(That’s important because 90% of Google searchers don’t look past the first page of results!)

One of my other sites recently made it to the first page of Google for a particular search phrase with decent traffic and mid-level competition.

Here’s what I did:

This blog’s sister site is TwitterPowerTool. After doing some research about popular search keywords regarding Twitter, I noticed that one phrase was particularly promising.

According to the FREE Google AdWords Keyword Tool, the phrase “twitter ideas” gets about 4000 global monthly searches.

Then I went to Google to see how many websites are already competing for the phrase “twitter ideas.”

To do this, first I made sure I was “signed out” of Google, by looking at the top right hand side of the Google.com homepage. My browser is Firefox, so then I went under Tools/Clear Recent History and selected that.

Finally, I refreshed the Google.com page.

Doing all that gives you a closer approximation to the results a stranger would see when searching for a particular phrase on Google. If you don’t do that before you do your research on keyword competition, the results you get will reflect only your personal searches, and those won’t give you an accurate, universal picture of what’s being prioritized by Google.

After I did all that “cache clearing,” I typed “twitter ideas” into Google.com. (Note: I used quotation marks around the phrase, just like that — that’s important.)

Looking right under the Google search field, it said “About 37,200 results.”

You’ve probably noticed that when you type a really popular word or phrase into Google, you get “About 5,000,000 results.” So while 37,200 isn’t ideal, that’s much lower than the results you’ll get for a phrase like “twitter backgrounds”, which returns over 1.5 million results.

All that means that it will be easier to get on Google’s first page for a keyword phrase with only 37,200 web pages containing that expression.

So I decided to change the Title tag at TwitterPowerTool. In that blog’s WordPress dashboard, I selected the All in One SEO plug-in, and changed the home title to:

Twitter Power Tool Blog * Twitter Ideas * Your FREE Twitter Guide

(Remember: Google’s character limit for title tags and blog post titles is 71 characters.)

Then I changed the General Settings/Site Title too, but if you use the All in One SEO plugin, everything you enter into its fields overrides the General Settings and other places in your WordPress Dashboard where your tags are, such as the Layout options in the blog’s Socrates theme.

Also in All in One SEO, I changed the “Home Description” to read:

A guide to Twitter ideas, tools, clients, apps, tips, videos + Twitter news, best practices, case studies + How to use Twitter.

I also used those words in the Socrates theme‘s Layout Options/Site Description.

Google’s maximum meta description is 155 characters, so keep what you type below that number. (Those are the words that show up as part of the Google results.)

The next thing I did was see if the domain name TwitterIdeas.com was available, over at Register.com.

First I made sure I was signed into my Register.com account, so that Register would know about my search.

I didn’t think “www.TwitterIdeas.com” would be available, and I was right, but the hyphenated version was:

www.twitter-ideas.com

So I went through the motions of purchasing the domain name for the regular Register price of $37.

But instead of purchasing the domain, I abandoned the shopping cart.

About an hour later, (because I’m a long time, regular customer) I got an email from Register.com, offering me the domain for only $19.95!

So I went back and purchased it, AND also bought the Premium Site Forwarding option for $47 for the life of the domain.

(That sounds like a lot, but you just saved almost 50% off the domain name. And don’t forget to visit a site like RetailMeNot.com to see if there are any Register coupon codes you can use to get an additional discount.)

Under the Premium Site Forwarding options, I redirected www.twitter-ideas.com to point to TwitterPowerTool, and checked the “Domain Stay” button.

(Along with Title tags, Google places a lot of importance on your domain name, so selecting “Domain Stay” increases the likelihood that Google will give my site priority in search results.)

Now the big question:

What were the results of all my tweaks?

Less than two weeks after I made these two changes, my blog TwitterPowerTool now appears on the first page of Google for “twitter ideas” (no quotation marks — after all, the average searcher doesn’t use them.)

And “twitter ideas” (no quotation marks) returns 380,000,000 results!

If I only make a few affiliate sales at TwitterPowerTool as a result of these changes, I’ll have made back my modest investment.

(For more great tips on how to get your blog onto Google’s first page, CLICK HERE to get instant access to the report, Google First Page Formula.)

Google first page: how one blog quickly made it to Google’s first page is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

There are different types of affiliate marketing.

The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, fall under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

* Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money.  In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads.

The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site.  However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

* Pay Per Performance (PPP)
PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates.  In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action — that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor becomes a lead.  This means a lot of savings for the merchant.

On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

* Pay Per Sale (PPS)
In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site actually buys something from the merchant’s site.  Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee.  But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

* Pay Per Lead (PPL)
The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow.  In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company.  Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist.  If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing.

There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant’s site.

* Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing
These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made.  In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS< PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant’s site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation.  Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

* Residual Income Affiliate Marketing
In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant’s site.  Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product.  Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits.

Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you?  It is not really for me to tell.  Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

Affiliate marketing strategy: PPC, PPP and other affiliate marketing programs is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Some years, there have been hundreds of marketing newsletters I’d had every intention of reading some day, and long lost friends I’d meant to reply to. But every December, I face the fact that I’ll never get around to doing that stuff, and do a mass purge of the inbox. It feels good to start the new year that way.

You might think this was a good time to use Spring Cleaning Deluxe on your Mac, too. This age-old software from SmithMicro promises to clean out old data on your Mac, making it run faster.

Don’t believe it.

I ran Spring Cleaning a few years ago. It broke my computer. When I took it into the Apple store and told the guy I’d run Spring Cleaning on it, his face froze. We were standing right next to the software shelves, and sure enough, Spring Cleaning was prominently displayed.

The Apple guy looked around nervously and then said quietly, “See, that was your mistake.”

So I know I’m not the only person who’s wrecked their Mac by running Spring Cleaning on it.  Just think of the poor saps who ended up going to apply for a payday loan so they could fix their computer, only to break it for good with this software. Don’t take the chance.

