Affiliate Marketing- A Freelance Affiliate Marketer's foretaste on Home Business Opportunities!!

TAGS : Viral Marketing; Internet Marketing Blog; Earn Money Blog; Blog Promotion; Internet Marketing, Best Affiliate Program

"A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web application presented as a webpage consisting of periodic posts, normally in reverse chronological order"-en.wikipedia.org.As you add content to your blog, new posts are automatically positioned on top of previous posts, so your visitors can see "what's new." Then they can comment on it or link to it or e-mail you if they choose to do so. A weblog is edited, organized and published often through a content management system or CMS. The blogs are online diaries or journals where blogger expresses his feelings, creativity, research work with like minded surfers through her periodic articles. Or weblog can be resembled to an online diary where blogger submits his frequently visited links for reference of the visitors.

The history of weblog can be traced back to the first website, http://info.cern.ch/, the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. In the '90s there were a handful of websites and the life was so easy. But with with the cluttering of thousands of new websites each day, things turned to be complicated and it became harder to find relevant information easily. Some novel eWiz like Brigitte Eaton,Jorn Barger,Peter Merholz, James Garrett,Cameron Barrett produced an alternative way to thread a particular topic related websites in a page or link for more convenience of the surfers to find content oriented sites in a single bucket ! The idea grew popularity, and a number of webmasters each day sent their URLs for listing in their websites. The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997. The shorter version, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999. As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary included the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger in their dictionary. Until '98 there were only a handful of weblogs in the net, but according to a report, more than 14 million blogs being published by the first quarter of 2005 !!

The popularity of Weblog is gaining momentum. As per a survey conducted by Comscore.com,50 Million US population ( i.e- 1 in 6 of total US population or 30% of the total US online population) visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. This represents a 45% increase compared to the quarter one of 2004. Blog visitors are 11% more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of $75,000 or more. According to the study, an average blog visitor spends 23 hours per weak online, while average Internet users spent 13 hours online."The study also found that the blog visitors are 30% more likely to buy products or services online. While less that 40% of the total Internet population made an online purchase at Q1 of 2005, 51% of the blog visitors did"- Comscore.com. This is just a replica of the universal acceptability of weblog these days. If you are an online marketer or thinking to start an online venture, I believe weblog is the best tool of Internet marketing. Do you don't think so??

Like Ezine ads, an Affiliate can use weblog as a futuristic tool of online marketing. With a decent and cool content writting, even a starter categorically can create a big blogsphere and use it as a perpetual passive mean of generating targeted traffic. The advantages of weblog over concurrent websites as a tool of online marketing are astoundingly multifarious.

First, weblogs are SE friendly i.e. you never have to submit your blog to any search engine. After you publish, your blog it will be submitted to the common search engines by the blog service provider. You never have to bother about on page criterions. Your META TAGS and KEY WORDs will be set automatically, eliminating the risk of keyword manipulation.

Second, zero designing and operation cost. You never have to hire a web designer for designing your weblog, just choose the right template and publish.

Third, Ping and Podcasting facilities promoting weblog as a viral marketing tool. With single click you are informing the whole world about your latest article updates.

Fourth, the next advantage of weblog over a web site is the trackback facility, an automatic notification between websites of related content—such as a post on a particular topic or one which responds to a post on another blog . Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts.

Fifth, blogs are more likely RSS( Really Simple Syndication) integrated. All blog service providers, including Blogger.com provide RSSfeed link. When you update your new posting in weblog and you use RSS feed, the SE crawlers will visit your site and publish your content to across world wide web, all silently.

Sixth, another great feature of blog is use of comment

Seventh, blog is a more personalized form of ezine. In ezines and websites we express either our knowledge or services, but in blog we can express our live experiences as if we are talking to our best friend. Personalisation of postings increases the Conversion Ratio of traffic to customer.

