Affiliate Marketing With Google Adwords

by: Christoph Puetz

No doubt you’ve heard of the 80/20 rule – which states that
20 percent of affiliates generate 80% of affiliate income, and
conversely, remaining 80 percent of affiliates generate only
20 percent of all income for most affiliate programs.

There are ten basics that will put your affiliate marketing
in the top 20 percent of affiliate earnings. Ten suggestions
that will transform your affiliate income from a trickling
creek that barely covers your hosting fees, to a roaring river
of extra disposable income.

TOP AFFILIATE MARKETERS DO MOST OF THESE TEN ITEMS

1.Top affiliate marketers cloak web site links

Cloaking affiliate links should not be necessary, but is. Oddly
many site visitors refuse to visit your links if they see an
affiliate code appended to the URL when they hover their mouse
over a link on your web page. Sometimes they will type the
affiliate domain directly to the browser address bar while
removing your affiliate ID from the URL. To short circuit this
odd behavior, simply cloak the URL. How? Visit this Link Tool:
http://WebpositionAdvisor.com/tools/link_cloaker.php

2.Top affiliate marketers write & distribute articles

Writing articles about your market niche is essential to gain
reputation as an expert in your field. But the biggest benefit
comes not just from writing those articles, but from having
those articles published by other web site owners and ezine
publishers. Your article gains you both reputation and links
from other web sites from the resource box appended to the
end of each article. Here are major article distribution sites.
http://yahoogroups.com/group/free-content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com

3.Top affiliate marketers focus on a market niche

Filling a web site with content reflecting a narrowly focused
product or service niche is a well known method of gaining web
traffic in your area of specialty. An excellent resource that
can help you determine relevant and focused areas to fill your
site with is called NicheBot. They offer innovative tools to
research and pinpoint market niches for your web site based on
the WordTracker Database and Google.
http://www.nichebot.com

4.Top affiliate marketers use autoresponder series

Autoresponders are incredibly valuable tools that allow you to
send a timed series of email messages to those that sign up for
them. Most often those autoresponders are sent through a third
party provider. Some of the top providers are Sendfree.com and
aweber.com, for a tutorial covering autoresponder basics, visit:
http://website101.com/email_e-mail/email_autoresponder_basics.html

5.Top affiliate marketers create web pages to pre-sell

Creating either testimonial pages or review pages that discuss
and pre-sell the product or service you are affiliated with is
the best method of getting increased orders for your chosen
affiliate programs. Many programs actually provide either an
article or recommended text to sell their products for you and
allow reproduction of those articles with your links embedded.

6.Top affiliate marketers gather email addresses

The best affiliates collect email addresses on their web site
by offering free reports via the above mentioned autoresponders
or by giving away ebooks or through newsletter signup forms.
The best use all of these methods or more to build their list
of email addresses. This also allows you to contact potential
customers that would otherwise never see your site again after
clicking away to the affiliate program web site.

7.Top affiliate marketers advertise SOMEWHERE

Depending on your market niche you should advertise using PPC
and/or ezine advertising. Some categories of Pay-per-click can
be prohibitively expensive, but advertising somewhere is all
but mandatory to gain substantial additional traffic to your
site. There are some great bargains in ezine advertising and
some less popular PPC engines other than Yahoo’s Overture and
Google’s Adwords. Try 7search, Kanoodle and FindWhat for lower
Bids than the big boys of PPC.

8.Top affiliate marketers optimize for search engines

Search engine optimization is becoming more complex as more
and more webmasters participate, but the basics applied to
your site can increase visibility dramatically over time. The
most critical of the many SEO techniques is to use title tags
that reflect individual PAGE content. Many webmasters write a
master title tag and apply that site-wide. This is the worst
thing you could do for search engine ranking. Learn more SEO:
http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/

9.Top affiliate marketers give away ebooks or freebies

Everyone knows by now that giving something away is a great
traffic generator and allows you to gather email addresses
to allow contact of potential customers at a later date. This
strategy is employed by EVERY successful web-based company at
one time or another. Think of all the free things YOU have
collected online over time. Screensavers, software, ebooks,
discount codes, toolbars, white papers. They work!

10. Top Affiliate marketers have their own mailing lists

The best of affiliate marketers have their own newsletter or
ezine and gather email addresses on their site to build their
list of subscribers. Having this list allows regular contact
with potential customers interested in your site, your product
and your market niche. If you don’t write your own material or
think you can’t produce weekly content, there are hundreds of
authors out there that will gladly product articles for you.
The article distribution lists provide free content and ghost
Writers provide high quality content for a fee.

If you implement ALL the above techniques, you are guaranteed
to become one of the top affiliate marketers on the web. Then
you can create your own product telling everyone how YOU did
it, create your own affiliate program and have hundreds of us
selling for you.
About the Author

------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101 where you can learn
more through an extensive Affiliate Marketing Tutorial
http://WebSite101.com/Affiliate-Marketing/
Want more details on how to become a top affiliate marketer?
http://WebSite101.com/pam.html their sales letter is cheesy
their product is so good I wrote them a testimonial! Buy it!

Would you like to be earning up to $1000 a day from Your Home based online business?>>>> Show me the Money!

7 Steps Of Mega Adsense Earners

by: Andrew Daum

 

The Google AdSense program is like finding money in the street.

Kids in High School are making thousands of dollars a month with Adsense... Housewives, Retiree's, Mom and Pop's who've never made a dime on the Internet have created full time incomes by simply placing AdSense Ads on their web site or blog.

Then you have the "Super AdSense" earners. We have all heard of them... the Elite few who are on track to make half a million dollars a year or more promoting AdSense sites.

Do not be mistaken though... these people are not building like your Mom and Pop's do. They have systems in place that create sites for them... people who build sites for them... they have outsourced and automated many of the tedious tasks such as posting to blogs and searching for keywords.

While most people cannot emulate everything these Super AdSense earners do... many of them you can.

Here are 7 Required Steps you can implement today to copy their success.

1) Starting today... treat your AdSense business like it is a REAL business and track what you do.

