Ebay sues digital point owner for 'alleged' cookie stuffing

A heads up for those of you considering black hat methods

IT DOES NOT PAY

Hot on the press is the story of Ebay suing certain defendants for alleged cookie stuffing

Read the full story at http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/08/26/eBay_Sues_Alleged_Cookie_Stuffers_.htm

Now the case is still in its early stages so no conclusions of guilt can be drawn

Personally, I participate in the digital pounts forum at least 4 times a week and to be honest with you have gained a lot of useful information from other internet marketers there

It is a bit of a concern the implications of this allegation

If true, does this make digital point a bad forum or just reflects on Shawn, the owner.

And if proven not to be true, how long does it take to wash away the smear

I intend to continue to use the digital points forum

Anyone worried about cookie stuffing from any site need only to clear their cookies frequently

But the big message here is BLACK HAT COULD RUIN YOUR BUSINESS

Not so 'Free' Directory Submissions

So as an affiliate marketer or an internet marketer with your own website, one of the things you are certain to have been doing is submitting your website to free directories to get a backlink

If you are not already doing this then get off this post and start hunting down some directories to post your link in, like now!

Anyway I was doing my daily routine of generating backlinks today when I came across a site that has a "List of Free Web Directories that offer a Free One Way Text Link"

So I picked one of the directories and submitted my link, only to be met with the message, "your link will be live once you pay via paypal"

Pay by paypal?

Why was there not any warning before I got to the stage of submitting my link

Anyway, of course I have no intention of paying these cowboys.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with paying for links [actually I do, it's against google's TOS] but hey they've got to make a living too

But mate, if you are going to charge me for a link, then announce it from the get go so we both know what the game at hand is.

Not an unreasonable expectation is it?

Anyway newbies, be warned

No backlink is worth paying for

5 Things You Must Not Do On Your Niche Marketing Sites

Over the last few posts we have talked about things to do on your website to generate traffic, increase conversions, improve your opt in email list

Surfing through the forums, I have come across a disturbing trend of trying to trick the search engines to get ranking.

Problem is a lot of the sites teaching these methods do not have a sign up stating 'black hat' or 'this could get you banned'

So for clarification for any affiliate marketing newbies reading this, here are the five top things that are against the TOS of the search engines that you may have previously thought were legit

If you have been doing any of these or are contemplating doing them, the only useful advice is

STOP!

1. Keyword Stuffing: This refers to the practice of including your keywords in your copy an excessive number of times. I know that good SEO says your keywords and variations of it should appear often in your copy. However there is such a thing as too often. This actually does not help your rankings as the search engines can see right through it.

2. Buying Links. You build a website and you come across an ad for 2000 backlinks for $20. Sounds tempting, all those links from other sites pointing back to your website. Again not a good idea. The search engines especially Google, who have the lion's share of the market, frown upon paid for or purchased links and will reduce your ranking in the search engine results pages when they catch up with you

3. Hidden Text: This is the practice of adding your keywords to your webpages using the same colour as your page background, making the text invisible to human visitors but visible to the search engine bots. Again stay away from this. You'll just get burnt

4.Cloaking: Very big with blackhat marketers who are looking to make a quick profit from a website in a short period of time. The timing is crucial to them because they know the search engines will get clued on to what they are up to pretty quickly and shut them down.
Cloaking just means displaying one version of a webpage to human visitors and via software, having another version for the search engine robots. The page shown to the bots are often full of keywords and other SEO components but the content would not make any sense to a human visitor. This results in an artificial increase in ranking of the website but not for long
The search engines will detect your cloaked pages and... yes shut you down

5. Click fraud: Some webmasters monetize their niche sites with adsense. The TOS of Google adsense clearly states that you should not click on your own ads. Click fraud is the practice of clicking on adsense ads on your own websites to try to generate an income. Not good. You will get found out and you will get banned

So just a few things to pay attention to while trying to promote your niche marketing sites

Till next time

Affiliate Marketing Beginners | The Solution Is Here

I don't care whether it is poor conversions or low number of adsense clicks

Many affiliate marketers have a problem with one area or the other of their business.