"Let's be honest here... We're all good at justifying excuses to ourselves. I've even done it a few times myself ! But there really is no excuse for not following your dream. You're only hurting yourself." - Corey Rudl. If you are an ambitious online marketer or if you are new to weblog, I can name a few of the best blogging service providers like Blogger.com, Livejournal.com, 360.Yahoo.com, Typepad.com, Blogs.com, Xanga.com, DiaryLand.com where you should publish your first blog to realize your dreams. Choose the write one and publish your own blog today. For more cross reference, content, RSS Feeding and listing of your blog you can use some of the Blog Directories like-Masternewedia,Blogger, Blogrankings, Blogcatalog, Blogsearchengine, Blogwise, Weblogs, Blogrolling, FeedBurner, EmarketingBlogs. Blog advertising related services are provided by-BlogExplosion.com; Prosperall.com,Blogclicker.com. Pluck.comprovides free download toolbar which helps to customize your weblog searching. I highly recommend you to give a glance at their site. If you are dummy, please visit Samizdata.net for blog related glossary and content.

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About the author:

Blogger Purna Borkotoki is a part time Affiliate Marketer.Blogger has tried his best to compile his three and half years of real-life experiences in the field of Affiliate Marketing in his blog http://refdem.blogspot.com. If you are an experienced online marketer, his Free downloadable master course "Net Writing Master Course" is albeit a good choice for review. Join any of his Free Affiliate Programs and earn monthly residual income for the next years to come.

by Willie Crawford

One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, "Can You Really Make Money From Blogging?" People want to know if there's some way to profit from the time they spend maintaining their weblogs or personal online journals.

My answer is an emphatic "YES," because I do it... everyday!

Today I'll share with you how I do it.

Let me begin by saying that I don't make thousands per month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many making hundreds. Since I don't put in a lot of time maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my laptop (on a wireless connection)...watching the clouds roll by.

Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my regular websites that
are set up as my "money machines."

The search engines visit my blogs more often than they visit my regular sites, and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners. This doeshelp the search engine rankings of these sites MASSIVELY.

How Do I Monetize My Blogs?

I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for...
and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on.

I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on the webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs.

I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find affiliate products at
places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my
blogs. I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + "affiliate program" at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websites with suitable affiliate programs to you.

How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?

I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of blogging software. You have other choices... my programmer recommended this one to me.

I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com
because they are incredibly easy to set up and maintain. A secondary reason have them on Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!

The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your blogs often is a technique called "blogging and pinging." It's a method of notifying all of the major search engines, and blog directories, each time that you update your blog. The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog tospider other blogs/sites. It's very powerful.

I won't go into too much details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussion board and ask any and all questions! It's at: http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.com
The above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the term "cure nail fungus." It's a small niche but one that makes me $2400 per month... just from that one blog.

If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Number4: http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.html
That happens to be one of my pages too :-) I won't tell you what ALL I'm up to on that page... that's another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else's domain... so it improves your link popularity.

I'm not going to show more of my blogs because that just invites competition. Instead, I'm going to answer another question you have to be wondering...

"How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even if they are profitable?"

Well, first of all, I don't really need a lot like the "sacrificial lamb" that I showed you above to keep me satisfied.

I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is called AutoBlogger. You can check it out at: http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.html

What AutoBlogger does is allow me to queue up a number of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you queue up "articles" which can really be anything you want. Then you tell the software at what frequency to make a post.

My AutoBlogger account allows me to automatically post to an UNLIMITED number of blogs.

WARNING: A program like AutoBlogger can get you in trouble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abuse the search engines, it's just going to get you banned. If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they're just going to delete your blogs.

Here's how I use AutoBlogger:

I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing... as just one example. On these sites I share many of my articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits to post at a given frequency. This frequency can be a set number of hours, days, weeks, or months. So theoretically, I can set up a blog, pre-schedule 50 posts, and not touch it in months, while it is automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.

AutoBlogger even lets you set it to start rotating through the posts again when they run out, if you want to. I personally wouldn't do this since you'd just be posting duplicate content.

AutoBlogger allows you to insert RSS feeds right into your blog posts. So in addition to posting articles you can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds at
a set interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites (without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generally pull from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sent to my other sites.

If you don't even feel like queuing up a lot of posts, you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone else to do it for you... or just hired your kids to do it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.

OK, I've just proven to you that you can make money off of blogs. In-fact,you can make more money than many people make off of their REGULAR websites. It just takes a little thinking outside the box!

It also takes not being too greedy. What I just showed you works for me because I'm not doing anything that's likely to get me banned from the searchengines,Google AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program. It's only when you get carried away, and do things that harm the search engines that you "shoot yourself in the foot."

Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seems unnatural. By that, I mean don't auto-post twenty times in an hour, or post every hour for a month! No human can possible post to a blog at these rates for long, so the search engines detect something is "wrong." They don't generally prohibit you from using tools to make your job easier... just don't get carried away!

There are actually, thousands of people earning a living doing things similar to what I just shared... but with little twists. I'm meeting up with many of them in New Orleans in September. You're invited to join us. We'll basically be sharing how we make a fortune off of niche websites and programs such as Google AdSense. You can register today at: http://WillieCrawford.com/meet-in-new-orleans.html

About the Author

Willie Crawford, Navarre, Florida US

willie@williecrawford.com

Learn more about blogging and pinging

Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author, seminar speaker and
host, tele-seminar speaker and host, retired military officer, karate black belt, network marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He teaches how to actually generate substantial multiple streams of on-line income using very simple automated systems. An example is at: http://sendoutcards.com/willie

Copyright © 2005 Cutts Group, llc

Do you remember your first day as a business owner? You were probably just like the rest of us... pretty darned happy and bit on the proud side. Yeah, back then we thought we could conquer the world. Now we're too busy conquering our own little corner of the world to pay a lot of attention to the rest of the world... unless it's to learn a few tips from successful marketers just like us who have made it big. Tips just like these... that will apply to every market - regardless of the product or service - are a great motivators to try something new. Yeah, you never know when the next idea will be worth a million dollars!

1. Create a Special Offer

A special offer is exactly that... an offer that is special. Normally, customers would not be able to purchase this product or combination of products, and once the products are gone... sorry!

You don't have to go out and order a bunch of new products to put together a special offer. It don't take a whole lot... just use what you've got. Grab a few items that are related, group them together, discount the price, and your customers will be excited to be getting a good deal. Think about it from your standpoint... you've sold three or four items rather than one. Yeah, combination offers are winning deals for everyone!

2. Address the Small Customer Groups

Niche markets are everywhere, right under your nose! Within the customer audience that you serve right now are groups of people who share common traits. Think about it... maybe you have a group who speaks Spanish, a group of teens, and a group of middle class family men and women.

Evaluate these classes of people, and discover the unique needs and desires they share. That will set you up to customize your advertising campaign directly to them. It’s not hard to take your current ads, and make a few changes to adjust to the niches. They’ll be impressed that you understand THEM, and the increase in your profits will be the best thanks you can get.

3. Set Up a Winning Referral Program

Successful marketers develop the ability to turn their customers into advocates. Often, they don't even have to directly ask customers to refer them to others. Their willingness to go the extra wins customer loyalty and support. Naturally, satisfied customers refer their friends and family to the place that will take good care of them.

Quality service and is the first step toward referrals, but you can easily take it one step further. Studies show that every satisfied customer tells three people about you. What would happen with a little incentive added to the picture? Yeah, a lot more. Give customers who refer friends a thank you - whether it's a discount, special gift item, or a simple thank you card - and watch the referrals spiral!

You can get two birds with one stone by implimenting customer surveys. A few quick questions about what the customer does and doesn't like about your product, followed by a request for the names and addresses of friends and family who would benefit from the product, and you're all set to go with the contact information of a prospective customer!

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Who is Allyn Cutts, and why should you care?

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers. Allyn is a marketing and sales fanatic, providing measurable marketing solutions that drive huge results for small-to mid-size business clients. Allyn works personally with clients to design and deliver off-line and on-line direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://www.AllynCutts.com and you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Copyright 2005 Off the Page

Increasingly, Article Submission Websites make Authors Pre-register

As I post articles I’ve written online, I’m encountering many more content sites that require a password. Authors need to provide personal information and sign in before being allowed to submit to them. For instance, of the five most recent article content sites I found, all but one of them require a password. It’s probably a necessary precaution, to reduce the quantity of inappropriate submissions and spam they’d receive otherwise. In my opinion, shoddy articles aren’t that different than spam. Everyone who writes or posts articles should feel some responsibility to maintain writing quality. Readers deserve no less. And when too many articles are considered a waste of time (or worse blatant sales pitches) the effectiveness of Internet articles is undermined for us all.

