but having your own website makes the job a lot easier

If you think about it. What are your options for advertising your affiliate links if you do not have your own site

There are a few options

• Use Pay per Click ads with your affiliate links as the destination link. This is what used to be called the google cash method i.e you put up an adwords ad with the affiliate site's URL as your display URL and your unique affiliate link as the destination URL. Used to work but now with high bid costs and a very competitive market, there are very few niches that you can actually make serious money doing this. At best most people report breaking even. not really what a business is about. Also there is the problem of tracking your clicks. I mean which keyword actually generated the click that went on to buy?? it's anyone's guess

• Use other people's websites e.g Squidoo or Hubpages. The benefits of this is that you don't have to pay for hosting. The problems though are that you are GIVING AWAY your valuable content and the sites are not totally under your control.

• Use USFreeads. Admittedly an effective method. Tips at USFreeads And Niche Marketing. Again the limitation is that you actually need a premium account to make USFreeads work for you and your niche marketing campaigns. The free account is just not worthwhile

• Other Free Classified sites. I think anyone with any experience in the free classifieds sites knows that the majority of the traffic is people looking to place their own free ads. I tested free classifieds for about a year and yes I got some clicks but nothing that added up to serious conversions

• Buy an email list and spam them: A definite no-no. Besides, bought email list recipients tend to be very trigger happy when it comes to hitting the SPAM button

Advantaged of having your own website or Blog:

• Totally under your control. The content is yours. you can tweak it, add to it, alter it , improve it's search engine properties, take it down, you have total freedom with regards to what goes on those pages

• You can focus on driving traffic to this website on which you can promote more than one product or even have different methods of monetization

• You can build a reputation and have your personality reflected on your site. If you think about it, a lot of people out there make purchases from one person and not the other because they liked the way the sales person approached them.

• You can build an email list from an opt in form on your website and then work on building a relationship with the people on your list. Again sales are easier and people are more open to recommendations from people they feel they know

So let's get back to the original question

Do you need your own website to be really successful in affiliate marketing

I suppose the answer is probably YES

Till next time

Does a Niche Affiliate Marketer Really Need a Laptop

In niche affiliate marketing, there is obviously the need to have your own computer with internet connectivity

Personally, I have a laptop and a desktop but tend to use my Laptop most of the time. Even when I am at home

But does a niche affiliate marketer or any other form of internet marketer actually need a laptop?

The Portable Business Model:

One of the things that probably attracted you to affiliate marketing as a business is probably the idea of being able to take your business anywhere with you.

With a bricks and mortar business, you are really constrained to the office, shop floor, wherever.

As an internet marketer as long as you have access to the internet and the relevant log ins and what have you, you should be able to conduct your business from just about anywhere, be it a nice hotel in La jolla or a sandy beach in Goa.

So what is the point of having a business with these perks if you do not have the tools to take advantage of them??

The Efficiency Factor:

You know the feeling.

You are stuck on a train, plane, boat, whatever and have nothing useful to pass the time.

You have loads of ideas runnng through your mind and nothing you can do to implement them...till you get home to your trusty old desktop.

So you make notes on little scraps of paper that you know you'll lose before you get home or will come out as little bits of felt in your pockets once the laundry is done. Yikes

Admit it, it's happend to you. Perhaps more often than you'd care to admit.

But take the same scenario with a laptop in your hand luggage. Totally different prospects.

You may not have internet connectivity but you can at least make notes of your ideas and save them in an ideas folder for example. Or even write a draft for your next blog post.

By the way, I am writing this sitting on a coach, stuck at Sheffield, England.
Don't ask why I am on a coach trip. Long story for another post

But to get back to the point, imagine the 30 minutes spent waiting here or there and what you could achieve in those 30 minutes.

...If only you had a laptop

For me, my laptop goes everywhere with me.

SO what stops you from investing a few hundred dollars in a piece of equipment that could help take your business to the next level

Free ground shipping on all Sony Style orders $100 or more.

Till next time

Search Engine Optimization. The First Paragraph

This search engine optimization tip is one that I try to apply in all my online work. At least where possible.

So if you have your own blog or website, by now you will have realized that you need some SEO if your site is to get anywhere in the search engines

And these days getting good ranking is like going to war. The competition is really that fierce

Anyway here's a tip that works

Pay attention to the first 25 words on your webpage, be it blog or website

They really do matter.