The bottom line is you built the website so as to make loads of money. That's the basis of internet marketing

I know there are a lot of guides out there about a call to action, search engine optimization, building the almighty opt in list and building webpages that convert. Heck I have written a few posts on this blog about very much the same things

But the affiliate marketing newbie does not know about autoresponders and a clear call to action

And more often than not he has no ethical bribe, 'freebie', to offer as an insentive to join his/her opt in list

No money for PPC ads, No clout to be sought out for JVs, nothing

So how is the humble internet marketing newbie to make a few bucks on the internet

Traffic.

Yes the simple answer is traffic.

Get tons of traffic to your website

And you can do it without investing one cent.

Yes , your site may not be the most professional site in the world.

And you may not yet have figured out which is the best Adsense block format for your pages

Just get a reasonable site out there ...
...And drive tons of traffic to it

If your conversions are 1%, and you only get 5 visitors to your site a day, you are looking at sticking to that day job for a long time to come.

It will take you 20 days to get a conversion on average.

Now take the same site and drive 1000 visitors to it a day.

Ah, the same 1% conversion rate results in ...10 conversions a day.

Now that is the beginning of a business

Once you have made some money with your high traffic, poor conversion site, perhaps consider investing some of those earnings in improving your site.

An average e book on increasing conversions will cost you about $47.
With the knowledge you gain, you can maintain your traffic but increase your conversions

Now how many sales or clicks a day would a 3% conversion rate make you

Till next time

Adsense Units Showing Public Service Ads

Adsense siites are becoming a popular method of earning a living on the internet.

But what do you do when you do your niche research, get the website built, add your adsense units in those startegic places on your site and...

Instead of niche relevant adsense ads, you get public service ads. Which make a grand sum of zero dollars and zero cents per click

Shock Horror!
Here are a few reasons why this could occur and what you can do to rectify things

1. Your website is yet to be crawled by Google. This is why we are advised to complete your website and get it indexed before including your adsense code. To experdite indexing, try and get backlinks from other high traffic sites. The bots crawl the high traffic sites often and they will follow the link to your site and crawl it

2. Your site is in a niche that does not trigger any ads. The importance of doing your research before building the site cannot be over emphasized

3. Site in a naughty niche. Need I say more

4. Misuse of the robots txt in your code. This tells the google bots not to crawl certain parts of your site. So google cannot determine what the keywords and content of your site are and pout relevant ads on your pages. Hence public service ads.

Learn more at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10035

Till next time

Wordpress SEO | It's All In The Theme

Well we all not it's not ALL about the theme but in the competitive affiliate marketing business, you need to give your blogs every chance you can with regards to search engine optimization

It is often said that Wordpress is great for SEO and this is why a lot of affiliate marketers are using Wordpress as their blogging platform

I stubbornly stick with Blogger but that's just my preference.

Anyway for all you Wordpress enthusiasts you need to be aware of the influence of Wordpress on your SEO.

And this is where the title of my post 'Wordpress SEO, it's all about the Theme' comes in

There are some Wordpress themes that are very SEO friendly. Probably based on the amount of code, header height and such.

In choosing your Wordpress theme, take a few minutes to research how the theme affects your blog's Search engine rankings

There is always the option of getting a plug in such as all in one SEO plug in [I am told it is rather good] But best to get the basic right as well

Till next time

Why Adsense Sites Need To Be Niche Specific

In an earlier post on getting the most out of your adsense sites, I mentioned that your best chances of success are with a niche specific site.

