It seems all the blogs and websites about affiliate marketing tell you that you can get rich quick and quit your day job by just becoming an affiliate. Sure, that sounds great, but the reality is very few people who start in the affiliate business actually are able to generate enough income from working online to quit their 9-5 job.
Leaving your job to start your home based business using internet affiliate marketing takes time, dedication and yes even money.
I am not writing this to tell you that it can’t be done, but I want you to understand that if really want to become an affiliate and make a living from the Internet you need to treat the affiliate programs as a business.
When I say to treat it like a business I mean that:
1. You have a plan -
Plan A
You create a website (or blog), sign-up for different affiliate programs, create the links (or place banners) on your site, sit back and the money will come rolling in.
Yes, that was your plan, but have you found out it doesn’t work? So you are right back at square one and either you quit or you will go to “Your Plan B”
Plan B
2. You make a goal.
You create a theme based website on something you are familiar with.
You work on the content for your website by using original content.
Look for affiliate programs that go with what the theme of your website is.
Sure all this sound easy. But it takes time, dedication and yes, again I say it, money.
If you are wanting to build a business using affiliate marketing a free web hosting plan may not be to your advantage. Sure, it sounds good, but you can be very limited to what you can do.
I see many newbies on the forums wanting to know what the best area is to get into to start making money fast. Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick-scheme.
The scammers out there will let you believe that and for only $9.95 they say they have all the information for you to start making THOUSANDS per day immediately and quit your day job forever. DON’T BELIEVE IT.
There are many forums online that can help you find the answers to your questions and help with getting you started.
Affiliate marketing can be a very rewarding experience but take your time to get to know the ins and outs.
The very first step you need to do to get into the marketing area is to do research. If you have a theme based website that you are thinking of starting see if there is a need for it.
Remember, you don’t need to be selling something on your site. Many informational websites do extremely well with generating income for the webmaster. Why is this? Because people are looking for answers and they hope to find it on the Internet.
Tags: Affiliate Marketing, beginner
My create a website tutorial site was created using the older Xsitepro version and since the older version has been good with SEO and creating the site with very little problem, I had my doubts about if I really needed to get it or not.
I purchased the upgrade.
It is very different from the other version but this is not a bad thing. I find that even though the old version was user friendly, this new version is even better. It has more bells and whistles to it and many of them I may never use and for me to list them all would take to much time to write out when you can just see the new features that this Xsitepro software program has.
I have been wanting to add an online store to my website, but with the older version it seemed very difficult so I just kept putting it off. Once I purchased the version 2.0 of Xsitepro, I found many of the new tools they added will help me build the online store with very little problem and am working on it as we speak.
Xsitepro has MOST of the tools you need to create a website. The tools you also must have if you decided to get Xsite pro will be web hosting (cost) and keyword research (cost). Even though the price tag seems hefty at $297.00 (limited time $197.00), I believe the cost is well worth.
But if you are a beginner and no absolutely nothing about building a web site, take a look at Site Build It as it has ALL the tools needed to build a great website.
Finally someone puts all the steps together for you to learn how to start a home based business to make money online. But is it worth the cost?
I purchased Ewen Chia’s Working from Home Special Report.
First thought is that it was just full of fluff and hype. But as I read the information I was blown away at how this ebook actually gives you the step-by-step instructions on how to work from home to make money online.
A part in the introduction states:
“In this short book, I’m going to focus on three quick and easy ways you can combine the first two stages so you can start making money on the Internet.”
This product not only delivers, but it over delivers to help you learn how to create, build, promote and succeed with your own business online.
Making money online is a very competitive business, but with this no-nonsense guide in hand, you can’t go wrong.
What sets this ebook from all the others?
His step-by-step guide has snapshots of pages and many other free websites to help you start your own business online, which is a breath of fresh air from others that are only creating ebooks to promote their other products.
These are tried and true methods to get you started earning money online even if your budget is ZERO.
Many products being sold online have a bunch of freebies included. This one does also, but what sets it apart is that the freebies included are a goldmine of information, not just some ebooks thrown in to make the product look good.
Don’t have a product to sell online? Are you an affiliate marketer and you are not generating any (or very little) income? Don’t worry. In one section, Ewen shows you step by step how you can create for free, package, promote and sell your own product.
In a nutshell
This paragraph below is a quick snippet that sums up this special report:
“You don’t have to be a technical genius, and you don’t have to know everything there is to know. You’ll learn as you go. You have enough information to start right now.”