Begin tracking what you are doing that works... as well as what you are doing that does not work. This will keep you from making the same mistakes over and over, and you can repeat the steps that have worked in the past. As simple as this step seems... most people do not know the reason(s) to their success or failure.

2) Utilize the latest tools and software available.

The Super AdSense earners are not any smarter than your average person. I know many people think they are... but for the most part, they are regular non techie people.

They are smarter in one respect though... they use the latest tools available to them to automate most of the tasks involved with researching and creating sites. They use the latest keyword, site creation and search engine optimization tools available. The tools they use are their secret weapons.

3) Quit chasing the Mega Dollar keywords.

You cannot compete with the search engine experts who create sites for the $80 payout keywords. You may get lucky every now and then... but in the long run, you are better off building sites for the low to mid range payout keywords. The competition is less, and your chance of success is much higher over the long term.

4) Choose broad niches and break it down.

Choose a broad subject as your main theme (lets use computers for an example). From there... break it down into as many sub niches as possible.

Using Computers as the example... you could build sub niches/sites like laptop computers, computer hard drives, computer keyboards, etc, etc. You could literally build hundreds of sites around one major theme and stay totally focused. Once you have exhausted every possible sub niche of that major theme... choose another main theme and repeat the process.

5) KISS

Keep your sites easy to navigate and forget the fancy graphics that distract your visitors attention. Unless you are just building AdSense sites for the fun of it and to impress your friends... the purpose of having the site is to have people click on one of the ads, right? Then keep the site layout simple... dump the scrolling banners, dancing chickens and colored scroll bars... they are distractions.

6) What is the purpose of your web site?

Your web site cannot be everything to everybody. If you have a full fledged ecommerce site, with products for sale... links to other products, it is not a good site for AdSense. If the primary focus of the site is to sell products... let it do that.

Do not distract or confuse your visitor with to many options or choices. The best AdSense sites are AdSense only content sites that sell nothing. They are sites that "Tell"... not "Sell."

7) Be consistent.

This is not one of those deals where you build one site and you are done. Refer back to Step #4. You must continuously build in order to be successful.

Think of it as planting a crop that you will harvest in a month or two, and the sites you build are seeds. Once the seeds have grown and matured... you will reap the harvest. The more seeds you plant... the larger the harvest.

To sum it up... utilize the tools available to automate as much of the process of building sites - doing research and building keyword lists as you can. This alone will help keep you organized and on track. Be consistent in building... treat it like the business it is and you will reap the rewards of your harvest.

About the author:
Andrew Daum is the Publisher of the New Traffic Tools Newsletter. You can subscribe by visiting his web site at; http://www.newtraffictools.comand receive updates when the latest to be released traffic building software is available.

Do You want a system that runs virtually 100% on autopliot and generates $1000's of dollars per month? >>>>>>>> Show me!

The Simple Tactic the Internet Gurus use to Turn Time into Money!
by: Daegan Smith

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to spend years and waste thousands of dollars trying to make there home business “work” while others seem to just hit the ground running? Do you ever wonder why some people seem to have a sort a magical Midas touch when it comes to making money while others don’t?

I’ll tell you exactly why. Are you ready? Those that make money know that time is money and those that don’t make money have not realized this. That’s really all there is to it.

Let me explain, all business really is is the act of you trading your time for your customers money. If you are effective at doing the tasks that make this transaction happen as efficiently as possibly then you will be perceived as one of those with the mythical Midas touch. If not, then you’re just like most of us. That is, most of us will do the exact opposite.

It seems sort of paradoxical. Why would we spend so much time doing things that aren’t going to help us make money?

Honestly, it’s human nature that holds us back. We don’t know that we’re not doing the tasks that are going to make us money, because we think we are. In essence, we trick ourselves.

Let me explain what the typical online home business entrepreneur does. First, He’ll see an enticing eBook that seems to show some promise then he’ll buy and read it. After that, he’ll try to put some of the theory he’s learned into action.

This my friends, is where he messes up.

He’ll try to put what he’s learned in the book into action without research and without proper preparation. Then when things don’t turn out correct he’ll get discouraged and quit until he finds a next hot eBook title that arouses his interest. Then he buys that one and the whole process cycles again. A year passes and all this guy knows is that he’s spent thousands of dollars and effectively learned nothing concrete.

You see, the typical home business entrepreneur thinks he is doing what’s most effective and will lead to earning the most money by dropping what didn’t work and shifting his resources to the next idea. He thinks eventually he’s going to hit the jackpot and find the diamond in the rough. Ironically, it’s this exact attitude that will ensure that he’ll never find that diamond in rough. You see, in actuality, there is no diamond in the rough.

This is an important point so pay attention, EVERY eBook and every article our typical home business entrepreneur has read had been sold to him in the SAME WAY! He didn’t even notice it! He was too busy learning all his cool new business strategies. Let me repeat the last point for you, all the information that he had learned was different, but the median for its distribution was always the same.

That’s the secret the guru’s don’t tell you. The sales model is ALWAYS the same.

So, here’s the difference between the average home business entrepreneur and the home business entrepreneur with the Midas touch. Those that seem to hit the ground running learn the fundamentals first. They learn basic marketing principle then find something to market and then lastly try all the fancy stuff the guru’s tell them. And well, we already know what average home based business opportunity seeker does.

The gurus are masters of basic marketing principles. So, the most effective use of your time and money from the outset if you’re serious about becoming a successful home business entrepreneur is to master the basics of marketing.

It’s all marketing! Nothing more and nothing less…

About the author:
Daegan Smith is the Ex-NCAA Wrestler Turned Webmaster of
Perfect Home Based Business Opportunities - The Internet's Top Home Based Business Opportunities Free Information Resource!


make money from articles

Why Your Internet Business Is Like The Stock Market

by: Patty Gale

 
As savvy stock market investors know, chasing after the one "hot stock" with the possibility of bringing instant riches is not a wise idea. You know the old saying, "Don't put your eggs in one basket". This type of thinking carries a high risk. If your stock goes up and you are smart enough to sell, then you've made money. However, if your stock falls, you just don't know when (or if) it will ever make a comeback.