Here are a few reasons why

1. Targeted Audience. With niche specific adsense sites, your target audience is very specific. It is easier to identify who your audience is when you are operating in a niche.
Why does it help to identify your target audience? Several benefits in this

a. You can more easily find put where they are likely to hang out online and go get them from that site to your site.

b. Once you know who they are, you can more easily identify their needs and cater to this. Internet marketing after all is about finding a hungry market and feeding its needs after all.

c. Learn to speak their language. Again, once you have identified these people, you can quickly learn how they communicate, the subtle nuances of the niche and incorporate that into your website content

2. Conquer the niche. It is easier to become an authority online in a specific niche than to become a guru on everything.
It is authority and reputation that internet users buy from.


Imagine visiting a website about this that and the other
And on a page he say's hey 'i totally recommend product x'.
And you look about the site to see what his authority is based on.
What experience does this guy have on this topic to recommend this product?
Only to find no other information on the topic.
You are not likely to buy.

You need to establish yourself as an authority in a particular niche to get repeat sales.
Even the mighty Amazon, started as a bookstore. It is only when they attained authority and reputation that they diversified into what Amazon is today

3. Generate Content For Your Site. Structuring and generating content for a niche specific site is certainly less complicated than a general site. With a niche specific site the structure of your site is almost already predetermined. The requirements of your readers more easily defined and researching content is much easier

4. Search Engine Optimization. This is the biggest reason of all.
Identifying niche specific keywords to optimize your website for is much more straight forward in niche specific sites.
Also getting traffic via your SEO efforts is more successful with niche sites than with general sites.
You see most people when they go onto the internet are looking for the solution to a specific problem.

E.g I am bored and want to play sudoku online [This person types in 'sudoku online' which is a niche specific keyword. He doesn't type in 'I am bored']

5. Website Conversions. Loads of affiliate marketers have reported better conversions on their niche specific sites than general sites.
Now personally, all my websites are very niche specific so I cannot discuss this topic from personal experience.

It however stands to reason that the person typing in 'sudoku online' is more likely to play the game when they get to the site, than the person who typed in 'I am Bored'

It is safe to conclude that conversions either with adsense or affiliate products or your opt in form from niche specific sites will be higher than for general sites

Can You Really Make Money with Google Adsense?

As I browse through the forums I find a question that comes up again and again

Can I really make money with Google Adsense?

Some asking this question are internet marketing newbies who have no experience whatsoever. In this case it is understandable that they have come across the concept of adsense sites and are seeking information before jumping in.

Unfortunately, others have had one or two years experience online and have made nothing from their adsense sites. This is the group that I think really needs to worry.

I say this because you can make money from adsense sites and it is not realy too complicated to achieve.

We are not talking about Ginormous sums like the shoemoney site disclosed recently. We are talking about a couple of hundred dollars a month as an initial target. And this really is achievable

So here are a few tips that have helped me along the way

1. Niche specific. Your adsense sites should be niche specific. In later posts I will explain further why you need a niche specific site

2. Search engine optimization. You must apply some seo to your niche sites. Identify your most appropriate keywords and optimize your site for them. You should not settle for a less than a number one position in google for 3 or 4 keyword phrases

3. Stick to The TOS. A must, must do. Cannot over-emphasize this. You just need to read Google's terms of service and stick to it. No black hat or grey hat or whatever other colour unethical hat there is out there. Just white hat techniques

4. You need to update your content regularly and frequently. To maintain your ranking, to keep your visitors coming back and to maintain your reputation as an authority in your niche

5. Master Traffic generation. Even if you are only able to get 1 click per hundred visitors, it converts to a lot of clicks and therefore a lot of income if you are able to get a ton of traffic to your site. In fact I think this is something you really need to concentrate on. traffic generation.

6. Test your ad formats. There are different formats for adsense and you just have to keep testing different formats in different positions till you find what works

7. Have several pages on your site and optimize for different keywords in your niche.

With these few tips, you really can get started on making money with adsense

Till next time

Some really useful directories to submit your sites to

Directory submissions is one way of getting backlinks to your niche marketing sites.

At the moment there is a lot of uncertainty about the advantages of directory submissions with regard to SEO i.e do follow backlinks.

My advice is that it does not take too long to submit to a handful of directories and it does not hurt your rankings so do it!

