AffiliatesNeeded.Com What's New In Affiliate Marketing

If you have a home-based business, are you sure you are doing all you can do to ensure it is a success? The unfortunate reality is that the majority of people with a home-based business treat their business like a hobby rather than an actual business. This is a terrible mistake, as treating your business like a hobby will prevent you from achieving your fullest earning potential.

There are several mistakes that people make when starting a business that prevents it from becoming a full-fledged business. Namely, they fail to set their work hours, to establish goals and to expect success from their business.

Establishing a Schedule

Although it’s true that one of the benefit to starting a home-based business is the fact that you can establish your own work hours, it is still important for you to set aside certain chunks of time that are meant specifically for your business. This doesn’t mean you have to work the typically 9 to 5 work day, but creating a work schedule that suits your lifestyle will guarantee that you are spending the time needed to get your business started.

Determining Your Business Goals

Another downfall to many home businesses is failure to establish your goals. By creating short term and long term goals, you can more effectively monitor your business and make sure you are on the right track. The fact that home-based businesses are generally cheap to start can result in failure to take the business seriously. Simply because you have invested little or no money rather than one hundred thousand, it does not mean you shouldn’t create goals for your business or that you shouldn’t take your investment seriously.

Expecting Success

Since home-based businesses do not usually cost a whole lot to get started, it is also easy to have low expectations for its earning potential. The reality, however, is that at home businesses can generate 6 or 7 figure incomes when taken seriously.

The bottom line is that a business will only be as successful as you expect it to be. Therefore, if you only expect your business to be a minor success, that is all you will be able to achieve. Your mindset should be that your business endeavor is more than just an experiment. What you are starting is a business that will generate a substantial amount of income if you invest the time, money and energy it deserves to get off the ground

For more information on home businesses visit http://www.AffiliatesNeeded.com/ where they have been investigating home-based business ideas for years.

Build up your Backlinks with link juice!

The most important thing to know about link juice and authority sites is what they are:

Link Juice: The power of the page your backlink is from. The more weight, higher the quality, or higher PageRank of the page linking to you, the more ‘juice’ or power/weight is transferred to your page and site.

Authority Site: A website that is seen as trustworthy and influential by search engines, usually by the public as well.

Now here’s how the two relate to you:

While link juice issues make up a small percentage of backlink problems, authority site links create more trouble. But considering both involve the quality of the site responsible for your backlink; we thought we’d link the two together. Especially as authority sites often have considerable link juice, so a backlink from one could solve both problems.

Go to the Authorities

So as you search for more sites to request backlinks from, you want to make sure some of those sites are juiced up and authority sites.

You probably already know of the authority sites in your niche, but if you don’t, they’re easy to find. Just query the top keywords in your niche on Google or Bing and the lead site, the one that keeps popping up highest in the search results, is usually an authority site.

This is also a good way to find the sites in your niche with the most link juice. So make a note of the sites that rank highest in the search results, because those are the sites you want linking to your site.

Make your case

Now it can seem intimidating to try and link to an authority site. Authority sites are the go-to sites in your niche, and sometimes their influence spills over into the wider World Wide Web.

Most authority sites are constantly uploading fresh content; it’s one of the elements that makes them an authority. So offering to provide content can be a good way to get on the webmaster’s radar.

When you reach out to the authority site’s webmaster you will need to make a compelling case as to why the site should link to yours.
Make sure everything is spelled correctly, and the email sounds professional! A poorly written email could get you rejected before you’ve had a chance to perform.

Make sure your site is tight before you request a backlink. Your content needs to be clean and your links need to work. After all, you are inviting someone you want to do business with to check out your site, so you want to make sure you are ready to impress them.

You also need to be sure you know the authority site really well. If you are offering to provide content, suggest where it could be used. Does the site rely on article marketing? Facebook or Twitter? Try and come up with a unique way you can help them out. That way, it can seem like a backlink from the site will be the least they could do.

Don’t Give Up

And remember, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. While you shouldn’t email the webmaster on a weekly basis asking why he wouldn’t give you a link, if you don’t get a backlink, asking why (politely and professionally of course) is a good idea.

If they suggest any changes, and you decide to make those adjustments to your site, you can let them know when your site is revamped. You can also reach out again after you’ve added a section, launched a new product, and published a new series of reviews or started an email newsletter.