Tailor Your Posting List to the Readers You’re Writing for It takes a while to develop a list of places where to post your articles. Some of the sites contain a very broad range of topics. Some will post whatever is submitted. Some are very specific about the topics they will include. Some select only a few of the best from the articles they receive.

Part of developing your list of places where you submit is getting to know their preferences. Then you should match what you send them to their requirements. That’s the way to get the best exposure of your message - to precisely those readers you want to reach. Better to cull sites where the fit is not very good than to waste time and effort on inappropriate and unused submissions.

The Registration Process is a Form of Commitment Even when the registration procedure is quick and simple, it should make you pause. Is this a site that matches the type of articles you produce? Will you be willing to submit more content to them on an ongoing basis. The effort needed to register and keep track of passwords is only worth it if you'll be submitting regularly.

So as you scan through this list, don’t think about signing up for all of them. Choose those that fit. Then only send them articles that are sure to delight their readership.

Websites Where You Must Register before You Submit

20ishparents; A1articles; Activeauthors; Advertisingknowhow; Allmerchants; Alumbo; Eureka-java-gold; Article99; Articlealley; Articleavenue; Articleblast; Articlenexus; Articlesubmissions; Articlewarehouse; Articleworld; Articles101; Articlesfactory; Articlez; Authorconnection; Boconline; Bigarticles; Buaya; Bullmarketer; Businessclique; Businesshighlight; Buzzle; Constant-content; Content-articles; Contentdesk; Cumuli; Emailuniverse; Expertarticles; Ezineadvertising; Ezinearticles; Free-articles-zone; Fresh-articles;; Goarticles; Home-Business-Tips-Newsletter; Homehighlight; Isnare; Ideamarketers; Impactarticles; Linkgeneral;; Internet-Business-Success; InternetHomeBusinessArticles; Lyonsinternational; Mailbiz; Marketing-seek; Netterweb; Portalfeed; PromotionWorld; ReadyContent; SearchGuild; SearchWarp; SmallBusinessHowTo; Theselfimprovementsite; Traffic-Advisor; ValuableContent; WebMomz; Wmarea; Dime-Co; WorkatHomeCommunity; Zinos; EWorkingFromHome

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About the Author:

Dr. Lynella Grant Consultant and Author - Promote yourself, business, website, or book with online articles
http://www.promotewitharticles.com Free how-to. Or let me write and submit your articles online for you. No learning
curves (719)395-9450

 

 

 

Inbound and Outbound link popularity issues are in the rage and in limelight these days. Link popularity is one of the most critical and time consuming part of Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) off page criteria. Link popularity refers to the number and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your site. These other authoritative sites found your site important enough to link or refer, which make a good reason for the SE spiders to crawl to your site. When you search with Google for a specific term, it checks the relevancy of the web pages with the keywords located in the various places of a web page. Search Engine Optimizer (SEOrs) reaped close this drawback of the SEs and manipulated keywords for a higher SE ranking. Until a year back the Door-Away Page concept ( an on-page zero relevancy keyword stuffing criteria) was on hotshot. SEs are evolving towards more sophistication and improvedits relevancy algorithm for more surfer satisfaction. SEs are punishing hardly the reversed engineered web sites and last year Google itself kicked off more than a billion such tweaked web pages from its listing, according to a report.

The riddle that often been quested is "how to grow SE friendly in short period??". I hunted the same question for last three years and I finally have got a bifurcated answer - a) Quality Content and b) Link Popularity. Ask yourself what the SEs probably want? - a
web page with quality content and with greater relevancy, right? Respect the expectation of SEs and build a quality content that the surfers really want with sprints of tightly relevant keywords ( and words that are associated with the keywords i.e. the synonyms, antonyms or words that are co-related to the keyword ) in the various part of the web-page, to let the SEs know what the page is all about. Link popularity is very much dependent on content. In the next para, I am going to beef up on the tricks to increase your Inbound link popularity.

Manual Reciprocal Link Exchange: Friend, if you are really serious about to driving avalanche of free traffic to your site. I can give you an easy tip which works better than other tactics, I guarantee. First make a research on a topic of your interest. Second, select high ranked site that matches with the content and theme of your site and surf their  Link popularity and make a report on the webmasters of the sites and on the sites itself. You can use Alexato know a sites Google ranking. Otherwise you use Internicor Whois for collecting the information of other webmasters. Your third step will be to send a personalized e-mail and bid them a deal of reciprocal link exchange. Define the features of your site and the resources you deliver that their visitors can be benefited from. Webmasters seek reason to link you, so if your site is content based and if you are providing some valuable resources or information, many of the webmasters will certainly respond you affirmatively. Loop back to the second step and continue until you make a good number of reliable link exchanges.