Also there is the possibility of getting human traffic from the directories to your site.

The directories listed below are free to submit to and also do not bombard you with unsolicited mail.

http://www.jayde.com/ One of my favorite. really good service
http://www.dmoz.org/ It'll take for ever if it happens, but said to be liked by the big G
http://freesubmit.thetam.net/ Very quick turn around
http://www.best-net-sites.com/ Another quick turn around
http://www.best-sites.co.uk/ Quick inclusion and email confirmation
http://www.somuch.com/ Another quick turn around with email confirmation
http://www.01webdirectory.com/
http://www.linkhelpers.net/


This is just a short list. But there are loads of directories out there you can submit your URL to. Just be careful that there are no hidden costs.

Till next time

Niche Giveaway Live

Hi there,

Just a quick note to let you know that the second stage of the niche giveaway is now on

Loads of free downloads, some really useful.

Honest truth is there are some products that have shown up in virtually every other giveaway this season, but there are some good ones I haven't seen before

Get your free downloads here

For newbies I would say that these give aways are not to be sniffed at. They give you information on a wide range of aspects of affiliate marketing at no cost to you.

Nuff said

Till next time

How To Find Niche Do Follow Websites And Blogs

Hi there,

As webmasters, we are told to generate backlinks to our sites.

And not just any backlink will do, they should be from other websites in your niche or a similar niche.

The problem is some of these websites use the 'no follow' attribute. So how do you find sites that do follow

The reason you want to find these sites is because you are going to submit useful, informative and unique content to these sites. Either in the form of blog comments or as submitted articles

Before you use the resources I am going to reveal to you, I must inform you that spamming these sites will not do you any good, for several reasons

1. The blogs tend to use comment moderation, especially the blogs that are worth getting backlinks from. So if you try to spam them, your comment will just not get published
2. If you do manage to post some nonsense on the sites you discover, you will damage your reputation as a business and a tarnish takes a very long time to erase

Always ensure that the comments you submit are useful, on topic and contribute to the discussion.

Now to find niche do follow blogs use the following resources

1. Dofollo
2. Bumpzee
3. Do follow diver
4. Do follow Blog Search

Please use these resources ethically

Till next time

Quick Tip For Monetizing Your Website

Hello,

As an affiliate marketer, it's not always about the long term. You know the long courtship with your customers, endless freebies and tips in emails before making the sales pitch

Sometimes you just need to cut to the chase, show them what you,ve got and let them take it or leave it.

There are not many plans that you can do this with successfully

However I recently came across a video that teaches you how to make quick changes to your websites or blogs that could result in increased income to you.

Believe me, you'll be impressed.

You can watch the video by clicking on quick website profits

Enjoy

Get Rich Quick Schemes Or Scams

Hi there

Was going throught the forums and blogs today just to see what news there is in the industry when i came across this on a high traffic blog

"I love a get rich quick system. Why? Because they always work !!"

I kinda did a double take. But i Thought it was probably a hook line and he will double back from this in the body of his post. But this affiliate marketing 'expert' stood very firmly by that statement. Did not really give any arguements for the statement, just made the assertion and went on to promote some casino sites

It really is shocking what people will say or do to make a buck online today

Get rich quick schemes do not work. Period.

Yes it may work for someone that your aunty's, hairdresser's, partner's baker's son overheard about on the subway but for the majority of people, they are money losing scams

Stick to a real business. Yes affiliate marketing takes time and effort but it is a busines model that works. Yes a lot of affiliates may complain that they are not making a ton of money but they all admit that they have made some money

The trick to affiliate marketing is just to keep working at it. Get better, get smater, build that list and eventually, you too will make some money

Affiliate Marketing Beginners, Professionalism Is Everything

Hi there,
I was browsing the forums and blogs this morning when I came across a post that really got my attention

No it was not some secret way to make gazillions online, nothing of the sort

It was about a game company launching an affiliate program. Nothing exciting about that except that they state in their policy that 'No SEO allowed'

Hey?

