These affiliate programs are in no certain order, I’m adding them as they come to me.

Ebay

There is so many ways to make money with ebay, it’s almost unreal. I’m not aware of another company with as many ways to make money with their affiliate program like you can with Ebay. Not even Amazon has as many ways. Sure, there’s BANS, but before BANS even came along, many of us were making good coin with the eBay affiliate program. Now there are programs like PHPBay where you can insert ebay auctions into blogs or hard code them into any website. You can also use all the tools on the ebay publisher to customize the way you want to present ebay auctions. The different ways you can make money from Ebay is staggering. If you don’t have an account already, get one and familiarize yourself with their affiliate marketing tools.

Clickbank

Love them or hate them, the bottom line is you can make a lot of money with ClickBank. You simply have to learn to choose a product that others want and then create a site to sell this one product. The biggest mistake I see many ClickBank beginners make is they try and sell everything ClickBank has with just a few pages on a copied website. It ain’t gonna happen folks! Choose a product that you’ve used and one you like. Create a main website or blog about this one product and then build a network of smaller websites and blogs to support the main one, build links to the main site by article marketing, blog commenting on DoFollow blogs and submit the post from all your blogs to the Social Media crowd (for backlinks). Use places such as Mixx, HubPages, Squidoo and Propeller to create pages or submit articles about your one specific product. Use good quality content (with long articles that are keyword optimized) to build you main website and the traffic will come. I know it sounds like a lot of work and it is. I didn’t say this would be a list of get rich quick top affiliate programs!

AdSense

Yeah, I know technically that adsense is not an affiliate program, but it’s still one of the easiest, if not THE easiest way to make money online.

All you have to do is pick a niche that you know something about, write good articles about every aspect of this niche, throw a 336×228 ad block at the top and a 120 or 160 adsense block in the sidebar and sit back and rake in the money. The more content and traffic you have, the more money you make. It’s really that simple!

I typically spend 20% of my time creating content and the other 80% promoting my sites, which basically means building links to them. Once you have your site SEO optimized, the most important next step is to build links, build links and then build some more links back to your site!

Many so called “guru’s” tend to make AdSense harder than it is. Some of this is because they’re trying to sell you their “Get rich quick with adsense” ebook, some of it is because they just don’t know any better.

Look people, don’t over think adsense, it’s not that hard!

Independent Affiliate Programs

Some of the biggest money being made on the Internet isn’t through the Affiliate Networks like Commission Junction or ShareASale. It’s being made through independent affiliate programs. Independent affiliate programs are in-house programs that a Merchant runs their self.

Generally, independent affiliate programs pay a higher commission since some of their money doesn’t have to go to affiliate networks. If you can drive a lot of niche specific traffic your favorite independent affiliate program, you can expect to make more than through the affiliate networks.

There are independent affiliate programs for nearly every sector of the Internet. One I like for a couple of my Outdoor related websites is GunsAmerica. Yeah, you can make money selling guns on the Internet. That’s pretty sweet! You can be your own Internet gun runner! LOL

Sometimes it takes a little more to find these independent programs, you’ll just have to search harder. Many Wedding Affiliate Programs are independent and generally pay more than their affiliate network competition. A lot of Webhosting companies have both independent affiliate programs as well as belonging to an affiliate network. Compare the payouts for each program and you’ll see most pay out more on their in-house programs.

Run Your Own Affiliate Program

Have you ever wished you had a lot of affiliate marketers pushing your product? Well you can!

When you run your own affiliate program, you split the money with the affiliates and that’s it. No one else has their hands sticking out.

This is generally the most lucrative for you plus it leaves you free to keep producing other services or products to sell.

“But I don’t have a product or service to sell” you say.

Fear not, there are places where you can have products made for you or you can buy products with Master Resell Rights, brand them with your name and then resell them under your own affiliate network.

Have you ever wondered how the big name Guru’s are able to turn out ebook after ebook or software program after software program? Simple. The hire it done.

Many use the services of eLance or RentACoder. Others have writers or developers at their fingertips. All it takes is a small investment to have someone write you a professional ebook or software program. You then can market it yourself and keep all the profits or split it with your affiliates.

Another easier and cheaper way is to buy products or services with Master Resell Rights. You can find many products and services with Master Resell Rights at websites like BestChoiceForEbooks. Once you find a product or service you like, buy it and brand it with you own name and begin marketing it.

What? How Come I Didn’t Mention Amazon.Com?

I know many of you may be wondering why I didn’t list Amazon.com in this Top Affiliate Program post.

It’s simple really.

Although I make some coin from Amazon.com as do others, it doesn’t convert as well as other programs in many instances. Every website I’ve had plus those of many affiliate marketers I know that run Amazon, have higher conversions with other affiliate programs. It takes a load of traffic to make Amazon work and many people starting out do not have the hoards of traffic needed to make Amazon pay off. And if you do have the traffic, then chances are there’s a higher paying affiliate program you could be using. Heck, even AdSense generally pays off more than Amazon.

Okay, so this is your top affiliate programs. Maybe not what you wanted to see. I know many of you wanted specific affiliate programs. But the truth is, nearly any affiliate program from the affiliate networks can be a top affiliate program if you have passion for it, believe in the product or service and are able to drive targeted traffic to your site. That’s the real “secret” behind affiliate marketing. It’s a proven fact that you’ll be able to sell a product better if you use it and love it!

I’m constantly amazed at people who are searching for the latest hot niche to jump into. Many times it’s right in their own hometown or region and they never realize it until someone else takes it. If it’s niche blogging you’re looking for, look no further than your home town!

Why Local Blogging Is HOT

The reason local blogging is so hot and getting hotter right now is the same reason search engines blasted off at their beginning.

People want information and they want it yesterday.

They also prefer that information come from a trusted source. And who not to trust but a knowledgeable blogger who blogs about their community. Surely there aren’t many people with more knowledge than this guy/gal who blogs about their town?

Local bloggers can connect with local searchers without ever meeting them. Take restaurant reviews for example. Have you ever read a review you agreed with? Perhaps it was a good review of Bob’s Burgers on the out skirts of town. You love Bob’s Burgers and you agree with the review. You’ve instantly judged that writer in your mind.

“Gosh, that reviewer is so smart, everyone loves Bob’s Burgers”

or

“What a dweeb that reviewer is, everyone knows Bob’s Burgers uses roadkill in their meat”

Either way, you’ve made a judgement about the character of the reviewer. If it was a good judgement, you’ll definately listen a little closer the next time the review something. 

Once you have a captive audience, the World gets a little easier!