There are other ways to “spring clean” your Mac. They’ll take longer than running some automated software, but it will make a visible difference.

MacRumors has some tips on how to clean out old files from your Mac.

(NOTE: the only software they recommend that I’ve personally used is Monolingual, and it’s fantastic. It’s a little program that erases all those Swahili dictionaries and Cantonese keyboard thingies your Mac ships with, but that you likely won’t ever use.)

Over at ChrisWrites.com, there are some easy tips, like getting rid of all that crap on your desktop. And yeah: buy some more RAM! It will change your life!

Finally, CC Holland serves up “7 Ways to Make Your Mac Run Better.”

All these posts have safe, easy ways to “spring clean” your Mac without wasting your money on dubious software.

Spring Cleaning Deluxe for Mac: don’t use it! is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

In an embarrassing development, some users who consider themselves internet savvy were hardest hit in late 2010:

Readers of Gizmodo, Lifehacker and other Gawker Media sites may be among the savviest on the Web, but the most common password for logging into those sites is embarrassingly easy to guess: “123456.” So is the runner-up: “password.

Choosing and managing safe, secure passwords seems like a pain, but it is easier than you might think.

Christopher S. Penn offers some timely tips:

“For example, if the password you want to use is CheeseBurgers!, then create CheeseBurgers!Banking as a password for financial services, CheeseBurgers!Social for networks like Facebook and Twitter, CheeseBurgers!Email for mail services, etc. You’ll still mentally have “one” password but it won’t work for everything. (the added length is also a minor increase to security since longer passwords are harder to guess) If another Gawker media incident happens where millions of passwords and email addresses are stolen, perhaps only your CheeseBurgers!Blogging password will need to be changed.”

I have an even better idea: check out 1Password.

1Password generates new, secure passwords for you in seconds. If you want to be extra safe, choose a password over 13 characters long that contains not only letters and numbers but symbols too, like *, #, and $

I don’t have to remember these complicated passwords. 1Password does it for me.

Then 1Password saves that password along with all your other ones. When you need to log in again, you just click the 1Password bookmarklet on your browser tab, and it fills in your log in information. It even hits the “Enter” button!

1Password automatically backs up your passwords. If your computer crashes, or you need to access your log in information remotely, 1Password keeps them all safe and easy to get to. And it works on Mac, PC, iPad or iPhones.

1Password has saved my life a few times! Highly recommended for anyone finally convinced they need to be more careful about choosing and using secure passwords.

Secure passwords: tips for choosing and managing safe passwords is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

* Like this blogger, I too have just discovered the free and easy note-taking took called Evernote. I now keep Evernote open all day long, and copy & paste juicy stuff from around the web there. It’s a great way to permanently store urls, thoughts (mine and other people’s), post ideas and more.

* In the Christmas spirit, check out “12 Days of Blogging”:

“…every day, you’ll get a post filled to the brim with links to tips from some of the best bloggers around the world. Some of these names you may recognize. Others will probably be brand new to you. Either way, there will be over 75 bloggers featured as part of this series!

“Every day, you’re invited to leave links to any post you have that is relevant to the topic of the day – and I’m hoping you’ll take full advantage of this opportunity to promote your own work!”

* Is it possible to “Learn SEO in 30 Seconds”?

* Speaking of SEO, here are “9 SEO Insights You Must Follow” — for instance, here’s what you need to know about your blog’s page title:

“The page title needs to be under 70 characters and no more than 3 long tail keywords in the page title. Your most important keyword should be first and each keyword should be separated by pipes (|).”

Tips on blogging: pinging, SEO and more is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

As you can see from features such as the rotating top banner, the social media “slider” and the built-in ClickBank widget, the Socrates theme for WordPress is optimized for those who want to make money blogging.

Socrates is also the easiest WordPress theme I ever installed. When I had a question about how to customize the look of my blog, their support staff answered immediately.

There’s even a 30-day free trial.

So I’m very impressed by this WordPress theme.

Today I received this email:

Hi Socrates Customer,

It’s hard to believe it only been eight months since the Socrates Premium WordPress Theme was released.  The theme has become more popular than we ever imagined.

In fact, today we just hit our 7,000th customer.

So to celebrate I thought it would be a great idea to hold an exclusive webinar for our customers.

Whether you’re an active Socrates user or a trial customer I invite you to join me on Wednesday, December 29 at 7PM EST for a Socrates overview and Q&A webinar.

For Trial users I’ll show you how to fully setup and install Socrates in under 10 minutes, and then I’ll take any and all questions from customers for the next 50 minutes

Space is Limited…

Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST

Reserve Your Seat here.

I hope to see you there.

To Your Socrates Success!  Dan Nickerson

This webinar would be a great way to get a walk through of all the Socrates features.

Again, I’ve tried (and hated!) a bunch of other WordPress themes, so I highly recommend Socrates for easy install, number of features and ease of use.

FREE WordPress theme webinar: Socrates, WordPress and more is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

* “Dealing with a DDOS attack”: if you blog about anything controversial — or you just happen to get on somebody’s bad side — you might be subject to a Denial of Service (Dos) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack one day. This means someone is malevolently flooding your server with hits, to “break” your site.  (The same thing happens — but for good reasons — during an “Instalanche,” when one of your posts becomes so popular that thousands of people are trying to get to your blog right away.) Either way, your blog will suddenly crash, and you (or whoever is in charge of your servers) will have to go to some trouble to get it back up. mThink has a very short, pretty technical but helpful guide to reducing your chances of being the victim of a DOS attack.

* ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse asks fellow bloggers: “What do you do with posts when you change your opinion?”

* “Why aren’t you hosting your own blog yet?” asks Kiesha Easley:

“I have nothing against Blogspot or WordPress.com. In fact, if it wasn’t for Blogger, I might have never gotten my start. But it only took a few months of struggling to build search engine traffic before I started asking myself, how could I honestly say that I’m taking my blogging seriously if I wasn’t willing to invest in my own domain name and host my own blog? (…)

“for a blogger who really wants to be viewed as an authority, having .blogspot.com or wordpress.com at the end of a sub-domain, just isn’t going to cut it.”