Just make sure your diligence doesn’t get mistaken for irritation, so keep any repeat requests to a few times a year, rather than a few times a month. Being persistent, but professional, is a good way to show commitment and dedication.

Now go get juiced up!

Part of the Perfect Foundation Series

Create a blueprint for your website by incorporating elements of other sites that you like.

Make It a Hybrid

Many great websites nowadays are hybrids, meaning they are not exclusively a blog or exclusively a review site; they take elements from blogs, review sites, affiliate sites, content sites, corporate sites, and other types of sites.

Take elements from these various types of sites to form your own unique combination for your site. Select a handful of the components below that best serve the purpose of your site:

• Marketplace (affiliate, meaning they are not products that you company owns)
• Selling your products: Electronic
• Selling your products: Physical
• Blog
• Content: linear text information
• Content: coursework
• Downloads: software, PDFs, audio, etc.
• Audio interviews
• Videos, such as YouTube videos
• Community sites
• Discussion boards
• Wiki
• Search engine (when people can use your site to search for sites on the Internet)
• Reviews
• News
• Image portfolios
• User login areas
• Maps
• Data storage
• Tools
• Games
• Humor
• Affiliate
• Corporate site aspects (very professional, attention to brand and detail and presenting your company best)
• Web portal (parts of your site that are dedicated to telling people where else on the internet they can go to learn about a topic)

Make your site a hybrid of other types of sites. Use whatever elements best create the user experience you want to provide.

Sketch It Out

Once you have written down which of these elements you want on your site, you can start to conceptualize and sketch out the structure you want for your site.

For example, let’s say you plan to build a site that gives information on the history of lawn flamingos. You want to monetize it through affiliate banner ads and textual ads, as well as by selling flamingos in a marketplace area of the site. That means you want a content area and a marketplace area.

However, you might choose not to include an email opt-in in this particular site because you do not have enough relevant information to fill a newsletter.

Other Resources

Next week we will discuss silo structure, a type of site architecture that is great for search engine optimization when you have a content site.

If you sell goods ON your site — meaning that you handle payment processing — then you will need a merchant account. That is an important topic that will be written about in more depth in a later blog post.

We at Affiliate Classroom teach you a lot about affiliate marketing because that is the quickest way to start making money online. Getting a taste of success quickly is essential for many people to commit to building a long-term Internet business.

Get instant access to Affiliate Classroom v2 by signing up for our $1 offer at http://my.affiliateclassroom.com/.

Add a comment below if you have advice that will help others who are starting websites.

The new FTC guidelines take effect TODAY. These new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission will affect practically all marketing, but especially affiliate marketing.

One important change is that affiliates cannot use testimonials the same way they used to.

Another big change is that affiliates must disclose “material” connections. This means you as an affiliate must make it clear to your readers that you make money from promoting something. This disclosure runs in stark contrast to the strategy many affiliates take of keeping hidden the fact that they are affiliates.

Those are just two of the many impacts these new FTC guidelines will have. Affiliates should know all the major implications of these new FTC guidelines. You can do so by reading through FTC Toolkit, which is available at https://www.sitecompliant.com/.

Lawyers and FTC professionals wrote this course to educate affiliates on the recent FTC guidelines. We at Lurn will get a commission if you purchase it through our link. We at Lurn have read through the more than 230 pages of pertinent analysis and documentation within the FTC Toolkit, and we found it very enlightening.

Note that we at Lurn are not lawyers. You should get information from lawyers on legal matters.

Make sure to go out and start researching today about these FTC guidelines.

Google always has something new just over the horizon. This could be Google’s latest innovation:

Google tests putting images into search ads and new pricing

According to the Internet Retailer website Google has a big plan. The writer says, “Google’s new Product Listing Ads program is being tested by several online retailers as a new way to get paid search ads featuring product images in Google.com search results. Retailers are charged only when they make a sale, not on each click.” Interesting, huh?

A spokesperson for Google said, “We’re trying to figure out what type of information is most useful to searchers on Google.com. At the same time the Product Listing Ads program offers retailers a way to advertise their products in the results of searches conducted on Google.com without having to engage in bidding for keywords.”

Holiday Web Shoppers Hit Social Networks

The results of a study that is of particular interest to affiliate marketers has been posted over on the eMarketer website. The writer says, “According to research conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation and Yesmail, 27% of online shoppers who plan to both research and buy holiday gifts online this year will look for ideas about what friends and family want on sites such as Facebook. And nearly one-half (45%) will use social networks to research items, compare prices and look for offers.” If you’re not already utilizing the power of social networks, you’d better get with the program.