How to Monetize Local Niches

The sky is nearly the limit on how you choose to set up your blog on your local community. I’ve seen some blogs that had forums and business directories while others just blog on local events and people. It’s up to you how far you want to go.

I would start out by using a Magazine or News type blog theme. These use multiple subjects on the front page. The Revolution News theme by Brian Gardner would be an excellent choice.

How you choose to monetize your local blog is also up to you. Many simply use Adsense, which works well for local Internet surfers. However, by including a Jobs section and a Hotels or Travel section you could use Affiliate Programs from sources like www.ian.com and Job-O-Matic.

Your largest source of income though will likely be from local advertisers. You’ll probably have to sell some adspace on your blog to begin with, but after a few months if you continue to grow, the advertisers will be seeking you out.

Start by making a list of some of the top business’s in your area. You then send them all a sales letter along with a business card telling them about your blog and how they could increase business by advertising on it. Don’t send EMAIL!

Paid reviews can also be a huge money maker for local bloggers. Just make sure you do honest reviews about products or services you actually own or have used. If you continually post favorable reviews to places that everyone knows is a dump, you’ll soon loose your trustworthiness with the local readers. Tell the advertisers up front that there is no guarantee of a good review simply because they paid to have one.

Promoting your local blogis no different than promoting any other blog. Until people find your blog and start backlinking and sharing it with others, promote it just like your would any other website. Article marketing, submitting post to all the Social Media sites, directory submissions and so on. Make sure you use local keywords for your anchor text and you’ll soon see traffic come trickling in. Do you job well and you’ll see this trickle turn into a raging river of local traffic!

But I Live In A Small Town, There’s No One To Read My Blog!

I’ve heard this argument before. I’ve seen blogs covering towns with just 10,000 people do very well.

If you live in a small town, then widen out the scope of your blog. Blog about your County or Region. Don’t go getting to large though or you’ll risk having a blog that is vague and hard to rank for any specific keyword. Remember, this is a niche! Start off with your town and work your way out.

In large Metro areas, you may want to just take a section of the city and blog about it. I know a local blogger that only talks about her home life and the downtown area where she lives. She has made herself the “go to” person when it comes to events or other happenings downtown. Local advertisers can’t get enough of her site.

Trying to blog about the entire city of Los Angeles would be as much of a disaster as trying to blog about California. Remember, think small and connect with the people in your local area. This is why local blogging is such a hot niche and why advertisers will pay top dollar!

I don’t think the average affiliate marketer could find anything easier or quicker to include relevant products in their WordPress blogs.

For those of you who haven’t heard about PopShops or who don’t now what they do, PopShops offers a service that makes it quick and easy to include products into websites and blogs.

PopShops works with many different Affiliate Networks. From what I can tell, they work with Commission Junction, ShareASale, LinkConnector, LinkShare, Pepperjam Network, Performics, Bridalux and several Independent programs.

The WordPress plugin for PopShops installs like any other Plugin. You upload it to your blog files, go into your control panel and activate it. Then on your Editor there will be a logo that you can click to add products to your blog post.

In a nutshell, here’s how it works.

Let’s say you have a blog about Tech Gadgets. Obviously you’ll probably review all the new cool gadgets. Let’s say you’re reviewing a new WiFi card. Once you write the blog post, you can then search PopShops by typing in the brand or model of the WiFi card. If there are merchants who sell this card, they will appear to the left. You then select which merchant or merchants you want and click. (click on the Thumbnail to see the example)

Notice that to the left of the Merchants name it there will be a small logo that will tell you which Affiliate Network the Merchant is with. This is important as some Merchants are with several Affiliate Networks.

You can add as many or few items as you want, I generally stick to only using one product per blog post.

Make sure you’ve signed up for each Affiliate Network that you choose. It would be a shame to not get paid!

Another nice feature of this WordPress Plugin for PopShops is that it is highly customizable. It allows you to put the products in the sidebar, on a Post page, footer, satic pages or under a post. You have the power to layout your blog the way you want with only the products you want!

This plugin will help many affiliate marketers, especially beginners, set up profitable blogs in no time.

Here’s more information from PopShops about the WordPress Plugin if you’re interested.

The Plugin is free to use for anyone having a PopShops account, yes, even you PopShops users with the free account. There’s no reason not to give this PlugIn a try!

The inspiration for this method came one day when I asked myself “Self, I wonder what would happen if I created a product page from a big Merchant with one item on it and threw a bunch of relevant anchor text links at it?” To which myself replied “Well Don, I don’t know. Let’s try it and see what happens.” (Yeah, I have these little chats with myself all the time.)

In order to make this technique work, and it doesn’t work 100% of the time, you’ll need two basic things.

1. An affiliate account with a merchant that allows you create single product pages. The merchant must be an authority site such as Amazon.
2. A method to generate a good number of relevant links to your page with anchor text. You can use TNX, LinkVana, BacklinkSolutions or any number of other link networks out there. Article marketing is also a great way to generate the needed backlinks if you can mass produce some articles.

What we’re going to do here is use the Merchants authority site against itself to make our single product page outrank the main authority site’s page. Kinda underhanded but hey, all’s fair in love and affiliate marketing!

What you need to do is choose a product from your Merchant that is fairly new. This will reduce competition and increase your chances of getting the top SERPS rankings fairly quickly.

Let’s say you had created a single product page for the MacBook Air when it first came out. You would then take your single product page on the MacBook Air and create targeted backlinks to it.

It’s important that you do not use the same anchor text over and over. Change it up. Your keywords for anchor text would be something like.

• MacBook Air
• MacBook Air Review
• MacBook Air Reviews
• Buy MacBook Air
• MacBook Air vs IBM ThinkPad
• Apple MacBook Air

This way, you can still use the Merchants authority to rank well and avoid tipping Google off to what you’re doing. If you only use one or two targeted anchor text, Google could flag this as Googlebombing. That wouldn’t be good.

Another advantage to using a Merchant that has an authority site is that you can build a large amount of links to your product page without waking Google up. If you were to build massive amounts of links to a new site about the MacBook Air, they’d probably slam you pretty hard. It’s not natural to gain tons of new links to new sites and Google has this figured out now. (don’t ask me how I know ) However, Google is used to seeing a huge amounts of links going to these authority sites so you don’t alert them when you send all your targeted anchor links to your product page.

As I said earlier. This technique doesn’t always work 100% of the time, but it works pretty damn often for me. The trick is too be on the watch for new products coming down the pipe and be capable of producing quality one-way backlinks to your page.

