CPA Bloger

Remember when you discovered the possibility of making money promoting affiliate websites? Do you remember when you discovered that you could start by creating a ClickBank (or some other) account and selecting your first program or two to promote? I do. I also remember what it was like to see my own affiliate nickname on my first affiliate link. I put that link in my browser and viewed it as my link and life was good because that was my link.

Later on, I saw other affiliates online promoting the same program that I was promoting. I saw another person’s link in my browser and wondered “What would happen if I edited this link to look like mine?” So, I replaced the nickname (or affiliate id) with mine and suddenly that link became my link. Cool, huh? No! It took a while for me to realize that I was looking at a leaking pipe. If links could be changed this easily, commissions could be hijacked by simply editing the affiliate id. That was a problem!

The first possible solution for me was to change markets (maybe sell stuff on eBay or something). Then, I figured that if I had a leaking pipe, I’d better call a plumber. So, I did some research on the internet and came up with a solution that I’d like to share with anyone who may have the same concerns that I have about affiliate link security. I didn’t know anything about affiliate link cloaking or security until I began to search. But now I do.

There’s enough revenue out there for everyone. We should never have to resort to stealing from each other! Check out the Super Affiliate Link Manager. I’ve checked this out myself for practicality, sent and received quick email responses and even talked to the site owner on the phone. I just wanted to share the option with you. You decide!

Protect Your Commissions!!

written by admin

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest but fastest growing methods of earning an income online. The basic concept is web-based advertising through associations gained with other Internet marketers.

What’s especially appealing about an affiliate marketing method of advertising is that it’s simple for anyone to do. So even those who aren’t especially savvy when it comes to the technical workings of the ‘net can easily learn how to become successful at selling on it.

Affiliate marketing is actually a win-win situation because the affiliates and product owners all benefit from it, sharing the commissions. Even the customer wins if the affiliate has sent a highly targeted niche audience member to a product that suits his needs.

There are sometimes costs involved with affiliate marketing, but with a little guidance and assistance, you can learn how to keep those expenses to a minimum and still achieve your income goals.

You can start by using a signature file in a forum for the niche you’re targeting. You may not be able to blatantly advertise with links to a website, but you can post relevant conversations with other members and expose your affiliate link in your signature to the hundreds or thousands of users participating on the site.

Many people involved with online advertising are joining social networking sites like Squidoo and MySpace. These free sites allow you to interact with your niche and recommend products through your blog posts, links, or sidebar space.

You can also keep affiliate costs down by promoting your squeeze page through articles and then posting them to free article directories like Ezine Articles or Go Articles. As long as you create a valuable article, you’ll get the publicity for your affiliate promotions that you want to secure.

Some sites also offer free press release generation. If you create these with high keyword relevancy, then whenever the press release directory launches your page, you’ll rank high on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for your prime or long-tail keywords and phrases.

Even if you use paid advertising techniques to promote your affiliate products, make sure you use caution in keeping costs low. Don’t set your AdWords campaign to use up $100 a day if you can’t afford it. Be sensible with your budget and you’ll be able to find creative ways of gaining traffic without going broke.

written by admin

Once you’re ready to start promoting other people’s products as an affiliate marketer, your first question might be how to choose a good affiliate program? And the answer usually is: It varies. There are many things to take into consideration in choosing an affiliate program, so we’ll look at several of the most important ones here.

1. What market are you promoting to? An affiliate program which sells shoes won’t be much good to you if you’re selling to people who want to learn how to train their new puppy. So the first step in choosing good affiliate programs is to only choose from those which fit your particular affiliate marketing niche.

2. What are the commissions? Knowing how much commission you’ll earn from one affiliate program to another can help you decide which one might be best for you. There are other things to consider besides commission levels of course, but most new affiliate marketers feel this is important. They’d rather earn 50% sales commissions instead of 35%.

3. How much actual cash do you earn? Most new affiliates don’t realize this, but sometimes a high paying commission rate is not as good at it might first look when choosing an affiliate program. If you choose to promote a $50 product for 50% commissions for instance, you’ll earn $25. If on the other hand, you promote a product which sells for $150… even though you’re earning 35% commissions, that ends up being a cool $52.50 for you. Twice as much as that “higher” paying affiliate program.

4. What are the program’s terms? It’s very important to read the rules, terms of service, and all fine print for any affiliate program before you join. Unfortunately there are some affiliate programs which aren’t overly kind to affiliates in their terms of service. If they only allow you to earn sales commissions when someone clicks your link for instance, but not if they come back an hour later, you might want to reconsider joining them.

5. What are the payment terms? Some affiliate programs require you to earn over $100 before they’ll send your earnings to you, and others will only pay you once every three months. Many new affiliates can’t afford to wait three to four months for a payment, and many also can’t earn $100 or more very quickly when they’re first starting out. So find out what their payment terms are before joining, and be honest with yourself about whether that payment plan will actually work for you or not.

6. How good is the sales page? This is a very important item that many new affiliate marketers are clueless about. If the sales page will not sell, then you’re not likely to make much - if any - money promoting that product. A good rule of thumb is to check out the sales page first, and gauge your own reaction to it. Does it make you want to whip out your credit card and buy? If so, then it’s worth at least a trial promotion period.

If the sales page makes you scratch your head, say “hmmm” or “huh?”, or you find yourself constantly trying to reread a section to understand it, you may want to pass this one up. If it’s not good enough to engage the reader and make them want to buy, it’s not likely going to help you make affiliate sales.

written by admin

Anyone who has ever worked in sales knows that “Free” is one of the most powerful words you can use to grab a prospect’s interest. But avoid it when writing email - it’s a red flag for spam filters.

If you want a message to make it to the prospect’s inbox, never use “Free” in the subject line of an email. As tempting as it might be to write “Here’s The Free Quote You Requested,” a message with that subject line is likely to get blocked.

This applies to the body of the email, too. Some who feel brave might try sneaking it in - once. Most spam filters work on a point system, so one instance of the word doesn’t mean that a message will automatically get junked.

Some email marketers also write “Fr*ee” or “F`ree” in an attempt to trick spam filters. This is a bad idea for two reasons:

• Spam filters are getting better all the time, and may pick up on this trick.

• It detracts from your credibility. At best, it looks like an unprofessional typo. At worst, it looks like you’re a spammer.

Email deliverability experts also recommend to avoid using “click here” and “call now”. Any mention of prescription drugs is a bad idea, too.

And saying “This message is not spam”? Every spammer says that - so you shouldn’t.

Watch Punctuation - and the Caps Lock Key

Even if you’re sending out the best offer in the history of insurance, don’t write like you’re too excited about it. A phrase like:

          “I’ve found you the most affordable rates you’ve ever seen!!!!!”

can get an email sent straight to the junk folder. The prospect’s spam filter takes one look at all those exclamation points and stops the email message dead in its tracks.

In general, avoid the exclamation point entirely. Not only does it cause trouble with deliverability of emails, but it’s so overused in marketing writing that it has become practically meaningless.

When writing an email message, never WRITE IN ALL CAPS. Does it get people’s attention? Sometimes. Does it look like spam? Absolutely. What’s more, many people consider it rude - it’s the online equivalent of shouting.

written by admin

By 1997 search engines recognized that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.^[12]

Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,^[13] was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal profiled a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.^[14] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.^[15] Google’s Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.^[16]

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.^[17][18][19] Google has a Sitemaps program^[20] to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.^[21]

written by admin