With this idea of chasing after the "hot stock of the day", you might as well buy a lottery ticket. Diversifying your investment portfolio for long-term growth and stability is the wiser of the strategy. You invest your money over any number of stocks in different industries, thereby spreading your risk across the group.

The same principle should be applied to your internet business. Many of us first arrived online with the notion of building a really great website to reach the masses in hopes of making a lot of money. We later found out that the "build it and they will come" theory is just that, a theory. Oh sure, there are a few who have managed to create a nice income from just one or perhaps two websites, but even Amazon didn't turn a profit until 2001.

Unfortunately, most of us do not have unlimited financial resources. Many have given up, only to go back to either a corporate job or some other type of work in order to support their family. What they did not realize is that their internet business really should be treated like their investment portfolio.

Why do many of us still try to squeeze every single penny out of one website until it's bone dry? It's like wringing out the washcloth until there's no water left to drip. Why bank all of our risk in just one site?

There is a better way and it's called diversification and leverage. How? Instead of building one website and beating it to death in trying to get every last penny until it screams " no more!"... build more sites. In the past, building websites by hand took days and weeks, if not months. Today, there are tools to make this process much simpler and faster and in some cases, you don't even have to know any code at all.

Why diversify and leverage your business across a variety of websites? To reduce your risk and to leverage your efforts. Individually, they may not make a lot of money, but collectively, you could create a nice little internet empire of your very own. It will be well worth your time in creating a long-term internet "investment" portfolio.

To Your Success!

Patty Gale


About the author:
Patty Gale is a successful entrepreneur who specializes in personalization and customer care for all her clients. She exchanged her suits, hose and heels for working at home in her "jammies" and is on a mission to empower other women to do the same.
She can be reached at http://www.CommuteInYourJammies.com

Web Ecommerce: Where To Begin?

by: Noel Matthew

 

In web ecommerce, you are going to find a wealth of information about what it is and what it can do for you within minutes of looking on the web. The problem with this is, it is hard to sort out the good from the bad and the worthless from the maybe-worth-something options. Relying on the bad stuff will leave you broke and everyone is in search of the best options to make them a ton. So, where do you begin when it comes to web ecommerce?

In order to help you get started with web ecommerce, here are some of the things that anyone on the web selling can do to make their business more profitable and more potentially interesting to their buyers.

• Provide quality and something that is user friendly to the client. If you want to sell, you need to convince them that you have something that is better than what is out there or something that isn’t out there at all. You need to provide for them a good experience as well.

• Sales and promotions work as they would in the retail setting of a store. To get people in and buying, offering incentives can definitely help.

• Provide a great looking website for them to visit. Make sure that it is user friendly and that it is easy to navigate as well. Things like photos and graphics that are exciting and appealing are great tools to use as well.

• You can also do well by offering things like chat rooms and blogs that keep up the readership to your website. Allow them to play a role like this and they will likely book mark you and come back for more web ecommerce action!

Web Ecommerce can be a remarkable tool when you use it well. So, as your first step, take the time to explore what ways you can create a great place for your customers and how you can make sure that they come and come back.

About the author:
For more information please see http://www.web-ecommerce-shack.co.uk

Would you like to be earning up to $1000 a day from Your Home based online business?>>>>Show me the Money!

Ecommerce Hosting Considerations

by: Eric Lester

 

Website hosting can be a complex undertaking. Determining how much space you need, how much transfer, finding a reliable host, and getting everything online is no simple task. Add ecommerce to the mix and things become even more complex. This article will deal with some of those additional complications to finding a host for an online store. All of the same considerations to finding general hosting can be applied to ecommerce hosting, there are simply a few additional ones that need some attention.

Basics- Disk Space and Transfer
The core states of any kind of hosting, ecommerce or not, remain space and transfer, or traffic. Generally measured in monthly increments, your space and transfer will place a crucial role in determining just what size plan you need. Ecommerce sites will, generally speaking, require more space and transfer than an equivilant sized site without ecommerce. This is due to the presence of the shopping cart upon which the online storefront is based. Shopping cart programs are installed to the account on which they operate, requiring space, and their scripts for running the store will require additional transfer to handle customers as they browse, add items to their cart, and check out. Will there be a tremendous amount of extra transfer required by the cart? That depends on how many use the cart and on the cart itself. This is why its best to start small and having a clear upgrade path to handle future popularity.

Prospective online merchants will generally have a good idea how many products they'll be selling initially. This will vary wildly from merchant to merchant, and many merchants don't put their entire stocks online. It is wise to start with a considered selection of products first, especially if you wish to initially keep your hosting plan small and upgrade as the store prospers. Those with a great deal of products need to be aware they will probably be facing a bigger monthly fee for a larger hosting plan. Once the decision is made regarding the products, attention can be turned to finding a suitable shopping cart program to contain them.

Shopping Cart
The choice of shopping cart can be a personal one. Those entirely new to ecommerce will probably not have any experience with any kind of shopping cart software. There are a number of popular choices, and most hosting companies will provide one, if not a variety, from which you can choose. It is important to find a shopping cart that suits the individual user, as attempting to change your shopping down the road can be a long process that will, most likely, bring your store down during a transitional period. Don't immediately jump at the first cart a host offers. Ask if they have demos and try them out. Be sure it's a program you can learn and use, as it is the primary way you'll be doing your online business. Even if you have a large business and have a design firm setting up the cart, a rudimentary knowledge of the cart's processes is highly recommended.

Learn as much about your prospective shopping cart software as possible. Make sure it supports SSL, a common site security protocol that will help keep your customer's credit card numbers safe when ordering online. It will need to support your merchant account and payment gateway. In many cases a host might bundle these services, so compatibility isn't an issue. If you secured your merchant services separately from hosting, be sure they are compatible. Find out if the cart has a recommended maximum product limit and, of course, try not to exceed it. The store may slow down and perform poorly if there are too many products in it.