In the future, I’ll try and post more articles on how to make money online without a website since I know a some of you are just starting out and do not have websites.

It has always been said that Internet users have short attention spans. That’s still true for the most part.

When I first started, the rule was the post should be between 250 and 500 words. I naturally write long articles as it is. So I was getting comments and email saying my post were too long. So I started trying to keep them around 500 words. That was hard for me to do!

Here are a few reasons why you should be writing long blog post:

• If you’re only interested in attracting Social traffic, stick to making those short, concise post. Most Social readers have shorter attention spans than a 3 year old, especially if they come from Digg.
• If on the other hand, you want your post to rank high in Google SERPS and bring in loads of targeted organic search traffic, you’re more likely to do it with longer keyword optimized post than shorter ones.
• You’ll naturally have more long tail keywords in your long blog post. Long tail keywords bring in more targeted organic traffic to your site.
• Looking at it from Google’s perspective, which post is more informative? A short one or long post? Google is in the business of delivering targeted relevant information to Internet searchers. Google’s algorithym searches for the most relevant and informative information on the Internet when you enter a search into the the search box. So which post do you think it will return higher in the SERPS? A 250 word post about ‘Mens Hair Loss’ or a 1400 word article?
• If you run a content rich site with Adsense, you can increase your CTR with longer post and articles. Why? Because you’ll stand a better chance of the reader losing interest and clicking on an Adsense ad. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty underhanded Adsense trick hunh? But it works
• You may lose a few RSS subscribers who do not like long post, but you’ll also gain a few more who feel long post are more informative and detailed. They’ll see you as a detailed authority on the subject.

What constitutes a long post?

The way I look at it is, anything over 1000 words is a long post. I know some who say 700 to 800 words is a long post, but a 1000+ word blog post is much better, especially if it’s keyword optimized.

Long post are also more detailed. Instead of making some short-to-the-point sentences, you can take your time and go into more details with your post.

Tips For Optimizing Your Blog for Long Post

If you’re worried about losing your RSS subscribers to long post, here are a few tips that will help you keep them interested and to optimize your long post.

• Use the H3 tag to break up your long post into sections. Properly constructed H3 headings also add SEO benefits to your long post.
• Use bullets and numbers to break up list or for making points
• Use blockquotes when quoting others or for highlighting a resource
• Use Bold, Italics and Colored Text to get your point across and to break up your long post.
• Not all of your long post have to be a War and Peace novels. Just the really important post you want to expand on and the ones you want top rankings for. It’s okay to mix short post with long post. I’ve done this same thing here on AffiliateWatcher.Com

Still not convinced that long Blog post are better?

Take a look at the thumbnail picture below (click it to enlarge the picture). It’s a screenshot I did of a search for “How To Monetize A Blog With Adsense.” I posted it Monday morning and when I got home that afternoon, I was sitting at the #2 spot for that keyword term.

I jumped over some pretty big names to get to the #2 spot with nothing more than a 1400 word post about how to monetize a blog with Adsense. The only reason the B2evolution network outranks my post with their little generic post is because they have more backlinks to that page. It would be rather easy to outrank them and take that #1 spot away with fewer backlinks because my post has more weight than theirs.

Fortunately for me, this happens a lot with my long blog post. Whether or not it’s on this blog or one of my other ones. Long optimized blog post rank better! I no longer ask; how long a blog post should be, I just start writing and stop when I’m done!

These illusions are quickly shattered when they see their Adsense accounts with .05 and .20 cents per click and a CTR of 1%. It doesn’t take the newbie blogger long to realize that their dream of living of off Adsense income isn’t a reality.

Is Adsense Still a Good Choice For Monetizing Blogs?

The quick and easy answer is Yes and No. In order for Adsense to be a viable option to monetize a blog, you need large amounts of traffic. And not any old traffic will work!

Many bloggers love to talk about Social Media and they spend a good amount of time writing articles and submitting them to the popular Social Networks like Digg and StumbleUpon in order to bring the masses of Social Networkers to their site. While this may increase traffic to a blog, it rarely translates into clicks on their Adsense ads.

Why Social Traffic Isn’t Good For Adsense

If you’re one of these bloggers who’s chasing traffic from Social sites and still wondering why your Adsense account is empty, listen up, I’m fixing to let you in on a little secret.

Social traffic doesn’t convert for squat. Of course, you already knew that didn’t you!

Why?

Because people who use the Social networks are pretty ‘Net savvy and they don’t click ads. They read blogs more for entertainment purposes than they do for the informational value. Sure, they may read a post about whether or not Adsense is still a good choice for monetizing blogs, but if there’s an Ad block on how to monetize a blog with Adsense next to the post, they aren’t likely to click on it.

Another reason Adsense is a poor choice for Social blogs is because the Click Through Rate (CTR) will be in the dumps. This will cause  your Adsense ads to be Smart Priced.

This is how it works. Google Adsense works of off the principle that a targeted Internet searcher is more valuable to the advertisers than a browser just clicking around the Internet.

So when your Social Network browser comes to your site, Google does not consider this a targeted user. If the advertiser is paying $2 per click, and a Social Network user comes to your Social blog about making money on the Internet and actually does click on a Adsense ad, you’ll receive a lower per click price than if that user had went to Google and typed in “how to make money online” and came to your blog and clicked an Adsense ad about ‘how to make money online’. Google considers this targeted traffic and will pay you the most for this type of Internet users. 

Why Organic Traffic Pays Off With Adsense

Stop and think about this one for a minute.  When an Internet user is searching for some knowledge, they want it and they want it yesterday! Many of us will not stop searching the Internet until we find the useful information we need. We’ll click on this or that, we’re frantic searchers and we need that information!

Let’s say you’re bills are piling up because gas is at $4 a gallon and food prices are skyrocketing. You need some debt relief. So you go on over to Google and type in ‘debt relief’. You then click on the first result that promises you quick and painless debt relief. After you browse the site for a few minutes, you realize this site can not answer your questions and you’ll have to go elsewhere. There’s an Adsense ad block to the upper left with an add about instant debt relief. Hmmm, that’s just what you need right now, instant debt relief.

What do you do?

Click the Adsense ad promising instant debt relief or hit the back button a half dozen times to get back to the Google SERPS page?

Yeah, me too. I’ll hit the Adsense link every time if it will lead me to what I’m looking for.

And you know what?

The Webmaster or blog owner gets the maximum payout for your click because you found his site by searching for the term ‘debt relief’.

If I had gone to his site looking for ‘Ways To Make Money Online”and then clicked the same ad, chances are good he would not have received the maximum payout for that click. That’s why you’ll see some of your Adsense ads paying out .20 cents for one click and the next it gives you $2. It’s all about how the Internet user got to your site.