Bing Climbs In Search Market Share

I like Bing! It hasn’t yet replaced Google for me but it’s gaining ground. I’m glad to know I’m not alone. According to Laurie Sullivan, posting on the Media Post Publications website, “Microsoft continued a steady uphill climb in gaining U.S. search market share in October, according to comScore. Analysts say the uptick is partly attributable to features in its search engine Bing, released earlier this year.”

Newspapers Hold Out Hope for Paid Models

What would the online world do without hardworking journalists to break the news for the rest of us? Just keep going, a recent study by the American Press Institute’s study reveals. We may not mind being left in the dark.

“News providers were more likely to say their content was “very valuable,” while readers tended to settle on “somewhat valuable.” Even bigger variation exists in perceptions of how easy it would be to replace online newspaper content, with readers more confident that they could live without the information currently provided.”

American Express targets web and mobile payments with $300 million deal

If you thought you were addicted to your mobile phone now, look out: AmEx is planning to make it a whole lot more fun. The credit company is planning to purchase Revolution Money, a young payment card network, and use it to develop new ways to help consumers pay online and through their mobile phones. Now you can do all your holiday shopping while you’re on the bus.

Select the Best Content Management System for Your New Website

Part 2 of the Perfect Foundation Series

Once you’ve bought a domain and hosting, you want to put some content on that domain instantly. Getting content onto your domain will get your foot in the door so you can build the site out into the distant future.

What Are Content Management Systems?

Put your site up online within minutes and be able to scale it out by using content management systems.

A content management system (CMS) is a program that you install on your domain to provide you with an online admin area where you can write and publish content to your websites.

Top Three CMSs: Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress

Three CMSs stand out among the multitude available to you are Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.

These three CMSs are open source, which means they’re free. And they’re popular, which means you will have strong communities to support you and provide you with tons of cool features. They all will give you the ability to publish to your domain instantly and build it out into a great-looking site that you can profit from.

The main strengths of each are the following: To make and publish a blog site as quickly as possible, go with WordPress. To make and publish a professional site as quickly as possible, go with Joomla. For long-term professional or community sites, go with Drupal.

Here’s a chart comparing their relative popularity based on the number of searches for them on Google:

Because these are open source platforms, you can download tons of add-ons created by programmers around the world for free. These add-ons make these platforms able to do almost anything you want, instantly and with minimal technical knowledge from you.

After you’ve installed one CMS, start inputting plug-ins for it. For Drupal go to http://drupalmodules.com/. For Joomla, go to http://extensions.joomla.org/. For WordPress go to the “Plugins” tab within your site’s WordPress admin area.

Plug-ins and Open Source

Even though plug-ins give you great control over making your site great, plug-ins are the most vulnerable part of your website. Read about the plug-ins you plan to use to make sure your site will be safe.

Overall, however, open source systems are in certain regards much more safe than commercial systems because everyone who uses the software can make it safer by sending corrections or “patches” to the CMS organization. The Obama administration website “whitehouse.gov” recently switched to Drupal citing safety as a key reason they made the switch to the open source CMS.

Installing Your CMS

You will have a GoDaddy domain and hosting account if you followed the recommendations of the first article in this series “Perfect Foundation.” You can install all of these programs within your GoDaddy account with no complicated decisions.

Download the free WordPress blog platform by signing into GoDaddy, clicking “Hosting,” then “Manage Account,” then “Your Applications,” then “Blogs,” then “WordPress,” and finally “Install Now.” Follow the same general steps to install Drupal and Joomla from within your GoDaddy account.

If you cannot use your hosting account to auto-install these CMS platforms, then follow these steps:

1. Go to joomla.org, wordpress.org, or drupal.org
2. Download the version you want of the CMS software
3. Unzip the file, read the instructions
4. Upload to your site via FTP — which was described in the first article in this series — and start the installation.

In Affiliate Classroom v2 you can read how to use CMS programs to quickly build revenue-generating websites. Get instant access by signing up for our $1 offer at http://my.affiliateclassroom.com/.