A step further, you can share ezines or ask for article from the web-masters of the high ranked sites. Now create a resource page with the articles and link the page from home page as an on-page criteria. On the footnote of each ezine, provide details about the webmaster and services provided by his site more personalisely. Your personalized footnote will attract more webmasters to participate with you on one side and your surfers will be euphoric with some extra contents on the other.

Link Exchange Programs and Forums: Otherwise you can use link opularity programs like Link Topper, or forum.linkstoyou.comfor enhancing your inbound link popularity. I personally feel Ken Evoy's value-exchange.sitesell.com (a link exchange program) invaluable tool for every starter.Though link exchange programs are time saving, I endorse the conservative method of manual reciprocal link exchange method. I prefer manual link exchange method, because it give me more freedom to choose the best ranked and contentful site that is best suited for my site to link in. Some of the link exchange programs are merely link farms. SEs don't prefer these link-farms. You can be penalized by the major SEs for your participation with these link-farms.

Ezine Publishing: NewsLetterAccess,Ezine-Universe , Freezineweb ,Ezine Locater , SearchEngineBase, EzineHits are good examples of high circulating Ezine directories. Even some of them have their own affiliate program for its subscriber. There are more than six million ezines all around the net, so  rather than manually feeding your digital article to each and every ezine directory, deploying an ezine announcer like wetrack.it or NewsletterPromoteis invariably an ideal idea. An Ezine announcer submits your article in a thousands of sites all at one click.

"Links are one kind of off-page criteria that measures human reactions to your content"- Ken Evoy. The SEs consider the inbound links as vote of confidence from the site it is pointing. If the pointing site is from an authenticated and high ranked site, more popularity points will be credited to your site by the SEs. The importance of inbound or in-pointing links from some credible site is growing more and more these days, as some of the major SEs are factoring inbound links as part of formulating ranking algorithm. Not only inbound links, but also outbound links can increase your traffic indirectly.

About the author:

Purna Borkotoki is a part time Affiliate Marketer and blogger. His blog Referral Demagogue is a daunting job from the self-styled blogger, where he unveils every tip and trap of online marketing. His real life online journal is his mouthpiece, where he unveils every facet of online marketing he learnt throughout his three years of online venture. For more Free Affiliate Program resources and articles,Syndicate The Feed.

 

Ezines or Newsletters are relatively a cheap method of online marketing. Ezines are just like real life magazine. It provide free articles and resources that could be of benefit to the readers. Subscribers receive the articles through e-mail. Everyday a large number of surfers join these Ezines for some free staff of their interest. The subscribers joins willingly and agree to receive mails from the Ezine, so this method of email marketing is more safe and spam compliant. The best thing about Ezine is that, unlike many other marketing tools that work only ONE TIME, your articles published in ezine will continue to pull in profits month after month just like a web site. Michael Southon ( one of the most successful technical article writers) sought the example with his first article "10 Tips For Successful Ezine Advertising" being published among 500,000 subscriber in a week.

Publishing to hundreds of ezines a day will definately increase your CTR (Click Through Rate), but it invariably doesn't indicate that ROI (Return On Investment) will be proportionate. Unless you take some care while publishing your article in an ezine directory, you are taking risks to your reputation and financel. If you are yet to publish your first Ezine, I would suggest you to give a glimps to the following basic points for better results-

• Write simple sentence so that everybody can understand. Never exaggerate.

• Make shorter paragraph, provide quality presentation and content. Remember content is the king in internet marketing. Make proper home work before you publish. Repeat your title keyword more than thrice in the body of ezine.

• Don't commit suicide by making a direct sales pitch, rather redirect your audience to your home page,  capture their email id and then try to follow up. People don't buy at their first visit.

• Do not blatantly advertise in your ezine, but offer advice and support to your follow ups. Your signature will do the advertising for you. Don't forget your business is on the heal of your reputation.