Did they mean SEO or something else?
Do they know what SEO means and how crucial it is to getting traffic via the search engines?

Anyway after much discussion it turns out that they made a mistake and SEO is allowed

A lame apology and red faces.

So am I going to jump on to the band wagon and promote this product. Of course not

The lesson is you must cross all your t's and dot all you i's BEFORE rolling out any campaign

No typos on your pages, no using of terms that you don't understand. no hype

Till next time

Adsense Units Best Format

Like me you will have come across tips by 'adsense gurus' claiming this adsense unit format is better than that

And initially I followed their advice without questioning

But I got a course by Perry Marshall [Click here to get the free course] and one thing he says over and over again is Test, Test and Test again.

So i decided to test two formats on one of my high traffic sites

I tested the 300 x 250 format within my content against the 160x600 skyscraper on the left side of my page

And the skyscraper format consistently did better than the 300 x 250 format

hmmm, i hear you say.

Goes to show that although the general guides are useful, different site will get different results

So get testing

More info on adsense at adsense basics

Till next time

Google Pagerank Madness

As an affiliate marketer, you probably obsessively check the PR of your websites every so often. Hoping that you will somehow have miraculously attained a PR of 5 or above?

But what is behind affiliate marketers obsession with pagerank that it has become an all consuming focus

And more important, is it a valid focus

According to Google "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

Oh yes and there are formulas as well

But I won't bore you with that

The problem with PR is it does not predict how well your site will do. You see there are two factors involved in your websites success

One is the search engines for which numbers and link quality and keywords and PRare quite relevant if your site is to get their attention

But the second and more important factor is human visitors. For human visitors, it is your content that matters. You could have a PR 0 page but if you have great content, you are more likely to make sales and loyal customers than a site with a gazillion backlinks and high PR but lack luster content

So what am I saying

By all means pay attention to your backlinks but not at the expense of your content.

It is true, unique content is king

Facebook And Affiliate Marketing

Facebook is a familiar site to most of us and the majority of people reading this will probably already have a facebook profile.

Probably a personal profile where your friends can check you out and leave personal notes on your wall. And that's okay... for personal stuff.

But I come across a large number of facebook profiles where pleasure and business are all mashed together. Not really good.

Imagine going to the Facebook profile for this blog and finding a note written to me personally about how silly we were at last night's party. or some such thing. Just does not reflect the business in good light.

Every website you own needs a facebook profile. It is crucial that you can network with people in the same niche without life issues interrupting.

And with the website or blog having it's own profile, you can quickly build a huge following for your blog.

Because that profile will only be focused on one niche, you can easily and quickly become the authority profile to go to in that niche

A tip is to put your blogs RSS feed on your facebook account.

Or better still have an autoposter from your blog to the blog's facebook profile. So every time you post on your blog, it automatically shows up in your facebook profile.

Great for generating traffic

Till next time

Top Reasons Why 90% Of Affiliate Marketing Beginners Fail

So the statistics say that over 90% of affiliate marketing beginners fail and quit before making a cent from their business

And you may be one of the affiliate marketers who is seriously considering throwing the towel in.

But why? Why are so many people who are aware of the excellent opportunity that affiliate marketing is, turning away from it after a period of 'failure'

False expectations: The number one reason why affiliate marketing newbies fail and quit is false expectations. You know, all those ebooks that purport to tell you exactly how to make $10,000 or some ridiculous amount in two weeks flat or the one that guarantee's you that using the tips contained in them will deliver 1000 unique visitors to your site every day.