Note: this blog, and almost all my other ones, are hosted by DreamHost and so far I’m very pleased with them. (Their customer interface really needs a 21st century makeover, but otherwise I’ve never had a problem with DreamHost.)

* “When is the best time to publish blog posts?” An outstanding post, full of infographics, looking at the ideal “time of day” and “day of week” to post on your blog, in terms of traffic and the chance of getting your posts shared on Facebook. Some surprises! All in all — fascinating. One to bookmark.

Tips on blogging: new blogging tips from around the web is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

In Part Two, we looked at using Twitter and social bookmarking sites like Digg to let the world know about your blog (and get even more backlinks.)

Finally, in Part Three, let’s see the results of doing all that:

Let about 24 to 48 hours go by (if you can wait that long — I’m not very good at that).

* Go to Google.com. If you have a Google account, look at the upper right hand side of the page. If you are “Signed In,” be sure to sign out.

* Then refresh the page, and clear your browser cache. (In Firefox, this is under Tools/Clear Recent History.)

NOTE: Unless you do all this clearing and refreshing, you’ll get search results back that reflect what YOU’VE been looking for on your computer.

And you want, as much as possible, to see what a total stranger would see if they typed “discount electronic widget adaptors” (WITHOUT the quotation marks!) into Google.

Another way to replicate searching from a total stranger’s computer is to use a program like HideMyIP.

* So do just that: TYPE YOUR KEYWORD PHRASE into your Google search field and see what comes up.

It may take a few more days to see more of your sites showing up on page one, but if you have followed these instructions, you should see results.

Doing all this costs you nothing but time, energy and patience. But believe me, it is worth it.

I’ve gotten my clients’ “page one” results in 24 hours — in one case, for an ultra trendy shopping search term that had over 78,000 competing results!

However, there is still more to learn about how to get your site(s) on Google’s first page.

I haven’t told you the half of it.

For example, Google search results can be highly volatile; your site’s standings will rise and fall depending on lots of different factors.

You HAVE to stay on top of it.

One of the best resources about getting and keeping Google first page results is a new ebook, with methods the author has tested through trial and error.

He talks about that annoying volatility with your Google first page results, and what you can do about it.

Not every writer does this; they just tell you how to get on Google’s first page, but not how to stay there!

He also shares some truly unique ideas and resources I never thought of using before and have never read about anywhere else.

To learn his secrets, CLICK HERE for your instant copy of “Google First Page Formula.”

Google first page: free tips for higher ranking blogs (part 3) is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Through PayPerPost, advertisers ask bloggers to write short (100-200 word) posts about their product, service or website. Usually, the advertisers are websites hoping to get good reviews or even just inbound links to help raise their ranking in Google.

Here’s how it works:

I’ll get an email from PayPerPost telling me there’s an opportunity for me. I’ll sign in and check it out. You can reject any opportunity you aren’t interested in.

If the advertiser doesn’t expect too much for too little (such as a 300 word post for only $10) and they don’t seem to be running a scam, I’ll click on “Take This Opp.”

Let’s say the advertiser is a Miami Beach real estate company that wants me to post about its new website and its cool features. I’ll write up a post about the Miami Beach site on my own blog, carefully following the instructions given by the advertiser. I make sure the post is the length the advertiser has requested, and that I’ve included the requisite number of links to their site. It’s important to write a factual, truthful post about the services being offered, based on the information you’ve been provided: “This is the most respected real estate agency in Miami Beach. You can search their site for condos and houses, rentals and purchases. You get access to the Miami Beach MLS listings,” etc.)

Three tips: First, I don’t want to irritate my regular blog readers by shoving these paid blog posts in their faces. So I backdate the date on the paid post, so that it shows up closer to the bottom of my blog. For example, if the date I’m writing the paid post is January 20, I’ll edit the date on the blog post to January 17. The blog post still shows up, satisfying the advertiser’s request, and my regular readers won’t get turned off by an obvious ad.

(I say “obvious” because I always ad the phrase “Sponsored Post” at the bottom of the post, to satisfy both my readers and the government, which insists that bloggers make it very clear when they are getting paid to blog.)

(Here’s an example of a post I wrote for a PayPerPost advertiser.)

Second: after you publish the paid post, PayPerPost asks you to submit the permalink for it, so they can run it through their system to make sure it has met all the advertiser’s requirements. Now, normally when I create hyperlinks in a blog post, I format it as “Target/Open link in new window.” However, I’ve discovered that doing that can get your otherwise perfect post rejected by the PayPerPost system. So when you include links as requested by the advertiser, be sure to format them as “Target/Open link in same window.”

Third tip: if you are using InfoLinks contextual advertising to make money with your blog, go into the HTML of your paid post and insert the tags shown HERE to disable InfoLinks in this post only. After all, the PayPerPost advertiser won’t appreciate seeing ad links for other companies in his sponsored post!

I’ve been signed up with PayPerPost for a while. They’ve always paid on time and otherwise seem pretty reliable.

I recommend trying out PayPerPost to see what you think.

How to make money blogging with PayPerPost is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Put simply, Google crawls the web all day and night, looking for signs that blogs and websites have added new content. When Google detects that new content, it moves those newly updated sites and blogs closer to the top of its search engine results pages (SERPs.)

PLUS the more posts a blog builds up over time, the more likely that it will be linked to from other sites — and as we know, Google loves backlinks, too.

So when it comes to blogging and getting on that precious Google page one “SERP,” newness counts — and so does volume.

That means blogging every day, to build up your volume of posts AND keep getting Google’s precious attention.

Now it is easy to update your blog every day, even if you don’t have anything vitally important to say.

To do this, you need a WordPress blog that uses a Theme that includes Widgets.