So What Type Of Blogs Are Best For Adsense?

It’s not really what type of blog is best for Adsense, the question should be “What type of traffic is best for Adsense?”

And that question is an easy one to answer. It’s organic search traffic. Plain and simple.

Now having said that, you’ll see that many of the so called Social media blogs do not rank well for anything of value.

Ever see John Chow or some of the other popular social bloggers rank in the top 10 for terms like “how to make money with Adsense?”No, you don’t. That’s one of the biggest reasons you don’t see Adsense on their sites. They can’t bring in the organic search traffic they need to convert browsers into ad clickers and their social traffic sure as hell won’t click the ads. So they end up with a crappy CTR and get Smart Priced. The few clicks they do get, Adsense pays out a few cents here and there. Then the Social bloggers will proclaim to the masses about how Adsense doesn’t work any longer!

Adsense Can Be a Steady Income Producer For Blogs and Websites That Pull In Organic Traffic

This is the real secret to Adsense and how to make it pay the most for every click. If you have a blog or website that ranks well for a number of keywords and your pages are optimized to bring in targeted search traffic, you’ll do well with Adsense.

Your blog doesn’t have to be a custom made Wordpress blog nor does it have to be fancy. In fact, you can start with one of these Adsense optimized themes. It does have to be SEO optimized with lots of backlinks to rank well for your keywords.

Forget about the Social traffic and getting your post Dugg and Stumbled. Sure, it’s nice to see all that traffic, but why bother when you know it’s not going to convert plus it’s going to ruin your CTR. And to top it off, it will get you Smart Priced with Google Adsense.

Go after the money. And in this case, the money is in ranking well for your keywords and driving crowds of targeted organic search traffic to your blog or website.

Your blog or website should cover one subject, such as ‘debt relief’. Don’t try to make a blog or website cover everything under the sun. Each page of your website should have an article or post covering one keyword.

For example, if you had a blog over the main keyword of ‘debt relief’, then you’d probably want your interior pages targeting keywords such as ‘bankruptcy’, ‘debt consolidation’, ‘how to pay off your bills early’ or ‘debt consolidation loans’.

While you’re at it, make sure your blog or website is optimized for Adsense. Don’t cover every page in Adsense ads. The top paying ad block is normally a 350 block at the top. You might also want a Tower block in the sidebar, but that’s where I’d stop.

In the past, I put those little Adsense link blocks on my sites, but have always done poorly with them. I’d rather someone click on one of the Adsense ads in the body so I’ll make more money per click. That’s why I’ve started putting only two Adsense ads on my content sites. More ads normally dilute your per click payout.

To wrap this up, if you want to make money with Adsense, forget about those cool social blogs, go with a keyword targeted blog or website. SEO optimize it, build backlinks to make it rank well for your chosen keywords and then sit back and watch the Adsense money roll in. You can still monetize a blog with AdSense, you just have to go about it wisely.

Everyone knows that June is the prime month for Weddings. That means if you haven’t already started monetizing your site for Wedding affiliate programs, you need to start…today!

The Wedding industry is a monster. It has so many verticals, the ways to make money off of them are nearly endless. But be warned, this is one competitive industry! There are some large websites out there that will be hard to compete against.

You’ll find Wedding affiliate programs for the obvious things like Wedding Favors, Tuxedo’s and Wedding Dresses but you’ll also find affiliate programs for everything from workout programs, wedding planning, wedding websites to Honeymoon trips.

Before we talk about tactics, let’s look at a few of the big players in the Wedding Affiliate Program game.

Beau-coup - Beau-coup claims to be the leading online retailer of unique Wedding and Bridal Favors. They have a 90 day cookie and a 10% commission on each sale. You can find them at ShareASale.

One of the things I really like about Beau-Coup is that they offer free shipping on orders of $150 or more. Free Shipping really gets people to buy stuff they normally wouldn’t.

American Bridal Accessories - ABA claims to over the most diverse product line of wedding accessories. They are paired with the LinkConnector Affiliate Network. ABA offers 10% commission on products that your traffic buys. They also have a minimum payout of $25.

One thing I found odd about American Bridal Accessories is that they exclude all camera sales by their affiliates. If you feel cameras would be a strong part of your affiliate commissions, you may want to look at another merchant.

My Wedding Favors - MWF pays a 12% commission and has a 120 day tracking cooking. I really like these long tracking cookies! PLUS, unlike some other affiliate programs, you get paid every time your customer reorders in that 120 day time period, not just once! This could really add some dough to your bottom line.

My Wedding Favors also offers data feeds. This will be very helpful if you want to set up a Wedding Favor type shop or just add another niche to your already existing store. They offer to send your money to you through the mail or direct deposit into your checking account.

You can find MWF in the CJ, ShareASale and AvantLink affiliate networks.

Bliss Weddings Market - BWM offers a 10% sales commission and a 90 day tracking cookie. BWM also offers its affiliate data feeds and SEO optimized dynamic tools.

Bliss Weddings Market carries a full line of Wedding Accessories and Gifts, many of them unique. You can find Bliss Weddings Market at the AvantLink affiliate network.

HansonEllis Bridal Gifts - HansonEllis is in CJ and AffiliateFuture affiliate networks. They pay 10% on orders and have a 120 day cookie. They were formerly known as OnlineFavors.com.

One thing I especially like about this company is all the publicity that it gets. It was voted by Brides Magazine as one of the best Wedding websites plus they’ve been feature on NBC’s Today show and in several newspapers and magazines. This builds brand awareness and can be the difference between someone placing a big order through your site or moving on to another.

Like I said earlier, there are tons of Wedding related companies with affiliate programs and they’re easy to find on Google.

Strategies To Optimize Your Site for a Wedding Affiliate Program

You don’t have to have a website or blog dedicated totally to Weddings to take advantage of these Wedding affiliate programs. In fact, I know a lady who makes over 1k a month off of Wedding affiliate programs and she has a diary type blog. Whenever she mentions something about a wedding in one of her blog post, she inserts links to her merchant. She blogs about Women’s issues so her blog is just right for this niche.

Another friend of mine has a Sports blog. Again, every-time he mentions a buddy of his getting married, he sends his readers to a Wedding merchant. Each year he has a post about gifts for Men to give to the Newlyweds. His readers love it.

You can monetize this Niche with just about any type of blog or website you run. You just need to think outside the box!

Here are a few ideas for monetizing this Niche.