So having spent all your savings on these ebooks that just fail to deliver, of course you are frustrated and want to throw the towel in

Poor Foundations: A business, any business is only as strong as its foundations. Have a poorly planned structure and you are doomed from the start. Planning includes domain name planning, website layout, product creation, article submissions, everything. You need to have a strong foundation if your business is going to grow. A poorly laid out website, or a weak grasp of traffic generation or shoddy keyword and niche research will get you exactly zero dollars

Jack of all trades: There is so much information to study and understand in affiliate marketing. The newbie can easily be swamped by the amount of material they need to learn in a short period of time. Also There are so many new and 'shiny' tips and tricks out there that instead of focusing on one thing, mastering it, implementing it and analyzing results so he can improve on it, the newbie spends his time running after one or the other next big thing and eventually, burn out

So if you are considering throwing the towel in, please don't. Affiliate marketing is such a simple business plan and has so much potential, it's simply amazing

Instead, start again, lay solid foundations, have reasonable expectations i.e expect to put in a few months of work before the profits roll in and master one thing at a time

Give yourself a treat. Get these Free affiliate marketing study material

Till next time,

Links That Will Hurt Your Site

Backlinks are the backbone of search engine optimization. And we as affiliate marketers are encouraged to build as many backlinks as we possibly can.

The need to generate backlinks has lead to the evolution of black hat SEO and all it's trappings and I will tell you this, some of these black hat methods are innovative. [Innovative, though they may be, blackhat is highly discouraged here.]

The power of backlinks is so great that people can sell links from their high page rank web pages for a respectable sum of money

In your quest for backlinks to your money making sites, a note of caution.

SOME LINKS WILL HURT YOUR SITE.

Google's aim is to deliver high quality results to people who use their search engine. And they will protect this at all costs. They are therefore constantly on the look out for sites that do not appear natural in their spectrum of ranking characteristics especially backlinks

Backlinks to your site should be from websites in a relevant niche and should occur naturally.

So here are a few examles of backlinks that could hurt your site

• Bad backlinks 1: link farms. I really do not care how craftily you build your link farm, The big G will eventually find you out and heavily penalize you.

• Bad backlinks 2: porn sites. We all know the large amount of traffic porn sites get and it may seem like a good idea to try and divert some of that traffic by putting a link on the site. However unless your site is in some way related to the porn industry, don't do it.

• Bad backlinks 3: Abnormal backlink patterns. A website that suddenly gets 200 backlinks in one day or backlinks all from the same website or IP block just is not natural. Something is up. And if you think that Google will not notice this, you can forget it. When building backlinks to your site maybe through forum participation or blog commenting, add only a few links a day in a steady and natural manner

• Bad baclinks 4: Irrelevant niches. I don't have any evidence that links from unrelated sites can hurt you but i am not sure that backlinks from sites that are not relevant will help your cause either. You could spend that energy on links that do matter

I know that there is a lot of debate in the affiliate marketing forums [ if you are not a member of a forum you need to join one now. There is a wealth of information, mostly good in the forums. You can find a really good big traffic forum by clicking here. It's free to join], anyway to get back on point, there is a lot of debate on what links can hurt your website and some people actually say that they do not believe that some inbound links can hurt you.

All I say to this is this, is safeguard your money making sites and be careful in choosing site you get your backlinks from

Writing A Winning Sales Pitch

With niche selection covered and traffic generation under your belt, the next thing you need to focus on as an internet marketer is increasing your website's conversions.

After all, traffic + No conversions = No income

Now to have conversions the content of your sales copy has to touch your reader in some way. It has got to be something that he or she can connect to

A few sales copy methods that work are

Address their anxieties: If you are marketing an internet marketing product, your prospects will probably have concerns about hype and false promises. So a good place to start is to acknowledge the hype in most marketing sales pitches and tell them why this one is an exception

Their Aspirations and beliefs: Whatever niche you are into, you need to research your market, find out their demographics and discover what the aspirations and beliefs of that particular market are. Then in your sales copy, address those aspirations and beliefs directly.

Success Stories: If you have a good success story in your chosen niche, then this could be great for your sales copy. Especially if it is along the lines of an ordinary day to day person achieving some desired effect by doing X, Y and Z. This has been very successfully and widely used in the affiliate marketing niche. And despite the wide spread use, it still manages to secure sales

That's it for now

If you are yet to build your own website then click on free video training on website building to get your training videos

Till next time