Let’s use my blog TwitterPowerTool as an example, which was created using the WordPress Socrates theme. As you can see, the Socrates theme allows for a number of customizable widgets in its right hand sidebar. You can put affiliate and Amazon banners there, other kinds of ads, your blogroll — and of course, an RSS feed display like the one we are about to create.

When you visit that blog, you’ll see a section on the upper right hand side called “Twitter in the News.” Because Twitter is, indeed, in the news a lot, that RSS widget/section of the blog is updating constantly, a little bit like a stock market tickertape. In turn, this regular churning of headlines “nudges” Google into noticing TwitterPowerTool.

So how did I create that “Twitter in the News” widget?

In the WordPress dashboard, I selected Widgets under Appearance.

There are a variety of Available Widgets on display. I grabbed the RSS widget (which lets you post “Entries from any RSS or Atom feed”) and dragged it over to the top of the Primary Sidebar area.

I clicked on the downward pointing arrow on the far right of the RSS widget. This opens up the blank fields you use to customize the content in the widget. I typed “Twitter in the News” in the Title field.

Now I needed an RSS feed of non-stop news about Twitter, to give the widget something to display. So I opened new browser window and went to Google.com. I selected the “News” option at the top left of the Google home page.

Then, in the search field for Google News, I typed the word “twitter” (no quotation marks required) and hit “Search News.”

At the very bottom of the results page, you’ll see the familiar orange symbol with the word “RSS” beside it. This is the RSS feed for all the latest Google news from now on, related to Twitter.

Normally, people will click on this link and subscribe to this feed in their RSS feed reader (I use NetNewsWire for the Mac.) However, we want to do something a little different.

If you click on the RSS link and your RSS feed reader automatically asks you if you want to subscribe to this feed, you can indeed hit “Subscribe” — but not before you’ve copied the RSS feed code/URL you see in the New Subscription pop up. You’ll need this when you go back to the WordPress widget dashboard in a minute.

If your RSS feed reader doesn’t prompt you to subscribe, don’t worry: A page from Google will show up with a lot of HTML code on it, topped with the message:

“This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”

This page has the little snippet of information you are looking for.  Look for the word “<link>” Underneath it, you’ll see the following:

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=ca&hl=en&q=twitter

(Of course, if you searched Google News for “magnifying glasses” or “David Hasselhoff gossip”, the word “twitter” won’t be the last word after that final “=” — it will be whatever words you searched for in order to generate the RSS feed you want for your own blog.)

Highlight that <http://news.google.com/…> line, copy and paste it into a basic text editor like TextEdit. (I automatically do this with everything I cut and paste from every website. Doing this cutting and pasting only takes a second, and  strips out the invisible hidden code and formatting that’s attached to so much text on the web. It’s just a good habit to get into, to avoid ending up with ugly “stuff” on your blog, or even in a Word doc, that messes up its appearance…)

Then I copy and paste the line from TextEdit, and into the RSS widget field that says “Enter the RSS feed URL here:”

Asked to “give the feed a title,” I pick one that relates to the topic of my blog — after all, every keyword counts. So I called it “Twitter in the News.”

I choose “10″ under “How many items would you like to display”; this means ten new headlines about Twitter will display on my blog. You can experiment with which number is best for you.

(I DON’T selection the other options, such as “Display Item Content” and especially “Display Item Date.” First of all, those dates simply mess up the keyword density you are trying to build up for your own keywords. If you have 10 news feed headlines that all contain the words “November 2010″, then “November 2010″ suddenly becomes one of the most popular phrases on your site — and I doubt “November 2010″ is the topic of your blog. Dates also make your blog look, well, dated to visitors if, for whatever reason, the feed hasn’t updated recently and old dates are stuck on there.)

After hitting “Save,” I see how the widget looks on the blog by going up to the title of the blog at the top of the WordPress dashboard and right-clicking on the name, so that the blog will open in a new window.

If I’ve done everything right, my blog now has a regular sidebar item with constantly updating content for my blog.

Is this as good has having a fresh, new original blog post every single day? No.

But having an RSS news feed about the same subject as your blog keeps your blog on Google’s radar — and it also provides intriguing, valuable information to your visitors that’s free, easy for you to provide and always fresh. Google likes that — and your visitors will, too.

How to add new blog content every day (without posting) is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

(You want to do this because you want your blog to show up on the first page of Google when somebody searches for the subject of your blog. And Google favors blogs that are linked to by other high page rank sites; the likes of Google-favorites such as Squidoo confer lots of “authority” back to your own blog.)

Now, in Part Two, we’ll look at a few other things you can do to help get your blog a higher placement in those all important search engine page results (SERPs).

* Twitter tells the world (and Google) that you’ve got a new web site
To show up in Google, your new sites need to be “spidered” by Google’s “bots.” One way to let Google know that these sites have been created is to use Twitter. Google and Twitter are closely linked and that relationship shows no signs of waning.

So send out a tweet like this one:

“Check out my new site about discount electronic widget adaptors at http://www.squidoo.com/discount-electronic-widget-adapters”

Obviously, use an url shortener like TinyUrl or Is.gd to stay under Twitter’s 140 character limit.

Do this for every single new page you just created: the one at HubPages, the one at Xanga, and so on.

You don’t want to spam or annoy your Twitter followers, so use a FREE Twitter message timer like Twuffer.com so that all these tweets to go out at different times. (I use the “Schedule” function in MarketMeSuite. I also use MarketMeSuite to get backlinks to my blog…)

* Now tell other important web sites about your new ones
Next, use SocialMarker.com, ShareThis.com or OnlyWire.com to tell all the important social bookmarking sites, like Digg, Reddit and others about your new web pages. Google crawls most sites on the web once a day — assuming they have new content.  On the other hand, because these social bookmarking sites are being updated every split second, Google crawls them every hour.

This procedure will take a little time if you don’t already have an account with these bookmarking sites, but it is VERY important. DO NOT skip this step.