It is important that you include your keyword /phrase AND some related words here

When the search engine bot gets to your page and finds a well crafted first paragraph, the bot knows precisely what keywords your page is relevant for

It is important not to overdo it, i.e the SEO, though

Since the florida update, the bot has been on the lookout for pages that are 'over optimized' and will penalize them

Till next time

Make Money With Adsense Traffic Question

Adsense is an increasingly popular method of making money online

Especially among internet marketing beginners

But the sad truth of the matter is many of them report success as making a couple of dollars a day.

Yes $2 dollars a day and they are all over the forums with their 'check me out' posts

Hang on a minute. $2 a day means $60 a month!!!

Not really a business is it

One of the things that a lot of the adsense training books overlook is how much traffic you need to make a decent income with Adsense

They all say 'drive loads of traffic'

But what's 'loads' of traffic?

For any internet marketing newbie getting 10 unique visitors a day is pretty good going. A hundred and they are ecstatic.

But the truth is this is just a trickle

Let's do the maths for a second

Let us assume that you have really good adsense conversions, say 10% of the website's visitors click on your adsense ads.

And lets say you are in a niche that pays $1 per click on average, for example

To really make a significant income from adsense ads that is going to help you 'Fire the boss' you really need to be making $3000 a month.

That's $100 a day

So to get this income how many visitors a day do you need if your click through rate remains at 10%

$100 means 100 clicks which means 1000 visitors a day

Now lets take a closer look at the forums

Too many posts with people claiming 10 cent clicks and even 5 cent clicks

So it would seem that for the majority, they actually need 10,000 visitors a day with a really high click through rate to get ant decent income from adsense

So am I saying adsense is bad or not worthwhile?

Certainly not

I make a significant proportion of my online income from adsense

But this really is a 'getting you in the right frame of mind' post

You need to focus on your traffic generating campaigns to really make adsense work for you

Till next time

Fake Clickbank Income Proof

Just came across this video and thought i'd give you a heads up

Go to any make money online product's sales page and you will see the almost inevitable proof of sales or proof of income on clickbank

And for the majority [I hope] of these sales letters, the proof of income snap shot is probably genuine

But there are those products that are supposed to help you make a few hundred dollars a day and you buy them and implement what it teaches to a tee and nothing happens
Your clickbank account is still showing ZERO

And you must be wondering, is it me?

The vendor shows evidence of this system working for him so it must be that I am doing something wrong..or whatever

Well watch this clip and then decide for yourself



Well, you've been warned

Till next time

Traffic Analysis Niche Marketing Essential

Traffic analysis is one area that a lot of newbie niche marketers or affiliate marketers fall down on again and again

Traffic analysis is crucial to taking your business forward

The formula for success in this business includes your niche site, traffic and conversion

The aim to to get traffic from the sources that provide visitors that convert

Building a niche site and just driving any traffic from anywhere just will not cut it

Yes you may get the occasional conversion; and more often than not that conversion is an adsense click [Peanuts] rather than an affiliate sale [real money], but you will be going through a large amount of traffic to get the conversions

What any niche site needs to have to be profitable is traffic that does convert!!!

So how do you know where this traffic is coming from?

From your traffic analysis software

I know a lot of people are put off because they think it involves buying yet another product. I mean this business is supposed to be about making money, not spending it!

But there are good traffic analysis products that are free and quite accurate

My recommendation is Google analytics. Analytics is easy to use and very up to date

Once you set up analytics all you really need to do is focus on your bounce rate and your length of visit data

A source that has a bounce rate of over 50% is one that I don't really spend too much time cultivating. Especially if you combine this with a length of stay of less than 30 seconds

You could argue that a high bounce rate means that they are clicking on your affiliate links and going to the merchant's page, perhaps to make a purchase

But no-one comes to a website and within 30 seconds has read your content, decide to buy and clicks through to the merchants site with credit card in hand. It just does not happen that way

So get analytics
Monitor your traffic sources
Pay attention to the bounce rate and length of stay
Then focus on the traffic generation methods that are providing you with interested traffic

And if you are willing to pay a small amount of money for a more robust software then consider Site Tracker

Till next time

Top 10 Blog Traffiic Tips. Guest Post By Yaro Starak

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

The Problem With Yahoo Answers

Any regular reader of this blog will know that I consider Yahoo answers one of several methods you can use to generate traffic to your niche marketing sites

And It really does work a lot of the time.

There is an increasing frequency of complaints about Yahoo answers in the forums lately. And one often repeated complaint is account cancellation for no apparent reason

And I must say it really is for no apparent reason.