• Follow the common practice of writing an article on a Wedding topic, making sure you SEO optimize the page, publish it and then start building up relevent links to it with targeted anchor text.
• You could also use this article as a landing page and then send traffic to it by using a PPC campaign like Adwords.
• Browse forums related to Women’s Issues and drop post and/or links back to your article. Just don’t be spammy about it. Be helpful and you’ll see some substantial traffic.
• Don’t try to compete with the big boys. Select longtail keywords and optimize your pages for those. If you’re doing PPC, then target the lesser keywords. They’ll be cheaper. For example, if you targeted the keyword “Wedding Favors”, you’ll pay around $2.30 per click currently. However, if you targeted “Wedding Invites”, you’ll pay around 80 cents per click. The longer the search phrases become, the cheaper they are.
• Don’t forget about Adsense. If you’re a lazy ass affiliate marketer (I’m guilty of that at times ) and just want to score some big Adsense clicks, you could go to DigitalPoint or other places and have someone write you a 1000 word article on a specific wedding product or service. I’d expect to pay $10 or so for that article. Throw it up on your site, optimize it for Adsense and then promote the hell out of it. Could be some of the easiest money you’ll make if you rank well!

The point is to get you thinking outside the box and taking advantage of these seasonal opportunities to boost your cash flow. Who knows, maybe you can turn it into a whole new business. After all, like I said before, there’s plenty of Wedding affiliate programs to go around!

Yo Dawg, Check it Out. 5 Lessons Affiliate Marketers Can Learn From American Idol.

1. No matter how bad things seem, continue to persevere. American Idol Asia’h Epperson had every right to bow out of the competition when her father died two days before she was to audition. But Asia’h Epperson didn’t go back home. She staid put and won a trip to Hollywood.
2. No matter how big a Star you are, you can still make mistakes. Paula Abdul seems to put her foot in her mouth several times a season. Or she just shows up drunk. Doesn’t matter, you’d think she’d learn from her lessons after all this time, but apparently not. I’ve been doing Affiliate Marketing since the late 90’s. I look back in time to the big names on the Internet and have to wonder where they are now. Some couldn’t recover from huge mistakes while others followed rule #1.
3. Now matter how well the Powers-That-Be like you, if Consumers don’t like what you have to sell, you’re out. Carly Smithson was the obvious American Idol favorite. You could tell by how the Judges, especially Simon, kept carrying on about her. Didn’t help her in the end though, the audience decided to send her home. You can be the biggest, baddest Super Affiliate out there but if you peddle junk, you’ll soon find yourself without income.
4. Even if you do everything right, you can still lose if you can’t convert traffic into buyers. I think most everyone was shocked when Michael Johns was sent home. Heck, I even liked his singing. For some reason, he couldn’t convert watchers into callers. The same can be said for Affiliate marketers. You can be selling the best product on the market at the best price, but if you can’t convert crowds into buyers, you might as well be trying to sell ice cubes to Eskimos.
5. Being able to connect with your Customers is more important than choosing the right product. How many times have you heard the American Idol judges tell one of the contestants that they chose the wrong song? Yet, that person continues on while someone who supposedly had the right song choice was sent home? Affiliate marketing is in many ways the same. A good affiliate marketer can push a so-so product every now and then and make money. His customers will trust him/her and will buy from them again and again until they prove untrustworthy.

I thought about adding a sixth lesson, and using the saying that Black Hat techniques only produce have short term results and comparing it to Sanjiya Malakar’s little brush with fame last year. It was no secret that Sanjiya had the market cornered on teenage girls and call centers in India in last years American Idol competition. But, that wouldn’t make for a good list now would it?

So there you go. 5 quick and to the point lessons an affiliate marketer can learn from American Idol.

It never occurred to me before then that I’ve been using a Article Rewriting program that turns PLR articles or other articles into quality written articles in about 15 minutes. I assumed everyone else knew about this program, but apparently not!

I’ve tried a lot of article rewriting software before I ran across WordFlood.

This is the first article rewriting software that I found that can take a ordinary PLR Article and spin it into a well written quality article in no time at all.

Who Needs An Article Rewriter?

Anyone who runs multiple blogs or websites and needs quality content can use a quality article rewriter.

Coming up with quality content for my blogs and websites has always been a problem for me. I can rewrite most PLR articles myself in about 30 minutes. That is, rewrite them so they sound good and not a bunch of garbled jargon. 30 minutes isn’t much, but I need about 20 to 40 articles per week and that time adds up.

I thought about hiring a rewriter, but many charge $5 or more for a 500 word article. If I only needed a few articles that might work, but when I need 20 to 40 a week, that can add up to a lot of commission money!

I could tell you that I like WordFlood because it makes rewriting a PLR article a snap. Or that it has many other useful features like keeping a running tab on the Keyword Density of the article your writing.

It also tells you what percentage your current article has been changed from the original. This is helpful to help prevent you from turning out duplicate content.

I will tell you though, unlike a lot of programs out there, WordFlood will let you try the program for 14 days, Free. I rewrote a lot of PLR articles in my free 14 day trial! Of course, after a few days of turning out quality content for my blogs, I knew I would buy it because it saves me so much time and money.

However, the best way to show you how easy WordFlood is to use, is to show you this Video. The video will explain it a lot better than I can! (Note: there’s no sound with the video, so don’t try and adjust your sound!) If you can’t see the Video, click on the link and it will take you to it.

Rewrite More Than PLR Articles

As you can see, WordFlood is not only easy to use, it has many features article marketers find useful.

You can rewrite more than PLR Articles with WordFlood. Basically, you can cut and paste any article into WordFlood and rewrite it. I’ve used to to rewrite Wikipedia pages as well as articles from article directories. The sky is about the limit on what you can rewrite.

Another nice feature about WordFlood is you can rewrite the article you just rewrote! Let’s say you need 10 articles on getting RSS subscribers. You can take a few PLR articles, splice them together and rewrite the one big article in WordFlood. When you get done, save it, then go back and use the other synonyms to make a totally different article out of the one you just rewrote. Save that one and go back and rewrite the second one you rewrote!

You can get a lot of mileage out of this article rewriting program!

To get your Free 14 day trial of WordFlood and start cranking out high quality content from PLR Articles, Cick Here!.

FREE Bonus For AffiliateWatcher.Com Readers ONLY!

To help you get started rewriting PLR Articles, I’m going to give everyone who buys WordFlood through this website 8000 Free PLR Articles.

Yes, you read right.

8000 (eight thousand) FREE PLR Articles covering 252 subjects.

This should be more than enough to get you started turning PLR articles into quality content for you website or blog!