Finally, make sure it will do everything you want it to do. Some merchants sell services and downloadable items that don't conform exactly to the order-product-ship-product flow. If your cart doesn't support these features by default, there may be 3rd party add-ons that will provide this functionality. Miva Merchant is one such shopping cart with a very active 3rd party developer community providing a wide range of add-ons, or "modules" to extend the feature set of the original program. The merchant will have to buy these add-ons and have them installed on their own initiative, though, and the hosting company will not be able to support them.

Reliability and Support


Perhaps of greatest importance is reliability in your chosen host. Think in terms of a "brick and mortar" storefront. If someone locks the front door during business hours, then no customers can come in and nothing is sold. Similarly, if an online store is down at any hour, no customers can come in and nothing is sold. You want the most reliable hosting for such a mission-critical site. Never just take the word of a hosting company's site in regards to their uptime. Do research and look for customer reviews of your prospective host. Online merchants should always be willing to pay more for a reliable hosting company with good uptime and support. A good rule of thumb is to stay away from free or "bargain basement" hosts, since support and uptime are usually the first things to suffer with this kind of hosting.

Conclusions


Finding the right ecommerce hosting company requires a few additional considerations. Decide on your products, your shopping cart, and then shop for your hosting company. You will need more space and transfer than an equivalent site, but start small with your product selection and you can still save money on your hosting. Find a shopping cart that's easy for you to use and understand, as switching at a later date can result in downtime and a lot of work transferring your products. Finally, make sure your host has solid uptime, as an online store that's down isn't generating any sales.

About the author:
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for http://www.apollohosting.comand previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.

Create Worry-Free Sales With Secure Shopping Cart Software

by: Tia Rodriguez

 

Succeeding in business can be a hassle and a headache without the right tools. This is especially true when dealing with ecommerce. Regardless of the market, service, or goods being offered, the one tool that is essential to the success of every online ecommerce business is a reliable ecommerce shopping cart.

The online shopping cart is your one stop container for placing and receiving orders online. A basic shopping cart will allow the customer to specify the quantity of the goods wanted, take the customer’s credit, billing, and shipping information, and actually allow the customer to place the order. However, a good shopping cart software solution will do all of this and so much more.

Many ecommerce shopping cart solutions offer customizable templates and design tools for your shopping cart and sometimes even your website. There are also several web hosting shopping cart solutions that will not only handle the order placement and transactions, but also handle the hosting needs of your website.

Other tools and features included in shopping cart software packages are affiliate system management programs, search engine optimization tools, and advanced shipping options. There are also several ecommerce providers that offer secure encrypted credit card processing along with other merchant account tools as a part of using their shopping cart solution for your ecommerce needs.

Almost all reputable shopping cart software providers also offer full telephone, email and live internet chat support in case any questions may arise after purchasing their service. All of this is done to allow you to focus on growing your online business. By automating the backend of your website, you don’t have to worry about manually taking each order that comes in. Ecommerce shopping cart software handles all of this for you.

Make your online business profitable, secure, and reliable with an affordable shopping cart software solution. It is one of the best investments you can make in the operational aspect of your ecommerce venture.

About the author:
Johnny Kay is author of “Making Technology Work for the Small Business” and “Marketing Solutions Made Easy.” For additional information on how your ecommerce company can benefit from secure shopping cart software, go to http://www.1-shopping-cart-software.info

Would you like to be earning up to $1000 a day from Your Home based online business?>>>>Show me the Money!

Ecommerce Hosting Considerations

by: Eric Lester

 

Website hosting can be a complex undertaking. Determining how much space you need, how much transfer, finding a reliable host, and getting everything online is no simple task. Add ecommerce to the mix and things become even more complex. This article will deal with some of those additional complications to finding a host for an online store. All of the same considerations to finding general hosting can be applied to ecommerce hosting, there are simply a few additional ones that need some attention.

Basics- Disk Space and Transfer
The core states of any kind of hosting, ecommerce or not, remain space and transfer, or traffic. Generally measured in monthly increments, your space and transfer will place a crucial role in determining just what size plan you need. Ecommerce sites will, generally speaking, require more space and transfer than an equivilant sized site without ecommerce. This is due to the presence of the shopping cart upon which the online storefront is based. Shopping cart programs are installed to the account on which they operate, requiring space, and their scripts for running the store will require additional transfer to handle customers as they browse, add items to their cart, and check out. Will there be a tremendous amount of extra transfer required by the cart? That depends on how many use the cart and on the cart itself. This is why its best to start small and having a clear upgrade path to handle future popularity.

Prospective online merchants will generally have a good idea how many products they'll be selling initially. This will vary wildly from merchant to merchant, and many merchants don't put their entire stocks online. It is wise to start with a considered selection of products first, especially if you wish to initially keep your hosting plan small and upgrade as the store prospers. Those with a great deal of products need to be aware they will probably be facing a bigger monthly fee for a larger hosting plan. Once the decision is made regarding the products, attention can be turned to finding a suitable shopping cart program to contain them.

Shopping Cart
The choice of shopping cart can be a personal one. Those entirely new to ecommerce will probably not have any experience with any kind of shopping cart software. There are a number of popular choices, and most hosting companies will provide one, if not a variety, from which you can choose. It is important to find a shopping cart that suits the individual user, as attempting to change your shopping down the road can be a long process that will, most likely, bring your store down during a transitional period. Don't immediately jump at the first cart a host offers. Ask if they have demos and try them out. Be sure it's a program you can learn and use, as it is the primary way you'll be doing your online business. Even if you have a large business and have a design firm setting up the cart, a rudimentary knowledge of the cart's processes is highly recommended.

Learn as much about your prospective shopping cart software as possible. Make sure it supports SSL, a common site security protocol that will help keep your customer's credit card numbers safe when ordering online. It will need to support your merchant account and payment gateway. In many cases a host might bundle these services, so compatibility isn't an issue. If you secured your merchant services separately from hosting, be sure they are compatible. Find out if the cart has a recommended maximum product limit and, of course, try not to exceed it. The store may slow down and perform poorly if there are too many products in it.