• Title of your ezine add should not be all in capital or all small characters. Rather use a regular sentence with less number of exclamation marks. The title of your add is very very much crucial as the surfer get interested to you through your title only. Using numerical numbers in your title can be more beneficial sometimes.

• Before publishing your article in an ezine directory, collect the information about the number of subscribers the ezine directory presently has, the interest and age group of the subscribers and write accordingly. Suppose, you publish your article on Affiliate Marketing in an sports ezine, I think hardly your article will be seen by a visitor. So, select the perfect one according to  interest of the subscribers, not by popularity of the  ezine directory.

• Tracking of your adds is as important as it's to publish. Use a good add tracking system to monitor which of your adds working more than others. No one is perfact, man learns more from his past failures. If some of your adds are not working properly, try to recognize the pitfalls and rectify. I will love to personally recommend you to use Terry Dean's NetofficeToolbox, which comes out with a bagfull of free resources including a good add tracking system.

To publish an ezine, I don't think you necessarily have a huge barn of knowledge, but most crucial point - how you present your little experiences in a manner that anybody will endorse. Be optimist and research on how the sucessful netpeneurs write and present their ezines and encase therefrom. Stay informed.

Below is a list of 25 Ezine directories where you can submit your articles-

EzineDir ; NewsLetterAccess ; Ezine-Universe ; Freezineweb ; EzineArticle ; MyFavoriteEzines ; Ezine Locater ;  SearchEngineBase ; EzineHits ; NewsletterLibrary ; EzineDepot ; EzineCenter ; EzineSeek ; BestEzines ; Ezine-News ; EezineHub ; HomeIncome ; List-City ; OpenDirectory ; NetterWeb ; EmailUniverse ; Site-City ; ProfitInfo

Ezine Award Sites-

E-Zinez ; AwardSites

Overall, publication of Ezines in   directories almost a tedious job as I think and its lots time consuming. So, you can lessen your turmoil a little bit by  deploying an Ezine announcer. It saves your precious time. NewsletterPromote ; EzineAnnouncer provide good ezine promotion services. With one more step ahead, if you think to add more values to your ezine, I think submition of your article to more and more ezine award sites will be a novel one. By this you will knock the target in two ways- one being the opportunity to divulge into an avalanche of traffic and other being to increase your reputation over night. Don't indulge any hit or miss idea. Do something rock solid from the start up.

About the author:

Purna Borkotoki is a part time Affiliate Marketer and blogger. His blog Referral Demagogue is a daunting job from the self-styled blogger, where he unveils every tip and trap of online marketing. His real life online journal is his mouthpiece, where he unveils every facet of online marketing he learnt throughout his three years of online venture. For more Free Affiliate Program resources and articles,Syndicate The Feed.

Affiliate Program is a more advanced kind of MLM ( Multi- Level-Marketing) program, where an affiliate is remunerated against his service to refer others or making a sale of the respective product or service. On average about 60 Million people around the globe surf Google on money related matters everyday, and a proportionate amount of people search for a legitimate Home Based Business. Jupiter Research forecasted that U.S. online retail sales will reach $65 billion in 2004, and will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 17% through 2008 and sales will top $117 billion by that time. Obviously, internet-based home businesses (specially affiliate programs) will only comprise a fraction of that total, but the growth trend is certainly applicable.

The Rise of Affiliate Program-

Late Corey Rudl probably the most influential net guru of all the time, who deceased on 2nd June this year on a pathetic car accident might rightly coined out traffic as lifeblood to a website. There are billions of websites in the net with different subjects and topics. But whatever the subject be, every webesite need traffic to live up to its full potentials. By the mid 90s, there were only a handful of web sites in the net. But with advent of new technologies and shifting of market to net way, a large number of webmasters jumped recklessly into the foray. Invariably, a cut through competition among the websites cropped up for traffic and publicity. The webmasters started to adopt new ploys and maneuver accordingly everyday to allure more visitors to their site. The concept of Affiliate Program mooted out of such an maneuvering, as I think.

Its really tough to earmark the inception of the concept of Affiliate Programs, as there is no clear documentation on the first Affiliate Program. But roughly the history of Affiliate Program can be traced back to 90s, as a manifestation of cool marketing strategy borne out by some of the Adult Sites of that time. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, came up with the idea of an online referral commission system. Amazon.com launched their affiliate program in July 1996. Though a handfull of web sites were operating with the idea, but Bezos introduced the modern look and flavour of affiliate program and popularized it, so often he been mistaken to have launched the first ever affiliate program.