This offer alone could save you hundreds of dollars per month over joining one of those high priced PLR Membership Sites (which, most start out at $97 per month!)

There’s just about any subject you want and no, I’m not going to list all the subjects here! I don’t have that much time

Needless to say, whether you’re starting out trying to build a blog network or just need some quality content for your Hobby blog, these articles rewrote with WordFlood will get you started.

How To Take Advantage of All These Free PLR Articles

All you have to do to receive the 8000 free PLR Articles is to contact me through this Contact form and send me:  Your name, email and transaction details after you’ve purchased WordFlood.

I’ll then send you a link where you can download the .zip file containing 8000 PLR Articles, all for Free!

Good Luck!

I know some of you are Linen N Things affiliates and you can do whatever you want. However, if I were a Linens N Things affiliate, I’d certainly be thinking about how much money they owed me and how many affiliate links I have pointing toward their store.

For any of you who have been affiliates when a business went bankrupt, you know what I’m talking about. Try losing several thousand dollars worth of commissions when a company goes bankrupt and it doesn’t take long for you to become gun shy when a company starts talking bankruptcy!

As the old saying goes, “The chances of you getting paid are slim and none and Slim has left town”

Tactics For Dealing With A Company Filing Bankruptcy

There are several ways you can handle a company that is in financial trouble.

1. You can do nothing, cross your fingers and hope they’ll pull out of it. I know it’s tough to jump ship when you making good money on a company, just beware of the risk.
2. You can find another similar company and switch out all your affiliate links. This can be time consuming, but sometimes it’s the only option.
3. Option 3 is what I normally do. I try and pin down the top selling items that my customers were buying from this merchant. Then I go and find the highest paying commission on that product with a reputable company. Then I replace the old merchant store links with specific item affiliate links from the new merchant.

For example, let’s say your customers were buying J.A. Henckel Steak Knives through your Linens N Thingsaffiliate links. Just start a search of companies who carry Henckel Steak Knives, find a reputable one and replace your generic Linens N Things affiliate links with J.A. Henckel links from Amazon (or whoever is paying the best commission with competitive prices)

I much prefer this method over just throwing up another generic store banner. There is some reason that people coming to that page are buying Henckel knives so you might as well increase your CTR.

I do hope Linens N Things can pull out of their financial troubles. I love to shop there (yes, a Guy who likes Linens N Things…I just go there for the Kitchen Appliances and Cutlery though…honest )

Companies that go belly up are just another thing that us affiliate marketers have to deal with in this game. You learn to watch for the trouble signs and hope you can make a clean break before you lose commissions. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If Linens N Things goes bankrupt, I hope you’re not left holding the bag!

For those who’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ll remember that my Mother passed away in Dec. Since that time I’ve been trying to get her home and other affairs in order, which means a 500+ mile one way trip every time I went up there. I’ve been there more than here the last few months. I thought I had just about got everything in order too.

It Rains On the Just As Well As The Unjust..Or So They Say!

I had been home only a few days when I got a call early one morning from her next door neighbor. They had received torrential rains in Oklahoma over a few days time and my Mom’s home had flooded!

Geez! Throw me a bone already!

She lives on a creek, but this home had only flooded once before, in 1980! Since that time they had made improvements to the low water bridge upstream and to the creek itself. Flooding wasn’t a real concern since the creek rarely got out of its banks and even when it did, it receded quickly.

The bad thing was, most of her stuff I had organized and sit on the floor in boxes and bags. Needless to say, all that work was for naught because much of it was now ruined! I was just sick!

So, I jump in my Truck for another trip North. It took a few weeks, but I managed to get all the wet stuff out, including carpet and padding plus bad drywall. I fixed what I could and now I’m back home.

I guess we were lucky in one regard. The flood waters only stayed up a few hours. If it had stayed for days, it would have been a lot worse!

Hopefully, this time I’m home for more than a few days.

Here’s a little picture for you. The water was already down when I arrived but there was still a mess to clean up!

Catching Up on Emails - Please Be Patient

Thanks to everyone sending emails. I appreciate them.

For those of you who bought the Build A Niche Store Program through my site, and there have been many, first of all, THANK YOU, I APPRECIATE IT VERY MUCH! Second, you should have your Free Special Report by now. If you’ve bought BANS through this site and have not received your Free Special Report, please resend the information and I’ll make sure you get it.

I’m going to try and get back to regular posting. All the drive time I’ve had between here and Oklahoma gave me plenty of time to think about affiliate marketing and ideas for Post. Some I wrote down while I was driving…yeah, I know…not a good idea…lol

Since I wasn’t home to manage my offline business first hand, I was worried about my income. Thankfully my Wife has a separate job and my employees are pretty good people. So I only have one mountain of papers on my desk instead of a dozen!

What really made me feel good was the income that I knew would keep coming in from my Internet work. Day in, day out, the Internet will work for you if you set it up right. There’s no way my Internet income comes close to matching what I make in my offline business, but I knew if my employees ran off and I didn’t have a lick of business, I’d still receive checks from my Affiliate Marketing efforts. This is why I believe the Affiliate Marketing is sooo sweet! And why I believe it’s worth all the time and effort I put into it.

The best income in my opinion is passive income. Income that keeps coming in whether your on vacation, fishing, goofing off or in a hospital. Trust me when I say there’s is a certain kind of Peace you feel knowing that money will be deposited into your PayPal account or that a check arrive in the mail whether or not you’re “at work”.

Okay, so its now back to the grind of affiliate marketing and blogging…sheesh…I can already feel the sweat beads popping out on my forehead

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend that has helped me dominate nearly all of the local niches that I’m in. In some of these niches, which a few aren’t all that small, I’ve been able to get my business name in the top search engine rankings several times. For example, there’s one real estate related niche keyword for my local market where you’ll find information about my company 4 times in the top 10 on page 1 of Google SERPS.

It’s not uncommon for my Clients to say “I found you on the Internet, everywhere we looked, your name kept popping up.”I smile and quietly say “Really? That’s good, thanks for telling me.” All the time thinking to myself “Damn right you see me everywhere on the Internet, that’s the way I planned it!”

You see, when people go searching for something locally and they keep running into your name, it’s like you build a little bit of credibility every time they see your name. Pretty soon, they associate your name with the product or service they’re shopping for. That’s a good thing!

How To Dominate Your Local Niche

As I’ve said earlier, over the last few months, I’ve noticed this trend. I haven’t seen this happening in the last 7 years so I think something has changed with Google’s algo.