Finally, make sure it will do everything you want it to do. Some merchants sell services and downloadable items that don't conform exactly to the order-product-ship-product flow. If your cart doesn't support these features by default, there may be 3rd party add-ons that will provide this functionality. Miva Merchant is one such shopping cart with a very active 3rd party developer community providing a wide range of add-ons, or "modules" to extend the feature set of the original program. The merchant will have to buy these add-ons and have them installed on their own initiative, though, and the hosting company will not be able to support them.

Reliability and Support
Perhaps of greatest importance is reliability in your chosen host. Think in terms of a "brick and mortar" storefront. If someone locks the front door during business hours, then no customers can come in and nothing is sold. Similarly, if an online store is down at any hour, no customers can come in and nothing is sold. You want the most reliable hosting for such a mission-critical site. Never just take the word of a hosting company's site in regards to their uptime. Do research and look for customer reviews of your prospective host. Online merchants should always be willing to pay more for a reliable hosting company with good uptime and support. A good rule of thumb is to stay away from free or "bargain basement" hosts, since support and uptime are usually the first things to suffer with this kind of hosting.

Conclusions
Finding the right ecommerce hosting company requires a few additional considerations. Decide on your products, your shopping cart, and then shop for your hosting company. You will need more space and transfer than an equivalent site, but start small with your product selection and you can still save money on your hosting. Find a shopping cart that's easy for you to use and understand, as switching at a later date can result in downtime and a lot of work transferring your products. Finally, make sure your host has solid uptime, as an online store that's down isn't generating any sales.

About the author:
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for http://www.apollohosting.comand previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.

Virtual Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

by: Stanley Spencer

 

Why do some organizations choose to host their own Web site on their own managed servers, while others contract with a Webhosting company or purchase their ecommerce hosting services through an ISP (Internet service provider)?

While cost (including risk) and flexibility are often the two primary considerations when choosing how to host a website, understanding distinctions among Webhosting options and the pros and cons of each will help you pare down the list to something considerably more manageable, ensuring that you make the best decision.

Webhosting plans can be categorized broadly into two types: virtual server hosting and dedicated server hosting. Small to medium-sized businesses typically choose a virtual server plan where multiple ecommerce web sites are hosted on space within a single server. This service allows you to share a server with others, but your site is further protected or isolated with its own server resources including processor, memory, and disk storage. This arrangement works well for small sites that rely on dynamic generation of content from a backend database, small ecommerce sites, or for customers who wish to manage several separate web sites.

The reason that vendors can offer low-priced domain hosting for virtual private servers is because the customers look the same and require a set of web services that are essentially identical from site to site. Webhosting vendors who are able to package similar services across a huge volume of customers most effectively are generally the most successful since they can capture substantial economies of scale.

Dedicated hosting on the other hand is an option for mid- to large-sized businesses that require or desire the flexibility that comes with dedicated servers. While more expensive, this type of plan generally provides a higher level of security, support, and maintenance with a guaranteed level of availability. Offering this type of guarantee generally reflects a level of redundancy within the vendor's data-center operations that severely decreases the chances of downtime or removes the risk all together. Depending on the vendor's plan, flexibility means you can write and run your own custom scripts or applications and even use a content management system to manage the web site but not worry about managing the network, server hardware, or operating system.

The easiest decision will likely be whether you intend to host the site yourself or contract with a webhosting vendor. Scale is the primary decision-making factor. Going it alone takes money and the willingness to assume the activities and risk associated with managing the server hardware, software, and connectivity. For organizations that already have a dedicated IT staff and data center, hosting may be an affordable option. The IT department may, in turn, offer a shared server arrangement where organizational entities such as the organization's library are provided space on the server. But for those who are unable to tap into existing resources or who are working for companies without IT resources, contracting with an external webhosting provider is the only cost-effective option.

Narrowing the choices down can be difficult since there are so many vendors from which to choose. The first step is to list your requirements for developing, managing, and offering a web site to your users. For very simple sites, the vendor may provide tools for creating and managing your site along with available services to extend your site's offerings, such as online form capabilities. Alternatively, you can use your own HTML authoring tool and upload pages as needed.

Vendors try to make choosing plans as easy as possible by packaging most-requested services together into specific webhosting plans. Doing so allows customers to more easily select what they need; they also benefit from a cost structure that can be kept fairly low. Most plans require an upfront set-up fee along with a monthly fee covering the plan you choose and any additional services (extra e-mail boxes, additional storage, etc.) that you request.

Finally, choosing a webhosting vendor can be confusing due to the array of options. A winning approach includes developing your list of requirements along with a plan for current and future growth to allow you to substantially clarify how your needs map out against your domain hosting options.

About the author:
Copyright © Active-Venture.com's (http://www.active-venture.com) virtual webhosting service. This article may be reprinted freely online or in print, provided an active link is maintained to our website at http://www.active-venture.com

Use Your Hobby To Launch A Successful Website

by: Lois S.

 

When you study the really successful websites, you will quickly notice that many are based on seemingly strange subjects, many of which may not easily pass for a serious business.

This clearly underlines the fact that when it comes to online enterprises and ecommerce, the possibilities are endless and you can actually succeed at virtually anything. There seems to be just one condition. You need to be passionate about whatever it is your website is about.

Jeff Bezos had a passion for books and that is one of the reasons why he borrowed money from his parents and launched Amazon.com. The rest is history and today Amazon earns Bezos and his associates millions of dollars.

This is precisely the reason why the first place you should look for an idea for your online enterprise and website, is your hobby. What are you passionate about? Or what do you really care about?

Establishing a successful online venture is hard work and it helps a lot if the subject matter that you are dealing with is close to your heart. It helps transform your chores from work to having fun. The facts are that people usually become wildly successful doing things that they enjoy doing. The more fun you have at your business, the higher the chances of success.

Having selected the hobby you want to turn into a business, It will help tremendously if you carefully analyze the potential online demand for the various businesses related to your hobby. This is easily done by studying popular keywords statistics and is a very important thing to do before launching any online business or website.