* So first, you’ll have to visit Digg and all these other sites and create an account. If possible, select their “keep me logged in” option.

* Let’s say you use SocialMarker. Go to SocialMarker.com, fill in the fields under “Bookmark details” for ONE of your new sites, (using your keyword phrase at least once) and hit “submit.”

PS: always select the “make this link public” option!

Make sure you include the “Do Follow” sites, too, like JumpTags. While there is some controversy over whether or not this designation still matters, many SEO experts believe that links from sites that are set up as “do follow” (i.e., designed so that Google will “follow” them) are better for your SERPs.

* Social Marker will take you to Digg, Reddit and all the other sites one at a time. Remember, you are already signed in to those sites, so it will only take a few seconds each to submit your new blog or site.

Social Marker also requires some trial and error to master, but again: practice makes perfect! You’ll also need patience. This procedure takes a while.

Then use SocialMarker, OnlyWire or ShareThis to “bookmark” each of your new sites, one at a time.

When you’re done, you’ve just created another set of backlinks to your new sites, coming from places Google considers important, like Digg and Mixx.com.

And REMEMBER: the more links your blog has from other sites, the more likely it is that your site will show up on Google’s first page.

(In Part Three, I’ll tell you more about a report with lots of tips I’ve found helpful in getting some of my sites on the first page of Google.)

Google first page: free tips for higher ranking blogs (part two) is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

BlogMe.

For only $3.99, BlogMe gives you an “almost free” WordPress blog, with your choice of premium WP themes (from Woo Theme or Studio Press) AND free site hosting (with unlimited bandwidth) for a one-time only charge of only $4.

Here’s what they offer:

“BlogMe is an application we created to streamline the creation of wordpress blogs, hosting and installation of premium themes – by doing everything automatically. You can install your own website in minutes, and all you need is a domain.”

I know: that sounds pretty hard to believe, but I trust the folks at MarketMeSuite and decided to check out BlogMe.

So with my new $3.99 BlogMe account, I created a new WordPress blog, using one of the many really nice premium WordPress themes, and got free hosting for one year.

It was the perfect way to create and experiment with a new design I had in mind for my new resume/portfolio site. This gave me the chance to finally use one of the “my.name” related domains I’ve been sitting on for years now.

Here’s the result: the newly redesigned KathyShaidle.com

I’m pretty pleased with this blog and I’ve received lots of great feedback — not to mention a couple of new clients!

Anyway, BlogMe is highly recommeded. If you’re looking for a really affordable WordPress blog set up, check it out. Using BlogMe is especially great if, like me, you always wanted to check out the WordPress blogging.

After setting up my first WordPress blog, I’ve now used WordPress for all my subsequent blogs (including this one.)

You can get one WordPress blog with the theme of your choice, with one year’s FREE hosting, for just $3.99.

OR you can buy a $39 package. That one time fee gives you 10 blogs and free hosting. (There are other packages available too.) This is fantastic if you’re serious about setting up lots of different blogs for yourself and/or your clients.

So far I’m very happy with the BlogMe set up.

The step by step set up process at BlogMe was fast and easy.

There’s a part where, if you’re already sitting on a domain name, you have to go to Register.com or wherever it is and change your DNS information; that sounds hard to do, but BlogMe has all the directions. It really is just a matter of cutting and pasting a few lines of numbers.

If you haven’t used WordPress before but always wanted to try it, these BlogMe packages give you a practically FREE way to play around with the popular blog creation platform.

The great thing about WordPress are the plug-ins that let you customize and optimize your blog’s SEO, favicon and all kinds of stuff.

Anyway, you can find out more about BlogMe HERE. I’m biased because I’m a customer, as you can tell.

Get a WordPress blog plus FREE hosting for just $3.99: highly recommended is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

How embarrassing. Why did it take so long?

Because I wasn’t following Google’s own tips for AdSense placement.

After I made ONE change to the Google AdSense placement on my blog, my revenues shot up tenfold.

I was sick of visiting my Google AdSense account and seeing my daily revenue stuck at pathetic levels, like 10 cents or 20 cents a day.

All I had to do, as it turns out, was visit Google’s own AdSense blog, where they share tips and best practices.

Sure enough, the blog talked about a certain website that had been sticking a 468×60 Banner AdSense unit at the bottom of their pages, and wasn’t making much money.

But then the website started experimenting with 300 x 250 Medium Rectangles instead.

When they started putting the 300 x 250 Medium Rectangles right in their actual posts, their revenue went from $10 a day to $1700!

So I decided to change what I was doing with AdSense placement on my blog. Before, I just stuck a 728 x 90 AdSense Leaderboard unit on my blog’s sidebar and hoped for the best.

BUT as you can see from the illustration at the top of this article, Google recommends AdSense placement right below/at the bottom of your blog posts, too.

So the next time I blogged, I wrote my blog post as usual, but then pasted the AdSense code for a 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle image ad at the bottom of my own words, leaving a little space between the content of the post and the ad.

Google lets you put 3 AdSense units of a certain type (banners, text links) on your site at one time, so I don’t put an AdSense unit in every one of my posts — more like every third one. Anything else really looks tacky and ugly.

The results were amazing.

Within 24 hours, I went from making 20 cents a day with Google AdSense to making $2 or $3!

Now, that isn’t a fortune, but I kick myself thinking of all the money I’ve  “leaf on the table” by not getting more smart and aggressive with Google AdSense placement.

I could have made had an extra $60 or $90 a month for nine years, just for doing something that takes a few seconds a day. That’s almost $1000 I basically threw away.

(PS: if you accidentally put more than 3 AdSense units on your blog one day, don’t panic — Google automatically replaces the extra ones with a blank space. It’s not like you get in trouble or anything. There will just be a large blank space in the post where the ad would have been.)