However, Affiliate Program is proved to be relatively low cost method of online marketing. Even the most successful and sought after web gurus like Ken Evoy, Corey Rudl, Tery Dean have used and recommend the power of affiliate program. The net giants like ClickBank, Amazon, eBay already have set their examples with respective Affiliate Programs. Forrester Research reported a record $64 billion in online sales during the first half of 2004-a 32% increase over 2003. And they predict that figure will hit $184 billion by the end of the year. You believe or not, 45% of the total online sales are generated by the Affiliate Programs alone. For more feedback and future of Affiliate Program please review the free article by Elena Fawkner.

• Selecting the best Affiliate-
  There are hundreds of Affiliate Programs in the net making a bit zimig with liar and fraudulence. A third of them either phichers or email- grabber. So it will be prudential to be extra cautious in selection of an Affiliate Program and trying to stay aloof of the hoax.
  In selection of an Affiliate I particularly keep in mind the following criterions-
  
• Product/Service: If you let me to point out the most common blunder that every new netbie commit at their first endeavour of affiliate marketing, my answer is failure to filter out an Affiliate Program with a unique product. With a product that is ontravening to the theory of price to value, with a neggardly back-end support you can't go ahead in long term as you are dispersing probable customers with dejection from your site. Promote an affiliate program that is in lineage with the theme of your website. Otherwise no matter howsoever fierce your marketing strategy you deploying, you are doomed.
  
• Credibility: Try to go through the history of the Affiliate Program you are about to join.. How old it is, what is daily traffic statistics and its trend etc. Older the Affiliate, more the reliability. A hoax site often changes its name or will not survive more than three years. Alexa and LinkPopularityCheck provide good web report on a web site's link popularity, daily traffic status and google rating. I prefer Alexa web report to know the reliability and consistency of a web site . However, you can use Copernic as an alternative to Alexa or both in selection of an Affiliate Program.
  
• Security: A quality Affiliate Program never asks for your secrets (like Pay-Pal account, credit card number etc) at least on sign up. Often they use HTTS url or secured connection for transaction purposes. Use eBay Toolbar as a safety guard to protect your Pay-Pal and eBay accounts. Don't disclose your secrets to any ananimous program before judging their authenticity.
  
• Training: Any Affiliate Program that focus to excel in long term, never and never can ignore the importance of quality training and education to their affiliates. A quality Affiliate Program generally provides 24/7 training and help desk facility. Before joining any affiliate program, I use to put a mail to the help desk asking for their suggestion and feedback on a certain topic that their FAQ skip. This way I can judge their promptness of service delivery and their value to customers. Proper trainig session is so crucial to a newbie at their startup that no affilate program can overlook it.
  
• Referral Matrix: Prior to join an Affiliate Program, ensure how deep the matrix level goes. Deeper Affilate Matrix = More Residual Income potential. A good Affiliate Program generally offers at least 5 levels deeper matrix. Recently, I have noticed some of the Affiliate Programs, which have impletemented Forced Matrix System, where every new comer earns from the advertisement of their upline as Spill Over.
• Tracking System: Another critical thing you must ensure that, whether the Affiliate Program you are going to join provides a quality down-line management and tracking system or not. If yes, then try out it in the trial period instead. Don't believe in fluffy guarantees.

My friend, from my last three years of experiance in internet marketing I can say that anybody can make a full time living from affiliate marketing in a short span of time with a little or no initial investment, provided he is really serious and persistent. In my last three years I have seen a lots of changes in the trend of affiliate marketing. But still I prefare Affiliate Marketing as a good choice over thousands of other money pooling ideas because of its simplicity, optinos to earn a consistant income with minimal effort and time.

About the author:

Purna Borkotoki is a part time Affiliate Marketer and blogger. His blog Referral Demagogue is a daunting job from the self-styled blogger, where he unveils every tip and trap of online marketing. His real life online journal is his mouthpiece, where he unveils every facet of online marketing he learnt throughout his three years of online venture. For more Free Affiliate Program resources and articles,Syndicate The Feed.