For example your hobby could be golf. By studying keywords, you may find that Golf stretch exercises are a very popular subject. This would be a pointer that the right business to start would be something to do with golf exercises. You can, for example, sell golf exercise equipment at your website.

This is the way to cash in on your hobby or passion and birth a hugely successful website or online enterprise.

About the author:
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.

 

 

 

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Streamline Your Website Pages

by: Eric Lester

 

Squeezing the most efficient performance from your web pages is important. The benefits are universal, whether the site is personal or large and professional. Reducing page weight can speed up the browsing experience, especially if your visitors are using dial-up internet access. Though broadband access is the future, the present still contains a great deal of dial-up users. Many sites, ecommerce sites especially, cannot afford to ignore this large section of the market. Sites with a large amount of unique traffic may also save on their total monthly traffic by slimming down their web pages. This article will cover the basics of on-page optimization in both text/code and graphics.

Graphics

Graphics are the usual suspect on heavy pages. Either as a result of a highly graphic design, or a few poorly optimized images, graphics can significantly extend the load-time of a web page. The first step in graphics optimization is very basic. Decide if the graphics are absolutely necessary and simply eliminate or move the ones that aren't. Removing large graphics from the homepage to a separate gallery will likely increase the number of visitors who "hang around" to let the homepage load. Separating larger photos or art to a gallery also provides the opportunity to provide fair warning to users clicking on the gallery that it may take longer to load. In the case of graphical buttons, consider the use of text based, CSS-styled buttons instead. Sites that use a highly graphic design, a common theme in website "templates", need to optimize their graphics as best as possible.

Graphics optimization first involves selecting the appropriate file type for your image. Though this topic alone is fodder for far more in depth analysis, I will touch on it briefly. Images come in 2 basic varieties, those that are photographic in nature, and those that are graphic in nature. Photographs have a large array of colors all jumbled together in what's referred to as continuous tone. Graphics, such as business logos, are generally smooth, crisp and have large areas of the same color. Photographs are best compressed into "JPEGs". The "Joint Photographic Expert Group" format can successfully compress large photos down to very manageable sizes. It is usually applied on a sliding "quality" scale between 1-100, 1 being the most compressed and lowest quality, 100 the least and highest quality. JPEG is a "lossy" compression algorithm, meaning it "destroys" image information when applied, so always keep a copy of the original file. Graphics and logos generally work best in the "GIF", or more recently, the "PNG" format. These formats are more efficient than JPEGs at reducing the size of images with large areas of similar color, such as logos or graphical text.

A few general notes on other media are appropriate. Other types of media such as Flash or sound files also slow down a page. The first rule is always the same, consider whether they are absolutely necessary. If you are choosing to build the site entirely in Flash, then make sure the individual sections and elements are as well compressed as possible. In the case of music, I will admit to personal bias here and paraphrase a brilliant old saying, "Websites should be seen and not heard." Simply, music playing in the background will not "enhance" any browsing experience.

Text and Code

The most weight to be trimmed on a page will come from graphical and media elements, but it is possible to shed a few extra bytes by looking at the text and code of a web page. In terms of actual text content, there may not be much to do here. A page's content is key not only to the user's understanding but also search engine ranking. Removing or better organizing content is only necessary in extreme situations, where more than page weight is an issue. An example might be a long, text heavy web page requiring a lengthy vertical scrolling to finish. Such a page is common on "infomercial" sites, and violates basic design tenants beyond those related to page weight.

Code is a different story. A website's code can be made more efficient in a variety of fashions. First, via the use of CSS, all style elements of a web page can now be called via an external file. This same file can be called on all a site's pages, providing for a uniform look and feel. Not only is this more efficient; it is also the official recommendation from the W3C. The same may be said of XHTML and the abandonment of "table" based layout. Tables, though effective for layout, produce more code than equivalent XHTML layouts using "div" tags. Where a minimum of 3 tags are required to create a "box" with content in a table, only 1 is needed using divisions. Using XHTML and CSS in combination can significantly reduce the amount of "on page" code required by a web page. A final, relatively insignificant trick is the removal of all "white space" from your code. Browsers don't require it; it is primarily so authors can readily read and interpret the code. The savings are minimal at best, but for sites that receive an extreme amount of traffic, even a few saved bytes will add up over time.

Conclusions

Target images and media files first when seeking to reduce the weight of a page. They are the largest components of overall page weight and simply removing them can significantly reduce total weight. The images that remain should be optimally compressed into a format appropriate for their type, photos or graphics. Avoid huge blocks of text that cause unnecessary vertical scrolling. Organize the site more efficiently to spread the information across multiple pages. Adopt XHTML and CSS to reduce the size of the on-page code, and call the CSS externally. These tips should help reduce the size of your pages and speed their delivery to your viewers.

About the author:
Mr. Lester worked in the IT industry for 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, website design, before serving for 4 years as the webmaster for Apollo Hosting, http://www.apollohosting.comApollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.

Affiliate Programs Worthless for 80% of Affiliate Market

by: Mike Banks Valentine

 
No doubt you’ve heard of the 80/20 rule – which states that
20 percent of affiliates generate 80% of affiliate income, and
conversely, remaining 80 percent of affiliates generate only
20 percent of all income for most affiliate programs.

There are ten basics that will put your affiliate marketing
in the top 20 percent of affiliate earnings. Ten suggestions
that will transform your affiliate income from a trickling
creek that barely covers your hosting fees, to a roaring river
of extra disposable income.

