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