This is very true of this report. You do have enough information to start earning money online within a very short time, but you have to take the time to learn it and put it into action.
Is worth the price?
Yes, without a doubt. I have purchased other products many times the amount of this report and they did not deliver even close to what this package does.
This ebook is affordable for the masses and teaches beginners the step-by-step way to work from home to make money online.
Deciding if you want to start blogging or create a website can be a very frustrating task. Both of these options do have pros and cons to them but how do you really know which way would be right for you.
Blogs
Blogging can take a lot of time. You need to create ongoing original content to keep traffic flow. Once you stop posting, your traffic will start to slack off as people look at blogs as being up-to-date with events and information, many do not read “older dated” blogs.
If you are wanting to start your own business at home or just looking to earn extra money online, having a blog as a “store” does not look very professional, nor does having free hosting for your blog.
The URL of your blog may be very long and difficult for someone to remember. mygreatstore.wordpress.com
Create a website
Once you create a web page for your site, you don’t have to continuously update it.
Owning a domain name looks for professional for a business. If are thinking of starting your own home business and can’t afford even basic hosting and a domain name, then you may want to look at other options for making money.
Easier to create hierarchical navigation (home page, tier one, tier two)
See more information about Blog vs Create a Website.
Tags: blog vs create a website
Many do not know there is a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org Even though you can create a blog (also called weblog) using either one of these publishing platforms, there is a huge difference between them and this post will give you a better understanding of the differences.
WordPress.com
Hosted by a third party and if you wanted your blog’s name to be thegreatestblog it would be thegreatestblog.wordpress.com.
If you use wordpress.com to host your blog, you will be very limited to the look of it. You are also not allowed to use any affiliate links or any advertising that you would get paid for (ie: Google Adsense, Widget Bucks, etc). If you do use affiliate links within your posts and you are reported, you could end up having your entire blog suspended.
Creating a blog using .com just for the sake of creating inbound links to your oun website (or another 3rd party site) is also against the Terms of Service (TOS).
To create your free blog using wordpress.com, you need to decide on the name and if it is available, create your account and you’ll be blogging within a few minutes.
You get many different layouts with the free blog. You can customize the look and feel by moving different sections around and even uploading your own header to the blog.
But you cannot upload any available plugins using wordpress.com. They do have a few already on your free blog to help with spam, but that is about all.
If you are looking to blog to make money online, then wordpress.com is not your answer.
WordPress.org
This is used with a paid web hosting plan. There are many affordable web hosting plans that have a quick installation of wordpress so you don’t need to download from the wordpress.org site and upload to your hosting plan.
Many are turning to creating blogs instead of websites as they are very easy to install on your hosting account.
When you purchase web hosting and install a wordpress blog, you have complete control of it. With hundreds of plugins available, you can make it search engine optimized, add Google Adsense, create a sitemap for the search engines to spider your site better, and much more.
You also have hundreds of themes available which you can customize with your own colors and how the blog will look on your site.
If you are on a limited budget, but want to create a blog to make money online, you can get web hosting and register a domain name for about $50 a year through GoDaddy. Their basic hosting package has plenty of space to get you started.
The search engines love inbound links but they want to see quality links and trying to get these can be a very frustrating task to many new webmasters.
This list will help you work on getting quality incoming links to your site.
1. Submit Articles - Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com or any of the other Article directories you can submit to. You may think that it is difficult to write your own articles to help with your link building campaign. It is not. Take an idea of something from your website and write a small article. Many article directories have a minimum of 200 words.
2. Forums – When you become a member of any forums, you can usually put a “signature” at the bottom of all your posts. Make sure you read the Terms of Service before you add your signature line so you don’t get booted out for spamming. Some forums will also let you use a direct affiliate link in your signature.
3. Value-Exchange Program – Sitsell has a free program you can sign-up for to help you find quality links for your website.
4. Social Marketing- There are hundreds of different types of social media/marketing sites in which you can use to create backlinks to your site. These sites are a great place to start with your link building campaigns. I found a site that steps you through the mass confusion on how Social Media can help you generate free traffic. Learn more about SEO20/20.
5. Reciprocal Links – You can search for other websites that would work well with yours and ask for a reciprocal link. If you are requesting this from a webmaster, make sure it is not a canned e-mail that you send out to a lot of webmasters at the same time. This one is very time consuming, but could lead you to be able to have high PR sites link to yours.
6. Pay for them – Yes, people are still paying for them. You could contact a webmaster and let them know you will pay them a certain amount monthly, yearly or just a one time fee for text links on their site.