Marketing Spending Pays Off for Small Biz
The experts say you should be spending MORE on advertising now than you were before the recession hit. “Marketers have seen budgets slashed in the recession, but that can create a dilemma: “More marketing spending in a downturn can help a company come out ahead when the economy picks up again.” According to the “Small Business Marketing Health Check” report from Hurwitz & Associates, there is a correlation between small businesses that are doing well and greater marketing spending.”

Study: Consumers Look to Social Media for Discounts
Everybody is looking for a “good deal.” Douglas Quenqua, writing on the ClickZ blog, says, “Among those who have friended a brand on MySpace or Facebook, a third did it mainly to gain access to exclusive deals and discounts, according to a new report from Razorfish. The number was even higher — 44 percent — for people who follow a brand on Twitter.”

Google Forgiveness: Hard to Achieve?
Tony Pantano, writing on the WiseAff website, is blogging about his experience with Google. Tony says, “A few weeks ago I received an email from Google suggesting that 1 or more of the ads in an AdWords account were disapproved. In looking at that account, I discovered that they were showing disapprovals for ads that had been deleted.” He goes on to detail his Google “disapproval” saga. I think a lot of us have equally hair-raising stories to tell. The moral of this story is: God will forgive you…Google will NOT.

Utilizing Guests Posts: A Basic How To
Jonathan Volk invited oinkgasp of the WickedFire forums to make a guest post on his blog. Oinkgasp’s post is about “guest posts” and how to use them to your advantage. He says, “Extracting some excellent and unique content from another specialist to post on your blog is almost always a win-win situation for everyone involved. If your blog is even mildly popular, having a guest post or two is a great way to expand your reach and draw in new visitors. You may even find that the content discussed in the guest post brings in a significant enough of a reader base to expand upon further in future posts.”

French Believe Internet Is Most Trustworthy Source
A French survey ranked the Internet as the most trustworthy source of relevant advertising recently, with 29 percent support among respondents. Television ranked as number two. “The survey looked at different areas of the shopping process. Internet for example was also rated most highly as a medium providing information relevant to a purchase. The least effective measure is outdoor advertising and in store advertising.” Look out, Old Business; don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

Part 1 of Our “Perfect Foundation” Series

Master these quick tips for picking the perfect domain name for your site:

1. Make it relevant.

• Make sure you have industry-related words.
• Make sure your words explain clearly what your site is about. Before you can choose the words, you need to consider what value your site will provide to visitors and exactly who your target visitors are. Then think of the experience your site will give your visitors, and use words related to that.

2. Add SEO.

• You would gain SEO by having hyphens in your domain name since search engines will see the words more clearly. However, people find it much harder to remember the site name when you use hyphens. Whether or not to use hyphens is a decision you’ll need to make on a case-by-case basis. (Note from editor: Even though the idea that search engines see keywords clearer when the domain has hyphens comes straight from speaking with an SEO web designer last month, many commenters to this article convincingly argue against the use of hyphens in domains.)

3. Pick words pregnant with emotion.

• An easy way to find psychologically powerful words is to write nonstop for three entire minutes about your customers from their perspective. Step into the shoes of ONE SINGLE fictional customer — the person who is your target — and really get into what their life is like, what keeps them up at night, and what they hope to do with their life.
• That step will get you into the mind of your customer so you can stream out words that powerfully affect you (now in the customer mindset): If you’re in the mindset of your customer and your customer is a guy in his early twenties buying your get-out-of-debt ebook, you can easily think of powerful experiences like, “When I go out with friends to dinner, I always order the cheapest thing on the menu and even that is out of my price range,” which you can use to communicate to your market that you understand their situation.
• Keep a notebook with you at all times — write down any powerful words or phrases that speak directly to your customer and their lives.

4. Make it memorable.

• Make it short (obviously). One way to keep your site name short is to find a phonetic spelling of a word or words related to your product. “Compaq” for example communicates “compact” and is phonetically spelled. It probably reduced the price of the domain name since it created a new word.
• Consider alliteration, as in the names Google and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Now go to Godaddy.com to look up and buy domains and hosting. If this is your first domain, just buy the domain and the basic hosting. Don’t worry about anything else such as concealing your identity as the site owner.

Next week, we’ll get into choosing the best content management system for your website. See you then!

Promotional: We also have a course on domain name selection within Affiliate Classroom 2 (ACV2), which you can try for 10 days for only a dollar — and then you will start getting the regular price of $97/mo. — at http://v2.affiliateclassroom.com.