TOP AFFILIATE MARKETERS DO MOST OF THESE TEN ITEMS

1.Top affiliate marketers cloak web site links

Cloaking affiliate links should not be necessary, but is. Oddly
many site visitors refuse to visit your links if they see an
affiliate code appended to the URL when they hover their mouse
over a link on your web page. Sometimes they will type the
affiliate domain directly to the browser address bar while
removing your affiliate ID from the URL. To short circuit this
odd behavior, simply cloak the URL. How? Visit this Link Tool:
http://WebpositionAdvisor.com/tools/link_cloaker.php

2.Top affiliate marketers write & distribute articles

Writing articles about your market niche is essential to gain
reputation as an expert in your field. But the biggest benefit
comes not just from writing those articles, but from having
those articles published by other web site owners and ezine
publishers. Your article gains you both reputation and links
from other web sites from the resource box appended to the
end of each article. Here are major article distribution sites.
http://yahoogroups.com/group/free-content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com

3.Top affiliate marketers focus on a market niche

Filling a web site with content reflecting a narrowly focused
product or service niche is a well known method of gaining web
traffic in your area of specialty. An excellent resource that
can help you determine relevant and focused areas to fill your
site with is called NicheBot. They offer innovative tools to
research and pinpoint market niches for your web site based on
the WordTracker Database and Google.
http://www.nichebot.com

4.Top affiliate marketers use autoresponder series

Autoresponders are incredibly valuable tools that allow you to
send a timed series of email messages to those that sign up for
them. Most often those autoresponders are sent through a third
party provider. Some of the top providers are Sendfree.com and
aweber.com, for a tutorial covering autoresponder basics, visit:
http://website101.com/email_e-mail/email_autoresponder_basics.html

5.Top affiliate marketers create web pages to pre-sell

Creating either testimonial pages or review pages that discuss
and pre-sell the product or service you are affiliated with is
the best method of getting increased orders for your chosen
affiliate programs. Many programs actually provide either an
article or recommended text to sell their products for you and
allow reproduction of those articles with your links embedded.

6.Top affiliate marketers gather email addresses

The best affiliates collect email addresses on their web site
by offering free reports via the above mentioned autoresponders
or by giving away ebooks or through newsletter signup forms.
The best use all of these methods or more to build their list
of email addresses. This also allows you to contact potential
customers that would otherwise never see your site again after
clicking away to the affiliate program web site.

7.Top affiliate marketers advertise SOMEWHERE

Depending on your market niche you should advertise using PPC
and/or ezine advertising. Some categories of Pay-per-click can
be prohibitively expensive, but advertising somewhere is all
but mandatory to gain substantial additional traffic to your
site. There are some great bargains in ezine advertising and
some less popular PPC engines other than Yahoo’s Overture and
Google’s Adwords. Try 7search, Kanoodle and FindWhat for lower
Bids than the big boys of PPC.

8.Top affiliate marketers optimize for search engines

Search engine optimization is becoming more complex as more
and more webmasters participate, but the basics applied to
your site can increase visibility dramatically over time. The
most critical of the many SEO techniques is to use title tags
that reflect individual PAGE content. Many webmasters write a
master title tag and apply that site-wide. This is the worst
thing you could do for search engine ranking. Learn more SEO:
http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/

9.Top affiliate marketers give away ebooks or freebies

Everyone knows by now that giving something away is a great
traffic generator and allows you to gather email addresses
to allow contact of potential customers at a later date. This
strategy is employed by EVERY successful web-based company at
one time or another. Think of all the free things YOU have
collected online over time. Screensavers, software, ebooks,
discount codes, toolbars, white papers. They work!

10. Top Affiliate marketers have their own mailing lists

The best of affiliate marketers have their own newsletter or
ezine and gather email addresses on their site to build their
list of subscribers. Having this list allows regular contact
with potential customers interested in your site, your product
and your market niche. If you don’t write your own material or
think you can’t produce weekly content, there are hundreds of
authors out there that will gladly product articles for you.
The article distribution lists provide free content and ghost
Writers provide high quality content for a fee.

If you implement ALL the above techniques, you are guaranteed
to become one of the top affiliate marketers on the web. Then
you can create your own product telling everyone how YOU did
it, create your own affiliate program and have hundreds of us
selling for you.

About the Author

------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101 where you can learn
more through an extensive Affiliate Marketing Tutorial
http://WebSite101.com/Affiliate-Marketing/
Want more details on how to become a top affiliate marketer?
http://WebSite101.com/pam.html their sales letter is cheesy
their product is so good I wrote them a testimonial! Buy it!

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$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

by: John McLaren

 

I still remember thinking that promoting Affiliate Programs was a waste of time. Until I started making a small fortune.

At the end of 2004, I started some time exploring the concept of promoting affiliate programs through pay-per-click search engines. I knew of some Internet Marketing gurus who were claiming you could make thousands of dollars every month. But I was skeptical. I remember thinking, “I know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.”

But I decided that at least it was worth a look. The concept is quite simple. Choose a product – and one that has an affiliate program, of course. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

So I looked. And thought about it. And looked some more. I was still very uncertain about the whole concept, but I finally decided to test for myself whether it could really work. And since I knew I’d be spending quite a bit of money on advertising clicks, I felt it was well worth investing in a book so I could learn from more experienced marketers how to maximize the profitability of my campaigns.

As my business grew over several weeks I purchased and read several ebooks. By far the best I read was Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash ( http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq ). His approach is genuine, down-to-earth, and he explains very clearly how to build your own affiliate marketing business. And importantly, he makes a fortune doing what he explains in the book.

I started by testing 20-30 campaigns on various products. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I expected that from what I had been reading. I would test a product, and if it didn’t work, I would drop it quickly. The key with this business is identifying the affiliate products and campaigns that are successful. Once you find one that works, the money starts rolling in.

By February of 2005 I had identified several campaigns that were turning a profit. With one of these I was spending $0.08 per click to promote an affiliate product that pays me $18 commission on each sale. Approximately 1 visitor in 100 buys the product, so I make around $10 profit for every 100 visitors that I send.

What a formula! For every 1,000 visitors, that’s $180 in commissions. That might not seem like all that much, but remember once you have a successful campaign it keeps going all day, every day. If you send just 1,000 visitors to a program like this every day, then by the end of the month you will have earned $5,400 in commissions, of which $3,000 is profit.