Articles from the Blogger-

• Affiliate Resource: List of 25 Ezine Directories- by Refdem
• 6 POINT PRINCIPLES OF AFFILIATE PROGRAM SEARCH
• The Trivia behind Google # 1 Ranking -Keyword Density Vs Link Popularity
• "Contribution of Weblog As A Tool Of Online Marketing"- A Panorama
• More Article Submission Websites Require Authors to Register and Use Passwords
• "Affiliate Resource: List of 25 Ezine Directories"
• WANT GOOGLE RANKING? INCREASE YOUR INBOUND LINK POPULARITY !

My Favourite Articles-

• JupiterResearch Finds That Deployment of Corporate Weblogs Will Double in 2006 (New York, NY, June 26, 2006) -- JupiterResearch, a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business, reveals that 35 percent of large companies plan to institute corporate Weblogs this year. Combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006.

• Online Ad Spending Still Growing in the US and UK-Figures released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), show that US spending on Internet advertising set a record in the first quarter of 2006, reaching $3.9 billion. That represents a healthy 38% increase over Q1 2005, when the total was $2.8 billion, and a 6% increase over the Q4 2005 total of $3.6 billion......In fact, the report predicts that online advertising will overtake national newspaper advertising in the UK by the end of 2006, when the Internet will account for 13.3% of the £12.2 billion ($23 billion) UK advertising market, compared to newspapers with a share of 13.2%.

• Web Marketing & Sales- This presentation is filled with essential statistics, charts and advice about marketing websites online. Find out about: a) Search Engine Marketing b) Conversion c) Reporting
  DIY Resources. Just fill out the form below and we'll email the presentation (1MB in PDF format) straight to you.

• The Ten (not quite) Commandments of Marketing With Business Blogs and New Media- When marketing with business blogs, podcasts, social networks, or any other type of New Media Marketing tools, there are some commandments that must be followed. If you break them, you’ll die a horrible painful death being ripped apart by a gang of midget Ninjas, then you’ll spend eternity burning in hell!

• Top 10 Tips for Blogging - ...In order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to develop content and substance. A headline or simple sentence is not going to generate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a large portal of similarly-themed content.

• How PPC Advertising Works -The first step to designing an effective and profitable ppc advertising campaign is to determine your budget. Budgeting for ppc advertising involves not only determining how much money you can spend on your ppc advertising campaign, but basing that on the monetary value of a click to your website since you are paying per click.

• How to Become an Affiliate Master and Make the Big Bucks - If you want to sell products online, you can either get a storage house and keep your own inventory, or just sell someone else’s products. Which one sounds easier to you?

• Topic Selection - A Key to Profitable Blogging - Blogs may have originated as a means of online journal writing and community building, but the use of this model won’t accomplish much for the online entrepreneur. Unless your cats are far cuter than every other bloggers’ or unless you are an amazingly interesting person with some tremendous writing talents, your personal blog will get lost in the chorus of voices that crowd the world of blogs. In order to making blogging profitable, one must select a good topic upon which to focus.

• Tips For Selling More Online - So you’ve set up a fantastic online shopping website and are all set for the cash register to start ringing? But nothing seems to be clicking? Selling online is an art and as with selling goods in the real world, you need to learn the art of selling on the Internet as well.
  Here are some great tips for selling more online.

• Marketing Tips From The Tag And Ping School of Marketing - Now, you will hear the magic words 'Tag and Ping' till you're sick of hearing them. This is a method I have been using for some time. It's basically the same thing, only you're using the tag or tagging system of such sites as Technorati to draw attention to your tag or keyword.



• SEO Elite SEO Software Sitemap - SEO Lite produces some of the articles and Tools to boost your website traffic. Tips that are useful to grasp!!



• How to Steal to the Top of Google- One of the first tools that article talks about is the Crawler Simulator. That tool lets you see what a search spider will see. What you want to do is take our example website, http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/dog.htm, and plug that URL into the simulator.



• The Secret To Getting Listed In Google In Under48 Hours- Getting listed in Google in under 2 days is quite easy! First let's talk about what NOT to do. This drives me absolutely crazy when I see people doing this, and is actually what I did at one time as well. After you read this lesson, DO NOT waste your time doing this. I repeat... DO NOT waste your time doing what I'm about to tell you.