What I really wanted to see was just how well that system would work if you followed it to a “T”. Much like a beginner would do.

First off though, I want to rant a bit. I don’t visit the forums much over at the Keyword Academy. As stated above, I’m very busy and don’t have a lot of time. When I do get time, I’m working on my sites. The other reason is because of all the nonsense that goes on there.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a boat load of good info on there. The people are nice and very helpful.

No, what I mean is the ridiculous questions that keep being asked by beginners who obviously are not following Court and Mark’s program.

Look, if you’re a beginner and you’ve started the Keyword Crash Course, do yourself and others a favor and watch ALL of the video’s, especially the Core Video’s. They’ll answer just about anything you need to know. Don’t join and immediately go the forums and ask silly questions that are answered in the video’s!! It tells everyone that you haven’t sit down and watched the Core Video’s or the Webinar Video’s. It’s like saying you don’t want to take the time to watch and learn!

Okay, I’ve ranted long enough.

What’s New With The Keyword Crash Course

Court and Mark have done an amazing job with the Keyword Crash Course. I can’t imagine how much work they must have done in order to make everything run seamlessly. I have a great deal of respect for those two. They have, without question, put together the most informative and legitimate course on making money on the Internet that you’ll find anywhere. Bar none in my opinion, and I’ve seen a lot of programs come and go in my time.

Here are just a few of the things that are new.

1. The Niche Refinery. Helps you sort through keywords and helps you discover which ones have the potential to be the profitable ones. No more guessing whether or not the keywords you use will earn money. It’s the best Keyword Tool I’ve ever used, hands down.
2. The Forum has changed layouts and is much more user friendly in my opinion. There are a ton of features, including icons and badges that Members can obtain. They’ll show up next to your Screen name and Avatar.
3. The Webinars are now nicely organized so they can be downloaded and watched.
4. The Earners Club. This is a cool feature, especially if you visit the Forums. The Earners Club is a progress tracking system that is totally voluntary. You send your earnings verifications privately to Court or Mark and they’ll reward you with a badge showing how much per month you make via Internet Marketing. This let’s you know who knows what they’re doing and who is just regurgitating the same old crap found on the Internet! It’s like ‘I dunit, here’s proof’.
5. By far the best feature that I’ve found most useful is the Post Runner system. I can’t really go into detail what this system is or how it works, but once inside you’ll see that it’s worth it’s weight in Gold for getting your ranked!

Like I said earlier, Court and Mark have done an impressive and amazing job in just one year! At the time of this post, they’re running a FREE trial offer for the first 30 days. This is plenty of time for you to see what all the Course has to offer and learn some of the tools and methods successful Internet Marketers use.

The Keyword Crash Course – One Year Later

So what I did after doing the initial review was to go out and grab 7 domains for niches that I felt would be profitable using the formula for finding high paying keywords that Court outlines in the Course.

I then followed the directions outlined in the course. I did not use any of my other resources that I had available unless they were mentioned or proved by The Keyword Crash Course.

I built the sites using WordPress. I used Hostgator for my blog hosting provider.

From here, I simply followed the course’s instructions.

I have to admit, I had my doubts even though I knew this system worked. Of course, even when I do it my way, I have doubts. I don’t know why because they always work out.

In the first month or two, I saw little to movement in the rankings for these 7 sites. Of course, that’s normal unless you’re in a very Uncompetitive niche! Plus, I’m not a person who can sit for hours on end at the computer. I usually work about 3 or 4 hours total in one day and I break that amount of time over the period of the day. I guess you can say I have Affiliate Marketing ADD…LOL

But then months 3 and 4 saw these sites breaking into the top 100 and slowly creeping up the SERPS. This was exciting even though I’ve done it many times. I guess I was anxious because I was watching these 7 sites much closer than my others new sites I built doing it my way.