My Yahoo answer account which has been built up to a level 3 with about 15% best answers was suspended today because someone complained about an answer I posted

No worries except that I do stay well within the TOS of Yahoo answers.

But I am not one to worry about these things so I got to thinking what lessons can we learn from this

• Back up your answers. If like me you are someone who bothers to put up detailed answers to questions asked, Saving a copy of your answer in a document is a must do. Even if your account never gets suspended, which is highly unlikely, the answers you have given can be tweaked and then used as content for a blog, or an article

• Never depend on one source of traffic. The idea is to create multiple streams of traffic so if one source gets cut off, like me, you'll not be too concerned. You must continually expand the methods by which people find your site. Obviously Yahoo answers is a very good source of traffic but you can see that there can be problems with Yahoo answers as with any other traffic source.

• Keep Moving. So often we read on the forums about this or that person's Yahoo answers or Google adsense account has been suspended. And there is this plea for help 'How can I get my account back' My answer to all these posts is move on! One door closes, FIND AN ALTERNATIVE! In the short time since I got the email, I have found several question answer websites that look pretty good. I have found one that allows anchor text links from within the body of your answer. Still need to find out if it does follow. But my point is you can either get busy arguing with whatever body about getting your account back or you can get busy building your business in other directions

So although this post is titled 'the problem with Yahoo answers', I still do believe that it is a good source of traffic but not one to be totally dependent on

Til next time

Search Engine Optimization Link Building Strategy That Works

Backlinks are very important when it comes to SEO. And it is understandable that once an internet marketer gets hold of that piece of information, they run out and try and grab as many links as possible.

So you end up with a very nicely built website, with great information and lay out and it suddenly gets a gazillion links over about 1 week

What do you think the search engine spiders will do?

Give the site higher PR and better position in the search engine results pages?

I think not!!

You get a great big penalty or even get BANNED!!!

The search engines aim to give the most accurate results for any search term. So any evidence of activity to artificial enhance search engine performance of course will be frowned upon

What the search engines want is a natural pattern of link network development.

So build you links slowly and consistently over time. Be it article submission, directory listings or forum participation you are doing, be a little sensible and patient with it

The aim is to slowly build up your link network over time to give your site good, long term search engine performance

Till next time

SEO Practitioners. Yahoo An Option

In the world of SEO [search engine optimization], in every SEO ebook or manual, we are told that the aim is to rank well in Google for our chosen keywords.

So we go about trying to generate Quality backlinks amd do our on page optimization and chase the same spot that is being chased down by hundreds of other marketers.

And dare I say, some more savvy that us

And in all this flurry we sometimes forget that Google is not the only search engine out there, at least not yet :)

I just did traffic analysis on one of my sites and found that in the search engine traffic category, Yaho was giving that site about 4,500 uniques per day whereas I was getting a measly 1000 from Google

So a quick heads up to you affiliate marketers and SEO enthusiasts out there

Yes Google is King of the search engines

But Yahoo, well it can provide you with a significant income too

Till next time

Commission Blueprint. An Honest Review

Commission Blueprint has been out for a while now but I was so busy doing other things I just did not have a chance to take a look at it, till now

To cut a long story short, Commission blueprint is a video guide that teaches you how to effectively use adwords to promote clickbank products

And in one word, it is an excellent series of videos.

If you are regular reader of this blog you will find that posts dedicating to promoting a product are pretty rare.

This is a blog that aims to give free and useful information to affiliate marketing beginners.

But I am so impressed by the quality and mode of presentation of Commission Blueprint that I just had to talk about it

It is a series of 14 videos and a bunch of ebooks that really DOES take you by the hand and teach you how to construct effective adswords campaigns for clickbank products

And it works :)

Anyway enough from me

Click on Commission Blueprint for a more information

Till next time

Alternative To OnlyWire

Onlywire is a bookmarking service that I have recommended in previous posts. And for a while it was useful.

But recently onlywire has become a subscription service i.e you pay so much a year if you want to continue using the service.

There is still a free service but that entails you putting a code on your site that allows them to place their adverts on your pages. Not clear whether these woll be adverts recommending onlywire or promoting other products. Needless to say, it will be completely out of my control as a webmaster

Not very satisfactory!

Anyway a FREE alternative to Onlywire is Socialmarker

Social marker is another mass social bookmarking service that allows you to submit lots of bookmarks in a short period of time, so check it out

I think if onlywire wants to become a paid for service, they need to up the service

If you are considering a paid for social bookmarking service then I suggest BMD.