7. Web Directories – DMOZ, Yahoo are a few that you could request to be added into their directory. Yahoo does not come cheap to be able to add a link to their directory and you may do better by using many of the free ones. Many of the directories will now ask for a reciprocal link in exchange to add you to their site. Sometimes this may not be to your advantage as you link is buried so far down in their pages, that the search engines may not find them for a long time (if ever)
8. Create or use existing blogs – Many people are creating blogs to help drive traffic. One of the best ones I have found it wordpress.com. If you do use wordpress.com, be advised that you can not use any affiliate links within the posts, but you can link to your own sites.
9. Squidoo Lens – Create a lens about one of the products you are an affiliate of. You also are able to use Amazon and such to add more money making ways. Squidoo puts up google ads on your page and if someone clicks on them you will earn a commission from it also.
10. Hubpages – Here is something else that you could create a page on to help you generate traffic. It is pretty much set up the same way as Squidoo.
11. Google pages – Google loves themselves. Just like Hubpages or squidoo, you can create a page on products or information to help with link building.
12. Craigslist – Many people overlook this type of place to build links. Sure many of the ads are for selling items, but you can find all kinds of ads. Take a look around and see if you could create an ad for your website to help generate more traffic.
13. Press Releases – A press release is just a notification that your site is online. The ones I have seen you have to pay for, so it may not work for you, but it does not hurt to look into it.
14. Video Submissions – Youtube is just one of the websites that you can create a video and upload it to generate traffic. I am sure you have noticed that when you are doing searches on the engines, there are many videos that show up in the top 20 results. Using video is becoming a huge marketing ploy for many website owners.
This, of course, is just a small list of the many different areas to help you get started on your link building campaign. Don’t think you have to tackle all these in just a short amount of time. You may have better results from one than another.
Need help with onsite SEO, take a look at web site search engine optimization page.
Tags: help, link building campaign, search engine optimization, tips
I have finally put my Site Build It website on paper to have a better understanding on building this site.
Main Theme (1st tier) – Chocolate Recipes
Items for the side menu navigation (2nd tier) will be: Benefits of chocolate, White chocolate recipes, sugar free recipes, low fat recipes, dark chocolate recipes and online store.
Then all the recipes and information will be under the heading in which they fall, this will become my 3rd tier, which most of the time will not be shown on a side navigational menu but a visitor will get to it by going to a 2nd tier page.
Example – If they arrive at the home page – any of the side navigational pages will get them to the 2nd tier and from the 2nd tier there will be links within my content to get them to the 3rd tier for even more information related to the second tier.
I am not an artist, but I believe this image will give you a better understanding.
The online store will be on the side navigational menu, but you will also be able to get to it within any of the 2nd or 3rd tiers on the site. The store will include gift baskets and baked goods (many affiliate programs for these items)
The Site Build It program uses the tiered effect to create a website. The search engines like this as all of the information below your main theme is related to your main theme.
Many beginners try to create a website about too many different products or information that does not relate to one another.
You must keep within the same theme for the site.
While doing research for this example of creating a site using SBI, not really sure why I thought about it, but I put into the search engine “chocolate diamonds”.
I found they really do exist, BUT I would not want to add this information to my website as my site is about Recipes. If I started a website about Diamonds then it would be a perfect fit but not for this site.
By using the Site Build it program, you can create a website easily. By using the Site Build It action guide, all of this (and more) is explained in much greater depth.
Take a look also at your competitors and see how they have their website built. I bet you will find something close to my drawing above. Also using your competitors site map will help you see what product or information is going under what page.
No matter what type of website builder you will be using to build your own site, by using the tiers as shown above it will help the search engines really understand what your site is about and help you generate targeted traffic.
Find out more information at aboutsbi.com
Tags: create a website, Site Build It program, Site Build It Review, website builder
For this SBI review – case study, I have decided to “create a website” about chocolate to help you understand a little of what goes on behind the scenes even though what I am showing you (and much, much more!) is in the action guide.
After you buy Site Build It, you will receive an e-mail explaining were to start.
Make sure you follow the Site Build It action guide so you will be able to understand what the process is of how to create a successful website.
Yes, start with the introduction and move through each of the “days”.
Even though it is labeled as Intro, Day 1, Day 2, those may actually only take you about One Day to get through, but don’t skip over any of it.
In Day 2 you will look for a theme for your website by using Niche Choose It.
Think about your passion! Let Niche Choose It help you decide, don’t skip over this part! If you get stuck, don’t worry, you will find your niche!