What I’m seeing is that the articles I’m submitting to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles are ranking very high in Google for my local niche keywords. Many times in the #1 spot!

I’m also seeing my articles in the Top 10 when using an article submission service like Article Marketer. Article Marketer submits your articles to hundreds (and in many cases over 1000) article directories.

Now I’ve always wrote articles for my websites and my business. However none really ranked that well until lately. I’m not sure why, but I’m loving it. And it’s not only my local niches!

While searching for different products or services in other cities, I’ve noticed articles from article directories outranking many national companies as well as outranking my local niche blogs plus websites of my competitors.

Testing My Theory

To be sure this wasn’t some kind of fluke, I tested my theory by writing articles about several different products and services for other local niches outside my own area. I then submitted these articles to article directories  and waiting. It only took a few days for them to show up in the SERPS and start working their way to the top.

After about a week, 3 out of the 5 articles I wrote were in the top 3 in Google for their keyword or keyword phrase. The other two are in the top 20. Not bad for about an hours worth of work!

To get started testing this in your own local niche, all you need to do is find all the keywords or keyword phrases people are using to find your business. Then sit down and start writing articles targeting these keywords. I normally only target one or two keywords per article. Once you have a few, submit them to article directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles. As I said earlier, I use Article Marketer to increase my backlinks and exposure. Using article marketer to build backlinks has really rocketed many of my local sites to the top 3 in the Google SERPS.

Another side benefit to this is that every time one of your articles shows up in the top 10, it will push one more of your competitors off the front page!

Now, not only do you have an article that makes you look like a pro, you now also reap the benefits of having backlinks from that article!

How Great is that!

Try it in your own local market. Make your article from 500 to 1000 words each. I like to start with 10 articles on different keywords and keyword phrases. I find the longer article are ranking and sticking much better. Go try it and let me know how it’s worked in your local market!

Article marketing doesn’t just benefit global websites, in my experience, you can use article marketing to dominate your local niche like a pro!

What Are Affiliate Datafeeds?

Affiliate Datafeeds are files that merchants provide that contain all of the products that they carry, or just the products they wish to put online. Typically these files come in a MS Excel format so that they are easier to work with.

Some stores, like BettyMills, have datafeeds with over 50,000 products. This means that once you get your datafeeds online, your affiliate store will be populated with over 50,000 items from Betty Mills.

A good place to find Merchants who have datafeeds is ShareASale.Com. Not all merchants have datafeeds, but you’ll find many on ShareASale that do. Simply sign up for their Affiliate Program and download the datafeeds.

Not All Datafeeds Are Created Equal

Sadly, not all merchants produce the same quality of datafeeds. A nice feature about the merchants on ShareASale is that you can preview the datafeed before downloading. The preview will give you a few examples of what the datafeed will look like. You’ll see some that have very lame or minimal descriptions. That’s okay if it’s a merchant you really like and you’ll take time rewriting the descriptions. The description is where the money is in datafeeds. More on that later.

Programs and Services That Turn Affiliate Datafeeds Into Web Pages

As some of you may recall, I did a review of Goldencan some time ago. It’s a simple service where you can put entire stores from different merchants on your websites. Just make sure you’re signed up with the merchants before getting the code for those stores!

Another program I used and reviewed here is PopShops. Generally Popshops works the same way as Goldencan but not really…if you can follow that! With PopShops you get the choice of using either JavaScript, PHP or HTML to insert products from datafeeds into your website.  Unlike Goldencan, PopShops charges money for their service (except the basic level which gives you minimum products) . The prices are very reasonable for what you get. You can start with the free package and later on, if you want more products, you can choose which package suits your needs.

Goldencan on the other hand is free to use. However, with some merchants Goldencan will take the 4th click as part of the “fee” for their service. Having said that, there are plenty of other merchants on Goldencan that pay their own way so that all clicks are yours. If giving every 4th click to Goldencan is going to be a problem, you need to check the Goldencan website before you decide on a merchant and see which merchants pay their own way and which ones will cost you every 4th click.

Another service that I’ve used briefly was DataFeedFile.com. I used them briefly on several Affiliate sites. This was a couple years ago and one problem I was having would be dead pages. By this I mean you’d click on a page that DataFeedFile produced and there would be no product, just a statement saying the file didn’t exist. I hate to think about how much that cost me. To be perfectly honest, the best I remember, all dead pages came from Performics, so take that with a grain of salt. It could have been Performics problem, I don’t know. I just know that I do not use either one as of now.

The programs above work well for most affiliate marketers. Having said that, with these type of programs I feel that you loose some control over the products offered. I like to tweak my datafeeds. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that you need to tweak your datafeeds to get the most money out of them so they will convert well. You don’t have that luxury with the above services, at least not that I’ve seen. But remember, they are easy for the novice to use, so there is a trade off. Control vs Ease of Use.

A program that I use that will give you complete control over your data feed is Webmerge. I guess that I would say that my biggest complaint with Webmerge is the lack of good video tutorials on how to set it up and get started. Webmerge can be a bear to learn, but once you do, oh boy, you have a lot of control at your finger tips. Webmerge does link to some third party tutorials written by other websites, but so far I haven’t found any good video tutorials. I think novices would eat this program up if they realized how much control they get to keep using a product like Webmerge.

With Webmerge, the program creates static HTML page for every product in your datafeed. It will also create static HTML navigation pages. Once you have imported your Datafeed into Webmerge and then went through the paces to export your finished HTML pages, all you have to do is upload them to your server.

Just over a month ago I came across a script that took data feeds and created dynamic web pages with each product. This script created a whole store from datafeeds. You can even have multiple datafeeds running under one store. This is great if you want a comparison shopping site.

The program I discovered was AffiliStore 2.0. This script makes it easy to import merchant datafeeds and turn them into working real time stores. You really need to go and look at their sample sites to get an idea of how powerful this script is.

I call this script BANS sites on Steroids because this script will build stores for you that have thousands of pages!

One word of caution though. In the AffiliStore forums, I saw quite a few people complaining about their sites slowing down or misbehaving when they exceeded 10,000 products. So if you have a store with 30, 40 or over 50,000 products, you may want to try it out with a smaller datafeed. On the two sites I used to build with datafeeds, one has just over 8500 products and the other has just over 6000 products and I’ve had no problem out of either one. So far in my experiments, it looks like this script will be damn good in targeting and conquering niches.

One of the best things about AffiliStore is that it’s free! Yeah, freakin’ free! That makes it better than BANS any day!

A Word About Affiliate Data feeds

I saved this for last because many of you, especially the new people, need to know this. I see a majority of you failing to do this and you’re leaving money on the table.