This is a truly automated social bookmarking submission tool that just takes the hassle out of getting backlinks to your site

You can

• set up multiple accounts for each bookmarking site
• randomly vary the title, description, user name of your bookmarks automatically
• set up a schedule so bookmarks can be submitted at spaced intervals and loads more

And it is a one time fee not a recurring bill.

Anyway click here for more information and videos on BMD

Till next time

USfreeads and niche Marketing. Does USfreeads work?

USfreeads is a free classifieds site with paid option that a lot of marketers especially bum marketers use

And you will see a lot of blog posts extolling the virtues of USfreeads, with the necessary affiliate link of course :) , and telling you how very easy it is

And I, as a newbie affiliate marketer, saw one the afore mentioned blog posts, and hurriedly went and signed up for a free USfreeads account.

I rolled out a handful of ads and waited and waited and ...... nothing. not a sale, no onslaught of traffic, nothing

And to make things worse, after what seemed like a short period of time, my ads became inactive!!!

So I was perplexed and thought, there must be something in it. There must be a way of using USfreeads to promote my niche websites

So after a lot of research and experimenting I found a few answers

So here is a list of the things that I think contribute to my improved results with USfreeads

USfreeads tip 1: Get the paid option. It's only $10 a month and you can post a lot of ads with this membership. Click on USFreeAds to sign up

USfreeads tip 2: Test everything. You need to test and track your ads. Use unique tracking codes when setting up the affiliate links to be used in your ads campaign, so you can know when the sales are coming from you ads campaign

USfreeads tip 3: Put up loads of ads. those that have success using USfreeads have stated they have 70 to 100 ads running at any one time. You can weed out the ads that are not generating sales and replace them with new ads

USfreeads tip 4: Apply basic on page SEO when writing your ads. That way your ads will do well in the search engines and you can get tons of traffic to the ad campaign

More info at USFreeAds marketing Guide

Till next time

Adsense Hijack

Adsense Hijack?

Just came across a marketer who monetizes his sites using adsense

He noticed a drop in his adsense revenue and decided to investigate further

To cut to the chase, he found that some of the adsense blocks on his site had his publisher id on them and some had a strange id

Website hacking is getting more common and problem is the techniques are sometimes so subtle, that even the most vigilant can miss the signs

Just a heads up

Till next time

Getting a New Site Indexed In Google

All affiliate marketers want their niche marketing websites to appear in the Google index quickly, preferable with good search engine position

A quick look through the affiliate marketing forums reveals a large number of posts regarding getting indexed in Google

Before you submit your site for indexing, make sure that your website is up to scratch. Check for any broken links. typos and code bloat

Then you can do one of two things

1. Go to the Google submit your url tool and submit your website's address there. You will be asked to fill in a verification code and then you have to wait. Often a long period of time. So many sites are submitted everyday with Google that it can take a long period, some have reported 3 months, before the bot crawls your site

2. You can give the bot a helping hand by helping it find your site. The thing to do is, instead of submitting your site to the 'submit your URL' form, try and generate some backlinks to your site from other frequently crawled websites. examples include ezinearticles, blogs and active forums

Obviously the links have to have a 'do follow' attribute or the bots just will not see these links

Hope this helped

Till next time

On Page SEO For Your Blogger Blog

So I have managed to get a few of the posts on this and other blogger blogs to rank well with the search engines for a bunch of keywords

Everyone in affiliate marketing goes on about how great Wordpress is and how all those plug ins allow you to enhance your optimization efforts. And there is no disputing that this is true

But blogger posts can also be easily optimized and you have the advantage of quick indexing with blogger

Here are a few on page optimization tips for your blogger blog

On page SEO tip 1: Domain name. Before you choose the domain name of your blogger blog, do some keyword research and determine which keyword is most relevant to your blog.

Once you have identified the keyword, use it as the first word of your blogspot domain name
Remember, the earlier in your URL the keyword appears, the better for your SEO

On page SEO tip 2: Post title. When setting up your blog, you should have selected yes for the option to allocate each post it's own unique URL.

If you have done this each post's URL is your blogger domain name + the post title.

You should, where possible, include the keyword you are targeting in each post, in the title of your post

On page SEO tip 3: Template. We know that the google bot reads the webpage from LEFT to RIGHT and TOP to BOTTOM.

So why would you want to choose a template that has the about me and other widgets on the left side of the page? They have little or no SEO value.

It makes better sense to use a template that has the blog post to the left of the page and all the other widgets, ads etc on the right side of the page

Till next time