By month 5 and 6, a few real winners were beginning to show up among the 7. I had one that just wasn’t (and still isn’t) performing the way the numbers say it should, but that’s the real world. The site is in the top 5 for several of it’s keywords, but the traffic just isn’t there. I’m hoping it will come along once I expand the keywords it ranks for.

By months 7 and 8, I was making money with the sites. Well, actually some of them had been making money by month 4, but by the seventh and eighth months, nearly all were (all except 2).

I monetized several of the sites with Adsense and several with affiliate programs. Since I’m an affiliate marketer, I prefer affiliate programs over Adsense. You’ll also find out that some niches are just naturally easier to monetize with Adsense or affiliate programs.

Months 9 through 12 were spent tweaking the sites, adding content and promoting them further. I spent a great deal of time on the 2 slow performers and I found additional keywords to help one of the slackers. The one mentioned above is still giving me fits. Sometimes you just have to let ‘em go. Kinda like tough love for websites!

Am I making a killing off of these sites? No. But I am making some good money. How much you ask? Well, if you read my blog any amount, you know I stopped outing a lot of my methods and other info. But I’ll say they’re making just a little above 1k per month now and we’ll leave it at that.

If you need further proof this system works, as of the time of this blog post, the Keyword Academy blog has an unsolicited post from a Member who is making $800 per month from his website! Geez, it’s taking me 5 niche sites to do a little more than that!

It’s not surprising really. This system works if you’ll just put the time and effort in. I just wanted to prove it to myself even though it’s along the same lines I’ve been using for years. And the cool thing is, now that all the work has been done, they’re nearly on auto pilot. Very little work will be required to keep their rankings. This means you’ll have more time to create more sites following the Keyword Crash Course method.

They’re still running the FREE 30 Day Trial at the time of this blog post. What will you get for your free trial? You’ll have access to everything in the Keyword Crash Course. Unlike some other programs that only tease you with a few pieces of info, The Keyword Academy will allow you access to all the info. (if you choose the Premium account) The FREE trial is the best way to see what all the Keyword Crash Course consist of. If you’re a beginner or someone who has been banging their head against the wall trying to make a buck on the Internet, try the Course for Free for the first 30 days. If you’re like me, you’ve blown a lot of money on the Internet! Click here to look over this system Free for the first 30 days.

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Anyway, it was probably a troll email, but it did get me to thinking.

Could I start out with nothing and make some decent money online without all my tools and resources? Yes, I think I could.

So I decided to challenge myself for the month of January. I’m going to start a Challenge to make $2500 online during the month. Why $2500? I don’t know, it seems like a decent number. Plus, that’s $30,000 per year before taxes. I’d say that’s pretty close to what the average household brings home in the U.S. At any rate, that added income would sure come in handy to many families across the World right now, not just here in the U.S.

I’m setting some guidelines for myself to try and make it as fair as possible.

Here are some of the guidelines I’m setting.

• I’ll only be using free or low cost resources that are available on the Internet and accessible to the general public.
• I’m only going to start the Challenge with $50. Nearly anyone can beg, borrow or steal (just j/k’ing about the stealing part) fifty bucks. Sure, you can get started with nothing, but in reality, an online business is just like any other business. You’re going to have to put up a little money. Any money I make, I’ll reinvest it into the challenge if I need to.
• I won’t use any of my existing websites for help. It would be much easier, but I realize many people do not have a network of websites in place, so mine will be off limits to help me with this challenge.
• I’ll use a variety of techniques to make money online. I haven’t sit down and figured all the ways that I’ll try, but I will do a weekly post and let people know what I did the previous week and how much money was made or lost for that week.
• At the end of the Challenge – win, lose or draw – I’ll be giving away a lot of my resources to a few lucky readers. (I’m thinking a website here, tools, ebooks, etc…) Since I don’t know where this will take me, I don’t know yet what I will have to giveaway!
• To be elgible for the giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment on any of the post relating to the January $2500 Challenge and ask to be entered. You must let me know through the comments you want entered as some people will not be wanting to enter but yet want to comment. Extra entries will be given to people who blog about the January $2500 Challenge.