It is better to do it right the first time, then to go back later and have to redo.
Day 3 starts off explaining about Brainstorm It!, before you jump right into using it, make sure you read and understand.
One of the (many) helpful things is that, no matter what program you are in, you can look at the Site Build It action guide in case you are not sure of what is going on or you can go into the members only forum to see if other people ran into the same problem you may be having.
Here is the start of my sitebuiltit keyword research.
The action guide explains how to start your keyword research. I always start with the Vertical Brainstorm and then do singular OR Plural. The (WTB ) will have a number after it and it means how many seed word credits you have left, I have blanked out my searches that I have left.
When you begin with Site Build It, you have 25 to start out. These are included with your SBI package also.
Each time you do a seed word research, it will take one credit away. Once you get down to 0, you will have to purchase more credits, but don’t worry they are not expensive, so don’t skimp on using them as this is the basis of your website.
After finding it is a very competitive word, which I figured it would be, I found chocolate recipes would be better and there would be a lot to pick from.
Here is just a sample of some of the keywords that came up with in brainstorm it.
You are able to delete the keywords you don’t want or even add into the keywords. If you add keywords they do not take away from your credit for seed words.
If you find that the seed word you put in does not give you a lot of keywords, try a broader theme.
Brainstorm It! will warn you when you may have to broad of a theme, but sometimes that helps to find the niche area from you Niche Choose It.
This is just the start of the CTMP approach that Site Build It uses.
My main theme will be chocolate recipes, but what will each of my categories (navigational menu) be?
This I will take to paper and decide on.
See Site Build It Review Part Three
Tags: create a website, Site Build It program, Site Build It Review, website builder
Many people every day key in the words: Is Site Build It a Scam or SBI scam or something to that effect looking for negative remarks about it.
Most of the time when you hear about something that sounds to good to be true it usually is.
This site-hosting, site-marketing, and web site building all in one program is not better than sliced bread, but many believe it is close.
To let you know Site Build It is NOT a scam.
But is it a one-size-fits-all website builder program for everyone?
No, It does have it’s flaws and it is not for everyone. But there is not a perfect website building software on the market made for every single person.
Sure every company that has web design software toots their own horn and says they are the best website building program on the market, but it is not what the company says but what their customers say that is important.
And SBI (a huge majority of them) are extremely happy using it, as they not only learn how to create a website, but one that works.
Works for what? That is one thing that Sitesell (SBI is one of their products) states on their website “Build A Web Site That Works”. It works to help you create a successful website.
Your definition of successful could be having a lot of traffic or making money online (or however you want to define success).
But you still need to use your BAM (Brains and Motivation).
They give you the tools to help your Brains and Motivation create that website success.
The Site Build It action guide shows you the step by step process you would be using if you purchase the program, but I want people to see first hand on how it works and some of the things you can expect while building your new web site.
So even though I have already created two websites with it, I will go back at the beginning and let you see some of the process and how it works.
See Site Build It Review Part Two
Tags: create a website, Site Build It program, Site Build It Review, website builder
It is very difficult to start out trying to get at the top of the Search Engine Results Page using very competitive keywords (“money keywords”), as many of the websites that are on the first page have been working at it for years.
But if you target many of the long tail keywords for your main keyword (or sub keywords) within your website content, they can help you get targeted traffic. This targeted traffic are the people actually looking for your product or service, which can help build your business (and put money in your pocket).
Here is an example of how using a long tail keyword in your content can help you in the search engine results page.
Most people when they are doing searches using the search engines are not just using 2 and 3 words any more. Example Make Money, Create a Website, Diamond earrings, etc.
If they are using those searches, most of the time they are not looking to purchase a product or service but are just surfing around. Those could be your visitors, but what you want (and need if selling or promoting products) is the targeted traffic.
So if you really want to get into a very competitive niche area and you are set on that theme, find a few of the long tail of your main theme keyword and use those within the body of your text.
The below is taken from The Long Tail; Why it is Important for Small Businesses, an interview with Chris Anderson.
“Understand that The Top 10 searches at Google account for only a small minority of its searches. And half of their 200,000,000 searches per day are unique. That means that more than half of your traffic is unique… ”
Here is more information on “The Long Tail” and how it can help you.
You may think Hey, I’m just an affiliate, I don’t have a business. Sure you do. It is promoting the products of merchants and that is a HUGE business on the Internet.
Tags: generate site traffic, targeted traffic, use long tail keyword, website visitors