Does it seem too simple? Well, if it was so easy everyone from your Aunt Mabel to the mailman would be doing it. In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably does take some work. Since I can't possibly teach you all you need to know in one article, I'll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

  1. Choose Your Product Wisely. The program should pay a commission of $15 or more, otherwise it won’t be worth paying for your clicks. And if the commission is very high, be careful. Some products like web hosting and satellite dish installations may pay commissions of $100, but you face intense competition from other affiliates, so the price you need to pay to get ad exposure and clicks will probably also be very high. Sometimes it is better to identify a niche product with less competition from other affiliates.
  2. Track Your Campaigns Carefully. If you’re paying around 7 or 8 cents per click for a program that pays close to $20 commission, you need to make at least one sale for every 250 visitors. If you send 300 to 400 visitors with no sale, consider dropping it.
  3. Days Of The Week Do Matter. When testing campaigns keep in mind the day of the week and even the time of day. Some products sell better on Mondays through Fridays, during business hours. Others, like entertainment products, sell better in the evenings and on weekends.

Getting back to my own experience, after identifying several campaigns that ‘worked’, I spent some time fine-tuning them using techniques I read about in Google Cash. By the end of February I had earned $27,817 in commissions for the month, all on products I had never even heard of at the end of 2004. My profit was a neat $10,795.

It’s incredible really. I made this money without a web site. From home. Working an average of just an hour or two a day.

I’m finally making the amount of money online that I dreamed about.

How about you? Would you also like to build an affiliate marketing business? Could you use some additional income? I encourage you to proceed, but be smart about it. There are risks involved and you should be aware of them. You should read Chris Carpenter’s book. That way you’ll be on a fast track to more profitable campaigns. And his book will save you hundreds of dollars, easily, as you avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls.

Good Marketing!

About The Author

John McLaren has worked for many years selling IT consulting services. Now he works from home, just a few hours each day, building his highly successful affiliate marketing business. For more professional advice, he recommends the book, Google Cash, available at: http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq.

CPA (Cost-Per-Action) Affiliate Programs


By Stephen S Alison

The Internet is full of acronyms - CPC, PPC, EPC, etc., etc. And now we have another, CPA. So what is CPA?

CPA is an acronym or short for Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition. The term CPA is not new. If you browse through the Search Engines using the keyword phrase "cost per action" or "cost per acquisition" you will find numerous websites with CPA related articles dating from 2001 - over 5 years ago.

In a nutshell, CPA is a performance based online advertising payment system in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as a lead, a sale or registration. In other words, merchants/advertisers determine what actions they want to reward and how much they are willing to pay for those actions.

Lead, Conversion or Registration

The actions defined in a CPA or Cost Per Action agreement relate directly to some type of conversion, with leads, sales and registrations among the most common and does not include deals based solely on clicks such as AdSense, which are referred to specifically as cost-per-click or CPC.

The definition of a Lead, Conversion or Registration can vary from one CPA Affiliate Network to another.

A lead or conversion may simply be considered to be no more than a website visitor providing his/her name and eMail address.

In another example, to be considered a lead or conversion, a website visitor may need to complete and submit a 1 page or 2 page application form. In this example, the product in question may be a home loan or payday loan. But it does not matter to the publisher whether the applicant gets the loan or not or has to wait 30 days before they get an answer from the lender. Once the visitor has completed the desired or contractual action, the publisher has earned a commission.

In another example, a lead or conversion may simply be achieved by a website visitor completing a small website form and paying a small $postage fee via a credit card for the advertised product to be sent to their mailing address.

What all this means is that publishers i.e. website owners, get paid not on how many times an ad is seen or even on how many times it's clicked, but according to how many people click on it and take the action specified by the advertiser on his/her site.

Comparison of CPA Affiliate Programs with Cost Per Click or Cost Per Sale Website Monetization Models

CPA Affiliate Programs are very similar to other popular website monetization models whereby a publisher takes advantage of the arbitrage opportunities between low cost traffic and high paying contextual ads or products paying high affiliate commissions.

In one Scenario low cost pay-per-click or other traffic is driven to a website or landing page displaying high paying contextual ads. When someone clicks on the low cost pay-per-click ad, they then get referred to the website or landing page. If that same someone then clicks on a high paying contextual ad, the publisher earns a commission.

In another Scenario low cost pay-per-click or other traffic is driven to a website advertising high paying affiliate products or directly to the advertiser's own website. When someone clicks on the low cost ad, they then get referred to the Product page(s). If that same someone then orders and pays for a product the publisher will have earned an affiliate commission.

The subtle difference between the first scenario and the second scenario is that in scenario 1 the publisher gets paid with a % of the value of the click regardless of whether the visitor purchased the end product or not. In scenario 2 the publisher only gets paid if the click resulted in a Sale. In CPA (Cost-Per-Action) Affiliate Programs the publisher gets paid if the click resulted in a lead.

CPA Affiliate Network

Before you can engage in a CPA Affiliate Program you will need to apply for affiliate membership in one or more of the 50+ CPA Affiliated Network Companies. All applications are stringently reviewed before they are approved.

Once your application is approved there are essentially 7 simple steps to start generating profits:

1. Find the ultimate high paying, high quality CPA Campaigns to advertise;

2. Identify appropriate Keywords;

3. Register your Domain, prepare and upload your Landing Page;

4. Set up super Low Cost P-P-C Advertising Test campaigns;

5. Monitor and Identify Profitable Test campaigns;

6. Turn Profitable Test Campaigns into fully-fledged Campaigns;

7. Rinse and Repeat;

CPA Affiliate Programs can work well with any type of advertising or traffic generation but are especially extremely profitable when undertaken with a pay-per-click advertising program.

Caution - CPA Affiliate Programs are very profitable and are currently fashionable. All Internet marketers should start looking at CPA Affiliate Programs but before they engage in this activity they should make sure that they have read and fully understand pay-per-click advertising.

Stephen S Alison is a retired "bean counter" who spent 26 years in middle management positions for major US financial institutions in Europe and a further 10 years as an adviser/consultant to a number of European financial institutions. He owns and operates a number of "hand built" niche websites including: http://www.1clickflipping.com and CPA Affiliate Programs

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_S_Alison