Although I sincerely believe anyone can make money online if they just put forth a good effort and stay focused, I know that many people don’t have a clue where to start. I’m of the mindset that making money online is a long term proposition, but I believe some money can be made rather quickly in certain areas. These short term money making projects can help you get by while waiting on your long term business to become profitable.

I’d love to hear from you folks. Suggestions, comments or just to enter the giveaway that will happen at the end of the Challenge, leave me a comment. I’ll keep you updated as I sit down and plan how I’m going to make money online with the January $2500 Challenge.

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Outsourcing your work isn’t for everyone. But at some point in your affiliate marketing efforts, you’ll have to decide whether or not to bring new people in. People who are just beginning in affiliate marketing generally have time to do all the things necessary to become successful.

Once you’ve started building up your portfolio, things can get pretty tight. Especially time. If you stay in this business long enough, there will come a point when you discover that you don’t have enough time to get everything you need done accomplished. When this happens, it’s time to look into outsourcing some of the chores.

For me, it was content writing. I had so many websites that I didn’t have time to write content for every one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to write. But I can only do so much. Plus, there are different types of content. For my Adsense sites, I don’t need the best content. In fact, I’d say poor content will actually convert better on an Adsense site than good content. I can get 500 to 750 word articles written for these sites for as little as $3 to $5 per article. I don’t know about you, but my time is worth a lot more than that plus these articles pay for their self rather quickly.

There are literally people willing to do anything that you can think of. And many of them will do it rather cheaply. It comes down to the value of your time plus how much more money you could make by spending the time you do have on actions that create the most money for you.

By having a lot of articles written for my sites, the time this frees up is spent on building backlinks to my sites and creating more sites, which makes me a lot more money than writing content!

Where to find outsourcing resources

There Internet is a wonderful place to find people willing to work for you. All you need to do is look.

Here are some of my favorite places to find people to outsource my work to.

DigitalPoint forums. They have a section called the Marketplace. You can find anything you want here. Content Writers, Coders, Content, eBook creation, Link building services to people who will build backinks for you and submit your articles to directories and so on. Make sure you check the iTrader reputation of the person before hiring him/her to work for you. Most other Webmaster forums also have a similar marketplace. Other sites you may want to look into are; SitePoint, Webmaster World, V7N, Warrior Forum, etc.

eLance, Rent-A-Coder, RentAFreelancer, GetAFreelancer. These are great places to find people to outsource every aspect of your affiliate marketing. From building website templates to PHP coders and people who will build you landing pages, you’ll find them here.

Need-An-Article. When I need great content, I use these people. I can get 1000 plus word articles written by native English speaking writers for as little as $12.50 and these articles are as good, or in many cases – better, than ones I have paid $30 or more for. Their research is excellent as well and most of my article request are turned around in a few days.

Craigslist – Ha! Gotcha didn’t I? Yeah, I’ve found some good freelancers on Craigslist. Several Content writers and a Coder. Look toward the bottom of the page under the heading of “Services”.  Also be sure to check out the “Gigs” section. If you want someone local, just put up a post and you should have plenty of people responding shortly.

There are tons of other places to find people to outsource your work to. For many of you, you get hung up on the cost to hire these people. I think this generally comes from lack of confidence on most peoples part. If your sites are making money, then your outsourced work will pay for itself many times over. This will free you up to create more sites or work on an area that you enjoy and let the freelancers work on the chores you hate to do or are not particularly good at.

One last bit of advice here. And you’d better take this to heart. Once you find several freelancers that you like, keep their contact info close by. These people can be invaluable to you. Also, treat them fairly in all your business dealings. If they’re good, they’ll be an asset to your business. The few bucks you’ll save by trying to screw them over isn’t worth it. A good freelancer can be like the Goose that laid the Golden egg.

Remember, you’re the Money Man, the Rainmaker, the person with the Creative Ideas. Do what you do best and let the freelancers do what they’re best at!