There are many so called “guru’s” out there that will claim datafeeds at unique content for your website.

I’m calling bullshit on that one peeps!

If you can download a datafeed from your merchant, then so can all 2000 of the other Affiliates that have signed up for their affiliate program.

Then what happens when say… 5% of those affiliates, including you,  publish those raw datafeeds? Yep…duplicate content and then you run the risk of being labeled a “thin affiliate site” by Google. Something you’ll always be fighting against.

The way you turn that datafeed into dollars is that you open the datafeed in MS Excel and pull up the descriptions. Once you’ve opened your affiliate datafeed, you’ll go through those product records and modify the descriptions to be SEO friendly and informative.

This will get you higher in the Search Engines. The higher you are in the search engines, the higher the traffic. The more traffic you have coming in, the more bank you take home!

I can’t stress how important it is for you to spend time customizing and seo optimizing these product descriptions. It’s not uncommon for me to spend a few days tweaking my data feeds. This is where your payday is at!

I’m also currently experimenting with a Affiliate datafeed Wordpress Plugin. The jury is still out, but just as soon as I feel comfortable writing a review of this Plugin, I’ll let you know.

Okay, this should be plenty of information to get you set up and going with affiliate datafeeds. This is the nuts and bolts of affiliate marketing. Now go forward and build your affiliate empire!

This post has been a long time in coming. I guess you could say that I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it no more.

I spent about an hour and a half this morning browsing the do-follow list and leaving comments on several blogs. So what’s the problem? Many of the comments sections on those blogs using the do-follow list still have the “nofollow” attribute.

What’s The Do-Follow List?

The do-follow list is a list of bloggers who have removed the “nofollow” attribute from their comments so that the links left by Commenters are “nofollow” and will be followed by Google.

I used the do-follow plugin briefly on this site, found that I didn’t like it and have since used the Top Commentator plugin to reward my regular commenters with a PR4 backlink.

Luckily I never submitted my blog to the do-follow list.

Bloggers Beware of The Do-Follow List

The problem with the do-follow list is that about 80% of the blogs listed on these list, and there are several, still have the nofollow attribute on their comments.

Now you can look at this several ways. Either they’re being completely dishonest by not using the do-follow plugin as they are advertising or they’re just naive.

For you bloggers who think you’re leaving all these wonderful comments and that Google is following your link back to your site, you’re dead wrong. You’re being taken advantage of by many bloggers on the do-follow list!

Most of you have no idea whether or not the bloggers on the do-follow list have actually taken the nofollow attribute off.

When I’m using the do-follow list, I use Firefox with the SEO extension. This allows me to see which links are nofollowed and which ones aren’t. On some blogs, you can also look at the source code, but trust me, the SEO extension for Firefox is quicker. Just make sure you activate it in your toolbar! It then will highlight in a redish pink color all links with the nofollow attribute. Pretty easy!

Also, if the blog you’re looking at is a Blogger blog, the comments are nofollow. You’ll find a whole bunch of Blogger blogs on the do-follow list that claim “You comment, I follow“. Either these bloggers are dishonest or they don’t understand what nofollow is. Out of the hundreds of Blogger blogs I’ve visited, I’ve only seen one or two that actually had the nofollow removed and they were custom sites with their own hosting. If Blogger is hosting the blog, the comments are nofollowed and your link will not be followed by Google. Don’t waste your time.

If these bloggers were on the up and up, they’d do several things.

1. Take down the “U Comment, I Follow” icon
2. Find all the do-follow list and have their blogs taken off. As a blog owner, it’s your responsibility to remove your blog from these list if you’re not going to follow the do-follow guidelines.
3. Or if they truly wanted commenters, they follow the guidelines for do-follow

No Keywords In The Name Field

Here’s another area that is getting me a little peeved lately. Several of these blogs have comment policies where they do not allow you to put a keyword in the Name field.

WTF difference does it matter what is in the name field? This tells me one thing. The blog owner wants the maximum benefit of my comments on his/her blog but doesn’t want me to have the maximum benefit of a followed link. Pretty damn stingy in my book!

Now having said that, let me say I do not blame them one bit if someone leaves a comment with a link back to a bad neighborhood such as drugs, porn, gambling or other bad neighborhood. You have to protect where you’re blog is linking too. I also do not object bloggers removing comments that do not add value to the blog post.

But refusing to allow a commenter to use a Keyword instead of their name is just plain selfish. The whole point of using the do-follow plugin is for bloggers and their readers to mutually benefit.

Another form of Dishonesty are the bloggers who advertise their comments are nofollowed but only a select few commenter’s links are nofollowed. These blogs may only remove the nofollow for their friends or for those who make “X” amount of comments. That’s all well and fine, but do not advertise that your comments are do-follow because they’re not!

If You’re Going To Comment, Do It Right!

Just this morning, I deleted 4 comments by someone who left comments on 4 of my blog post. His/her comments were “Thanks for sharing”.

That’s bullshit. If you’re going to leave a comment, leave one that benefits the blog. If you don’t have the time to leave a decent comment, don’t leave one or I’ll make the time to delete them on this blog and I don’t blame others for doing it.

When I comment, I try and leave at least two sentences, most of the times it’s more…a lot more if I get on a roll.

The Do-Follow Dishonest List

I’ve been seriously thinking of starting a Do-Follow Dishonest list. This list will comprise of blogs who advertise they use the do-follow plugin or otherwise have removed the nofollow attribute from their comments but who have not:

• removed the nofollow attribute from their comments
• removed their blog from Do-Follow list
• stopped displaying the “U Comment, I follow” icon or other forms of advertising that their comments are nofollowed.
• allowed all comments to be do-follow. If you advertise your comments are do-follow, then all comments should be do-followed, not just those of commenter who’ve made “X” amount of comments or those who you like. Otherwise stop advertising that your comments are do-follow. This is nothing more than scamming visitors into thinking your comments are do-follow!

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think this would be a good idea. What do you think?

If you use the do-follow list at all, you owe it to yourself to get Firefox and get the SEO extension so you’ll know who’s being honest and who’s not. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time if you’re posting comments for a link.

The whole point of the do-follow plugin and the do-follow list was so that Bloggers could help each other. Bloggers would use nofollow on their comments so they could attract visitors who would leave comments. The commentators would then get a link back to their website for leaving comments. Now some of these blogs have benefited due to the do-follow movement and do-follow list but refuse to play by the rules. I’m calling your guys/gals out right now.

Stop being dishonest with your visitors!

are do-follow bloggers dishonest