All the advice I’ve read from other experts says the same thing: experiment with using as large a Google AdSense unit you can get away with, and make sure you put it INSIDE your blog post.

I’ve gotten lots of other expert advice like that from Eric Giguere.

He wrote a book called Uncommon AdSense, which I bought because:

• His “sales page” wasn’t an ugly mess of exclamation marks, loud sound effects, photos of “his” sportscar and ridiculous claims. (Come on: You know what I mean!)
• Uncommon AdSense was only $10, but is 100 pages long.
• Because Eric has your email address, you will always have the latest version of this ebook. Every time Google AdSense makes a change to its policies and best practices, Eric tells you about it.
• You get 3 FREE bonuses, too.

If you want to get some solid advice about Google AdSense placement and more, I highly recommend CLICKING HERE to get the book Uncommon AdSense right now.

AdSense placements tips for blogs: how ONE CHANGE can increase your blog’s AdSense revenue is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Then when you’ve clicked on one of those links, you’ve been taken to an ad for a product or service. Maybe a pop up comes up first and shows you a preview to the advertiser’s site.

When you clicked on that link, the owner of the blog you found it on gets paid!

These special hyperlinks are called in text advertising or contextual advertising.

I’ve experimented with different in text and contextual advertising services in the past, but I’ve settled on InfoLinks and use it on all my blogs.

InfoLinks is free and easy to join. Once you sign up, you get a piece of HTML code you insert in your blog’s source code.

Or you can use the very handy InfoLinks plug in for WordPress if you run a WordPress blog (like this one.)

(InfoLinks also has plugins for Blogger, Joomia and Drupal blogging platforms.)

Here’s how InfoLinks describes what your visitors will see:

“Pay Per Click In Text advertising inserts text link advertisements within the content of your website, usually in the form of double-underline hyperlinks. Upon a hover of the mouse, a floating informational bubble opens with content from an advertiser. If clicked, the visitor is directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn advertising revenue; otherwise, when the mouse is moved away from the hyperlink, the bubble disappears.”

InfoLinks offers many advantages if you’re thinking of monetizing your blog with contextual advertising.

They “guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share.” That means you’ll keep a bigger chunk of what you’ll earn after installing InfoLinks than you will if you go with another similar company.

Plus you can choose how many in text ads appear on your blog, so it doesn’t have to look cluttered and confusing.

You can also turn InfoLinks “on and off” with another piece of code, if you don’t want ads to show up for some reason on a certain place on your website. For example, if you’ve just written a post about a serious subject — such as a national tragedy or the death of a love one — it might look tacky, not to mention distracting, if that particular post had blatant contextual ads all through it.

A new feature called “Related Tags” lets you add a string of InfoLinks tags anywhere on your blog — for example, right under every post. This is a great way to earn extra revenue, but be advised: they can make your blog look messy.

Of course, it’s FREE to sign up to InfoLinks. They are easy to use, pay on time and are a respected, established company with lots of big name clients.

I’ve made up to $100 a month by installing InfoLinks on my blogs. Not bad for a few minutes of work for each blog, one time only!

InfoLinks doesn’t have an affiliate program, so I’m not getting paid to recommend them to you.

If you are interested in monetizing your blog using contextual advertising, I highly recommend InfoLinks.

How to make money blogging with contextual advertising (video) is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

It’s called Apture.

Here’s what they offer you, at no cost:

“One line of code can triple the time readers spend on your site. Interested?

“Apture’s Contextual Search keeps users engaged with your content by giving them the tools to search and share without even leaving your page. Give your readers the power to search the web for rich content from Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, Flickr, YouTube and others all through your site.”

Here’s what happens: you install a bit of custom generated code you get from Apture, after you give them your basic blog information.

After that, when someone visits your site and scrolls down, a slender toolbar appears and invites them to share what they see on your blog using email, Twitter and/or Facebook.

In other words, the Apture toolbar immediately connects your blog to the most important social networking tools on the web today. This means visitors can easily share your blog more easily to their friends and followers.

And that means more traffic and links for your blog.

Visitors can also use the built in search field to find information in your blog’s archives. This easy to use search feature keeps visitors engaged on your blog longer.

Here’s a recent report I received from Apture, telling me the different installing the toolbar has made to one of my blogs:

Apture Report for 2010-11-22 to 2010-11-28

• Readers spent 1.2x more time on your site when they used Apture
• Readers searched 118 times on your site using Apture
• Your readers want to know more about: kathy shaidle, ., tura satana.
• Readers shared 8 articles via Apture
• Using Apture, you retained 192 visitors who would have otherwise left your site

Here’s what the Apture toolbar looks like, customized in red, with the name of the blog itself:

As you can see, you can customize this unobtrusive toolbar so that it color coordinates with your blog’s preexisting design and features the name of your blog site.

As well, after you install the Apture bar on your blog, certain links in your posts will be hyperlinked to Wikipedia. When a visitor hovers over the link, a little pop up window will give them the Wikipedia entry on that topic:

Apture is a FREE way to add value to your site, so visitors will stay engaged longer and share your blog with their friends.

And of course, you can use the Twitter, Facebook and email features on your own blog’s toolbar whenever you want, to get word out about your blog via social networking!

If you’ve read this far, you’ve already seen my Apture toolbar in action at the top of this blog. I invite you to try it and see how easy it is to use.

You’ll probably want to add the Apture toolbar to your own blog, so your visitors can stay engaged with your site for longer periods of time. It’s free and easy to do.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Apture and sign up for FREE!

How to get visitors to stay on your blog — and share it with friends is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you.

With affiliate marketing, you may get cash pouring into your bank account easily.  And if your website is rich in great content and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Google Adsense is actually an affiliate marketing program in a sense.  In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, simply signs up with Google and provides the latter with text ads pertaining to their products.  These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences.  In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest.  The ads that Google places on your site will generally be relevant to the content of your site, based on the keywords on the page or post.  This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis.  The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount.  Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly as long as your total earnings are $100 or over.

Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits!  Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate.  For the merchantís side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms.  For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites.

And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

However, two factors need to be considered when looking at Google AdSense. One, your earnings will increase if your traffic increases. This is simply the law of averages. So make sure you do everything you can to (ethically) increase your blog’s traffic.

Second, where you place your Google AdSense ads on your blog is very important. One of my other posts tells you all about the best places on your blog to place your ads!

Affiliate marketing strategy: earn from Google AdSense is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Of course, you want earn huge amount of commission.  Keep in mind, however, that affiliate marketing cannot guarantee you instant success if you don’t work on it. There are a lot of ways of maximizing your income.

The easiest way for you to increase your revenue potential is by incorporating Google AdSense into your blog or website. What is Google AdSense? What are its advantages? How can it boost my revenues?

Merchants place their ads in Google, through the AdWords program. When these ads show up on the Google results page, or on your, they’re called AdSense. Google AdSense lets you display these ads in you website and when your visitors click through them, you earn.

What’s great about the Google AdSense is that the ads are relevant to the content of your web page. Most likely, visitors of your web site are interested on the theme of your site and specifically, on the content of your web page. So, seeing ads related to their interest would definitely drive them to click through the link or the ad.

Using state-of-the-art technology, Google scans your web site and matches the content of your pages to their large database of advertisers; this way, Google is able to find ads that are targeted by the users of your site.

In addition, Google changes the ads in your site as you change the content of your pages, so you can always expect the ads to be relevant to your site.

Advertisers in the Google AdWords/AdSense program range from large international brands to small-time domestic and local businesses, so the targeted market for the ads can range as well. This adds variety to your site; thereby, attracting different kinds of users. As you attract more users, you increase your earning potential as well.

In order to boost your revenues through Google AdSense, you must pay attention to making web pages of high value topics. Some ads pay only a few cents while some ads pay you dollars just for a single click. You would need to do a little research on this so you can come up with a more relevant content. Join affiliate marketing forums and get tips from experienced affiliate marketers.

Becoming an AdSense affiliate marketer is easy and fast. You just have to apply online and once your application is approved, you can instantly set up Google ads in your site. All you need to do is copy and paste some codes in your web pages and in no time the ads will appear in your site.

NOTE: Never, EVER click on the Google AdSense ads that appear on your website. Google will immediately close your account.

The next step is placing those Google AdSense ads on the best locations on your website. You can multiply your earnings just by making one change to where you decide to place those ads. CLICK HERE to learn the best places on your website to put those Google AdSense spots.

Affiliate marketing strategy: AdSense and affiliate marketing is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Search engine results are useless to users if the information doesn’t relate to the search term, or if the results are old. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information.

Updating your website every day will help you get noticed by the search engines. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or service online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.

It is because over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines for you to have the greatest deals in the entire world.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to augment their website’s status. It is certain that the internet has grown so fast over the years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market.

Therefore, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is vital for an online business success.

Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website. There are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank; the most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently.

This seems like a simple concept but there are many websites that fail to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated create highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the coming days. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites then do it. You’ll surely have a step closer to achieving high page rank through search engine optimization.

The next significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrase that your site is actually optimized for.

The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page rank.

You should also have to develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is imperative because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you.

The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

Another is to develop a content stratagem. People who get to search from the internet are looking for information. The more information you provide for them and the more helpful it is, the more likely you will make the sale.

Writing articles is the most effective way to build up content for your site. When writing articles to post on your site, make sure that you develop a clear means of arranging their content. You can do this by simply adding a new page to your site. This will allow room for extra articles to be added as you write them, and will allow you to build up an archive of articles which will maintain to draw online visitors.

Always keep in mind that search engine optimization methods are important in developing your site’s status.

With that thing in mind, make sure that you write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a deliberate family of other sites. These things will help improve your site’s popularity and ultimately grow your business.

Affiliate marketing strategy: SEO for affiliate marketers is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult.

Fortunately, there is plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.

However, most of these techniques require payment. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic?

Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business.

1.Reach more people
When you write good articles, it would be a shame not to share them with other people. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. The best sites to submit your articles to are EzineArticles, Bukisa, IdeaMarketers, ArticleRanks, BusinessKnowHow, Articlealley, Buzzle, ArticlesBase, GoArticles and Xomba.

By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box — that’s the little “About the Author” bit that appears at the very bottom of every article. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well.  Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you.

Thus, you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article; you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic.

Note: EzineArticles screen all the articles submitted to them, and take about a week to tell you if your article has been approved. Your article must be 100% original and not previously published at another website. People try hard to get their articles approved in EzineArticles because that site has a #6 Google Page Rank (Here’s my EzineArticles page, if you want to see what one looks like.) However, some of the other article marketing sites mentioned above have Page Ranks of 4 or 5.

(To find out a site’s Google Page Rank, download the Google toolbar, which displays the Page Rank of every site you visit.)
2.Free Advertising
Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site’s link in the resource box.

In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space. You have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer. And unlike advertising, it’s free!

3.Gain High Search Engine Ranking
Create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.

4.Increases Link Popularity
Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, it’s more appealing to your prospect to submit an article to other sites. Lots of webmasters resent getting “link exchange” offers — they are pretty old fashioned and the sign of an amateur.

However, lots of bloggers need guest posters and article writers, and don’t have time to post as much content as they’d like to. So why not offer to guest post for them instead? You’re doing them a free favor, and who doesn’t appreciate that?

Just do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. Try to get as many link partners as you can. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5.Optimizes your site for improved search engine ranking
By making your site keyword rich, you can greatly improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site. However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most web surfers — and Google will actually take marks off your site if you do that.

Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized. Choose a single keyword phrase — such as “affiliate marketing strategy” — and use it often in your article, without overdoing it.

6.Establishes a Good Impression and Reputation
By writing excellent, original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles.

Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

7.Enhances your credibility through references and testimonies
Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedback and testimonies when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record this positive feedback and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts.

Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by this feedback, as it will create a good impression on your prospects as well as your existing customers. In this highly competitive world, excellent credibility and trust may be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers.

Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve your business.

Affiliate marketing strategy: 7 tips on article marketing is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Likewise, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to generate income. For someone getting sick of the grueling ten-hour/day work routine, affiliate marketing is a chance to earn money without that daily grind. (Not that you should quit your day job before you can build up your affiliate marketing strategy to replace it!)

In affiliate marketing, both parties benefit since as the merchant earns from each item sold, and the marketer earns a commission.

If you are interested in affiliate marketing but are finding it hard to look for affiliate programs, affiliates or merchants, you can start by checking our various affiliate networks. Many affiliate programs in the Internet are being offered through an affiliate program network, which acts as a link between the merchants and individual affiliate marketers with websites that accept advertising.

Among the most popular is LinkShare.  LinkShare maintains and manages affiliate marketing programs for over 6000 merchants with various kinds of businesses, products and services. It profits from the set-up fees, monthly account maintenance fees and commissions.

Joining affiliate networks like LinkShare can help establish your online marketing business. Whether you are a merchant or an affiliate marketer, you need to  research your partners in order to choose the best for you. LinkShare only chooses legitimate businesses to work with and promote.

LinkShare lets you access a large network of advertisers and merchants who offer their affiliate programs to website publishers (a.k.a., affiliates) who are willing to promote their products. In the same manner, it gives the merchants access to a large network of affiliates who are searching for affiliate marketing opportunities.

LinkShare is especially beneficial for an affiliate isince he can find his options all in one location, absolutely FREE. Using LinkShare’s search and categorization functions, he can quickly compare products, commission rates and other benefits given by the merchant. The merchant usually just waits for interested affiliates to sign up in his affiliate marketing program, but being in the network makes it easier for him to promote his products to a larger market, thus, maximizing his potential to gain huge profit.

To help you decide whether to use large affiliate networks such as LinkShare or not, let us try to look deeper into its positive and negative sides.

The primary advantage of LinkShare to you as an affiliate is convenience.

As earlier mentioned, you find different pieces of information about your choices simultaneously all in a single location, so you save time and effort looking for affiliate programs or merchants.

It’s also easier to track your performance through monthly reports and statements, as well as its sales and commission rates, so you know whether the affiliate program is still worth continuing. If you have signed up for several affiliate programs, you can check all your statistics for each merchandiser you are affiliated with by logging in just once.

LinkShare helps you manage and maintain all records, such as click-throughs and sales transactions. It takes care of your commissions and gives them to you monthly in lump sum. Especially when you have more than one merchant partner, it would be easier for you to manage your accounts and track your earnings when you are affiliated through a marketing program network.

Furthermore, all this data is accurate and secured, so you are protected from all risks you might encounter at a less respected and established affiliate network. Above all, you can enjoy LinkShare’s benefits for free, forever. You just have to go to their site and register your website. Instantly, you get access to a great variety of affiliate programs available for you.

So, what’s on the negative side?

For one, merchants offer lower commissions to affiliates who partner with them through the third party program network. This because they still have to pay for the use of service and the technology provided by LinkShare.

Direct partnership with the merchant cuts costs of advertising through the network and so the affiliate has bigger potential to earn more. Moreover, it is possible that your payment may be delayed for a month or more since program networks would pay you only after the advertiser or the merchant has paid them. That’s bound to happen with any middleman enterprise like LinkShare.

Do you need to use LinkShare or other networks? It depends on your goals. You can opt for direct partnership with the merchant, but this choice is not always available. There are a lot of merchandisers who offer their affiliate program only through affiliate program networks like LinkShare and CommissionJunction, and thus, you have no choice other than joining the network to get into theit affiliate marketing program.

(To find out, visit the homepage of the company whose products you want to sell. Look carefully at all the navigation buttons and other links on the site. Often, you’ll see a link entitled something like “Affiliate Program” at the very bottom of their webpage. Click on that and read what affiliate marketing options they are offering to bloggers like you.)

That said, LinkShare and other program networks are not that disadvantageous. After all, whether you join it or not, earning big would depend more on your promotional strategies and persistence.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the LinkShare affiliate network.

Affiliate marketing strategy: a review of LinkShare affiliate network is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. However, you can maximize your earning potential by using the right tools necessary for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Here are the top three must-have tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website
The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. It really isn’t good enough to rely on a WordPress.com or Blogger site anymore. You need your own domain name and your own hosted site. That’s because, unless you pay for your own site and hosting, you are subject to being shut down by the bigshots at WordPress or Blogger because you’ve violated some real (or imagined) “terms of service,” or some competitor has filed a bogus complaint against you.

I purchase my domain names through Register.com. They offer domain AND email packages starting at only $9.99 per year. They also have the best customer service I’ve ever encountered from any online marketing business.

For hosting, I recommend DreamHost, because it is affordable, reliable and offers one-minute WordPress.org uploading. After uploading WordPress.org, you can select one of many WordPress themes available around the web as your design, but I recommend the Socrates theme because it is designed to be SEO optimized and set up for affiliate marketing. (This blog uses Socrates, for example!)

Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking.

By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Important Tool #2: Incentives
Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting.

Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Another is to encourage your visitors to follow you on Twitter. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can offer free software, access to exclusive services and other freebies.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity
The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings.

One of the best ways to do this at no cost is by submitting articles, with your website’s link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites like EzineArticles.com. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just by including a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is.

Another way to build up link popularity is to create a “hub” of mini-sites and blog using free webpage creation services like HubPost, Squidoo and other sites that offer great Google page rank. Here’s my post on how to build up one of these “hubs”.

These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a successful affiliate marketer.

Affiliate marketing strategy: 3 must-have affiliate marketing tools is a post from: Blogging Power Tool: Tips on Blogging