To you people, I’d say give it a try. Budget some money and get those time sucking jobs that are holding you back outsourced! Your bank account will thank you!

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To be successful in affiliate marketing, you have to find a product that many people want. Not only that, you have to find one that they are likely to purchase over the Internet. Sure, a few people will buy a car or boat online, but not many. There are some products that people want to see, touch and evaluate in person before buying. You can’t do that online! Find a popular product that you believe in and then see if they have an affiliate program and find out the terms.

Start by making a list of the things you like and are passionate about. It has always been said that you can sell something you believe in. That’s true. It’s also true that it’s very hard to sell something you know nothing about or have no experience in. This is why it’s critical in finding something that you enjoy or are passionate about.

Both Yahoo and Google have sections where you can go and look to see what the most searched terms are for the previous week, month or year. This will tell you what people are searching for online. Google also has a section called “Hot Trends” that is updated throughout the day to show you the most searched for terms. This can be a huge benefit if you follow it over time.

The other section in Google you want to do research in is Google Trends. This tool will tell you how well the product you’re interested in has been searched for in the past. Google trends is a free tool and one you should not overlook. You want to see the line on the grapch either fairly steady across the graph or rising. A downward line on the graph tells you that interest in the product is tapering off.

The section you want to look for in Yahoo is Yahoo Buzz. This section tracks the most searched for terms of the previoius week or month. It will also tell you whether or not your term is on the rise or tapering off. Personally, I prefer Google Trends for seeing if the product is on fire or cooling off. To find it, go to buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com. Play around with it a while to really find the best niche products that are hot.

Another excellent place to find hot selling products is ebay. Ebay has a section that will show you the most popular selling products. This can also give you ideas on what to sell on ebay and on the Internet as well. The section you want to look for is called Ebay Pulse. You can also drill down to find which specfic prodcuts are hot. For example, iPods are always hot on Ebay. But which color? Use Ebay Pulse to find which color or which model is hot.

Finding a hot selling product is not hard. You just have to know where to look in order to find them. Picking an affiliate product just because it has a high payout is a sure fire way to fail. Pick something you know about and then research it to see if there is a demand for it. This way you’ll have the confidence to stay the course until you see the fruits of your labor pay off.

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Yeah, for some of you BANS owners, it’s been a pretty tough last few months.

I’m knocking on wood here. If you remember right from my initial Build A Niche Store Review, my goal was to build 100 BANS sites. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I have AMADD (Affiliate Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder) and only made it to 30 sites before I lost focus and went off doing something else. So far none of my sites have been touched by either Google or eBay. I’ll give you my theories on why that is on down the page.

A Few Theories Why Google Is De-Indexing BANS sites.

I’ve been following a lot of the chatter on forums about this subject as well as receiving a lot of email. This is what I’ve figured out to this point. No one has 100% concrete proof why Google is de-indexing BANS sites. There are a few theories floating around.

1. The BANS program was being used by a lot of spammers. Many of these guys/gals were throwing up huge numbers of BANS sites on .info domains. They never bothered to change anything with the programs, their only concern was to get as many BANS sites up as they could, as cheaply as they could. This left a huge footprint for Google to follow.
2. Most of these same people never bothered to put any content on their sites. They were simply ebay sites with ebay auctions on them. This would be what Google calls a “thin affiliate” site. And we know what Google does with thin affiliate sites.
3. In order for Google to get all the spammy BANS sites, it had to take some legitimate sites along with them. It’s the shotgun approach. Use a huge pattern to make sure you get all of them. Try and limit the casualties but go forward knowing some innocent victims will be in the pattern.

My Theory On Why Google Hasn’t De-Indexed All BANS Sites

Even as far back as when I bought the Build A Niche Store program, there was talk about Google finding the footprint of all the standard BANS templates and possibly penalizing them. It seems this bird has come home to roost. From the start, here is what I did to try and make my BANS sites unique from all the other cookie cutter BANS sites.

• I changed up the CSS a little bit on every site. I made sections like the header and content fields larger and smaller.
• I changed the colors on every site.
• I changed the size of the headers on every site and used graphic headers.
• I DID NOT go out and start sending hundreds of backlinks to my sites. I built them up over time using blog carnivals, article submissions, reciprocal linking and adding one way permanent links.
• I added content to nearly every page plus I used a lot of graphics.
• I never put eBay auctions on my main page. I put content on the index page to make it look as much like a informative content site as I could. Just look at how many BANS sites have nothing more than auctions on their front page.
• On many of the domains that hosted my BANS sites, I added blogs, article directories and forums to many. (mostly just blogs that supported the main domain)
• I never put more than 2 BANS sites on one hosting account plus I paid extra for all sites to have a dedicated IP’s. I’ve read stories of people hosting all their BANS sites with one hosting company. Wow, I can’t fathom that idea. I’m just too paranoid I suppose.
• I only used dot com domains. Of course, these last two items is what I do for nearly all of my affiliate sites, not just for BANS. I want to make it as hard as possible for Google or any other search engine to spy on my websites.

Now, I’m not saying if you do these things that Google will not index your site. These are the things I did to every BANS site I had. I did these things from day one and as I said above, knock on wood, my sites haven’t been touched. In fact, many are still climbing the SERPS.

Is the Build A Niche Store Still Worth Buying?

I’ve had a few emails asking that question. Honestly, I’d say yes it is. But only if you intend to build sites that have a lot of content and you make them unique. If you’re plan is to buy it and throw up a bunch of BANS sites without adding any value to them, I think you’d be wasting your money. Google is on to you.

Alternatives to The Build A Niche Store program

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or so, you know I’m impressed with the PHPBay plugin for WordPress. As I stated in my post Advanced Build A Niche Store Strategies, I’ve been using PHPBayand WordPress to make blogs and stores with eBay auctions. It seems every week that my PHPBay/WordPress stores outproduce my Build A Niche Store sites. Hey, it’s no secret that Google is crazy in love with WordPress blogs. Why not take advantage of that? Plus, to be honest, a WordPress blog and PHPBay combination site just looks much better than 99% of the BANS sites out there, mine included. (hey, maybe Google hates ugly sites?)

Whatever the real reason that Google is de-indexing or penalizing BANS sites, owners using this program need to proceed with caution. If you continue to make sites with BANS, then do everything in your power to make them unique and stand away from the crowd.

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I’m not a sales letter writing Guru, but I have wrote my fair share for my online as well as my offline businesses. Here’s the way I go about writing a sales letter.

First off, I gather up other sales letters that speak to me. Yeah, it sounds corny, but I figure if a sales letter can make me buy something, when I know it’s a sales letter, then it’s pretty good. Whenever I come across such a sales letter, I either save it in my bookmarks or print it out and keep it in a file. If it can make a sale to me, then it can make sales to most other people.

Whether you like them or not, those sales letters that are rampant in the Internet Marketing industry sell products over and over. I hear people say they hate those “spammy” looking sales pages, yet it’s some of these same people who buy products from them, myself included. Face the fact, those sales letter type pages sell products or no one would use them.

Another important point to keep in mind when writing a sales letter is to put yourself in your potential customers shoes and ask “What’s In It For Me?” Forget about yourself for a moment. Your sales letter should be all about the benefits the customer will get when buying your product.

The Title of Your Sales Letter Will Make You or Break You

Once you start pouring over those sales letters, read through them all and see which Title really speaks to you. Which one really gets your attention? Which one makes you want to continue reading the rest of the copy? This is probably the one you’ll want to pay attention to.

I also keep the crappy sales letters. I try and determine where the ad copy lost me. Was it the title? or the ad copy itself? When you can answer these questions, you’ll have a good understanding of how a sales letter works.

A good title, or header, should grab your customers attention and make them want to read the sales letter. Writing an attention grabbing title takes some work. As with many things, the more you practice it, the better you’ll become.

The 4 Basic Building Blocks of A Sales Letter

When writing a sales letter, there are 4 basic things you must keep in mind and address if you hope to convert readers into buyers.

1. What problem does your product solve?
2. What does your product do?
3. What makes it better than anyone else’s product?
4. Finally, how much will this cost?

Now that you have a good foundation to start with, it’s time to put some meat into your sales letter.

There are an additional 4 things you must convey in order to make your sales letter do its job.

These are:

• Create hope: Its been said that people buy hope. A person with a tooth ache will stop at nothing to get it taken care of. The same is true for someone who needs quick cash for whatever reason. Whatever problem your product or service cures, make sure you show your customer that there is hope when purchasing from you
• Relate to your customer: Talk to your customer as if they were a long lost friend. Become personal with the customer so they feel that you can relate to their problem. People feel secure with someone they can relate with and they buy when they feel secure. Two of the best ways to do this is to tell a personal story and add a photo of yourself to the ad copy.
• It’s all about the FUD: Create FUD in your ad copy. FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, is a time tested technique to get people to buy. It’s been used by both large corporations and small companies alike. It’s in nearly every ad you see in one form or another. It takes practice and experience when using FUD in an ad copy. It must be subtle or you risk turning off the more experienced buyers. This is where those good sales letters you kept will pay off. Pour over them and see how the Copywriter used FUD to sell.
• Ask for the sale: No, wait, DEMAND the sale! When you’re looking over those ad copies you’ve saved, you probably notice that there are several call to actions in the body of the sales letter. Don’t assume that your customer will just get up and order from you. Tell them to do it now! Create a sense or urgency. One good way to do this is by giving them a deadline or give them a bonus if they act now. People hate to lose out on an opportunity! Make sure you tell them why they must act and explain what they’ll be losing if they don’t act NOW!

Learning how to write a sales letter takes a little time. You should also test, test and test more until you get that sales letter that pulls in the customers!

Aggressive Sales Letters Are The Best

The argument against aggressive sales letters has been going on since the first ad copy was written. It’s a proven point, aggressive sales letters sell better than passive sales letters. I don’t like to write aggressive sales letters, but they work.

A long aggressive sales letter will put more money in your pocket than a sales letter that sounds like you’re talking to your Mom. People are lazy by nature and you have to make them act. That’s what writing a good sales letter is all about, making the people you’re reaching out to order from you!

Start looking over those ebook sales letters and begin writing some of your own. Keep at it until you think you have it down. Put the ad copy away for a few days and come back and reread it. Keep making changes until it’s as good as you can get. Send it out and then write another one, send it out and see how it fares against the first. Keep doing this until you see one sales letter converting better than the others. This will be your money maker and you’ll be glad you learned how to write a sales letter!

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I’d like to take this time between writing the big articles and ask my readers what they would like to know more about concerning affiliate marketing or Internet Marketing.

So if there’s been a question you need the answer to or you need some help to get over a hump, let me know, I’ll write a blog post or reply in the comments if I can help. Chances are if you’re having a problem or have a question, someone else is having it also.

Feel free to ask about any topic as long as it pertains to affiliate programs, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization, blogging or Adsense.

I’m no Guru, but I bet I can help most of you if you’ve reached a dead end. Just leave a comment and I’ll get started.

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I’m going to start off by telling all you people who are new to affiliate marketing about a 30 Day Challenge you really need to be taking part of. Especially if you’re new to affiliate marketing or have had trouble making money from affiliate marketing.

I’ve told you in the past about the 30 Day Challenge. This year, it starts August 1st and the “pre season” has already started.

If you’re beginning in affiliate marketing, it’s worth your time to go over and sign up. Even if you’ve been around a while, watch the video’s. I’m sure you’ll pick up some good money making ideas.

Dan Raines and Ed Dales have been showing people how to make money with affiliate marketing for many years now.

It was only a few years ago that Dan ran the 15 day challenge, where he tried to make 15 thousand dollars in 15 days. And he almost succeeded! I learned a lot of useful tricks from that challenge.

The 30 Day Challenge site already has some very good videos up. You’ll get instant access to these video’s as soon as you sign up. For you that are just starting, I’d suggest starting at the beginning. For those of you who need a few tips, just browse through the lessons until you find the subject you need to brush up on.

The goal, as usual, is to take you from nothing and show you the basics of affiliate marketing. They’ll be taking you by the hands and teaching you every step. The lessons available will take you from nothing to showing you how to make your first $10 within 30 days.

I know, $10 dollars doesn’t sound like much. But you have to start somewhere. This is the problem with many new affiliate marketers. They want to start one day and think they should be earning $1000 per day by the end of the week!

The truth is, if you don’t have the skills to legitimately make $10 with affiliate programs, you’ll never make your first $1000. And that is what the 30 Day Challenge is all about, giving you the skills to make your first $10 which then gives you the confidence and skills to make much more.

I can’t tell you how many emails I get from people who want to know the “secret” of making money with affiliate marketing. If you suggest they try to make $10 in 30 days, they come back with something like “Oh, I can do that, but what I need to know how to make enough to live on.”

When asked further questions, I find out that they haven’t even taken the first step in building a website or choosing an affiliate program. These are the people who will more than likely never make it in affiliate marketing.

In my opinion, the best thing about the 30 Day Challenge is the members forums. Here you have many like minded people, many who are already successful in affiliate marketing, helping beginners and throwing out ideas. You’ll be exposed so many different ways to make money with affiliate programs it will make your head spin.

Go ahead and sign up for the 30 Day Challenge by going to http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com. Give it an honest try and I’ll think it will answer many of your questions and open your eyes to some of the “secrets” to affiliate marketing.

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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. Many of us continue to make 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.

If you would like to have an Online store selling eBay and other items, then give ProStores a look. They’re an eBay company and offer different packages for people wanting to start their own online business. They’re currently offering a one month free trial. Click here to get your free trial —> One Month Free Trial! ProStores – an eBay Company

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 or Private Label Rights (PLR). You can find many products and services with Master Resell Rights or Private Label 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.

You could even start your own store with all the ebooks, software and other products they offer.

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!

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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!

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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

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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!

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Update to the Update! Currently I can not recommend the Build A Niche Store program to my readers. Here’s why. Google has been deindexing many BANS sites, mine included. They apparently do not like the fact that this is a script that auto generates web pages with affiliate links on them (the ebay ads). However, Yahoo and Bing seem to still be ranking these sites and I’m still making money with them, but not near as much as I was when they were indexed in the top pages of Google.

If you’re looking for a legitimate way to create an eBay store where you can sell real products, I recommend Pro Stores. Currently they’re giving a free month trial for you to try it out. Use this link for your free trial – One Month Free Trial! ProStores – an eBay Company

Since I wrote the Build A Niche Store Review, I’ve had quite a few emails asking me to give everyone an update on how my Build A Niche Store‘s are doing, what techniques are working, which one’s aren’t, etc. I can say that the Build A Niche Store is still working for me, but a few of my sites have cooled off.

Currently I have 19 Build A Niche Store sites. These sites range from 11 pages up to over 40 pages. It all depends on the niche and how many categories ebay has for them.

Some of the first stores I built have dropped a little in the rankings as I’ve slowed down adding new content to them during December and January.

Last month my best performing Build A Niche Store did over $150 in commissions while the least performing store did just over $15. Sadly, this poor performer was a store I thought would be a great niche, but as it turns out, it’s a very competitive craft niche. This means I’m going to have to work very hard at building quality backlinks to this store to get it boosted in the rankings.

I didn’t follow my own advice when choosing this niche. It just “came to me” one night and I quickly looked up how many searches were being done for this particular niche and thought “Geez, this would make a great Build A Niche Store site.” The problem is, had I researched it a little further I would have found that the Niche has a lot of freebie websites out there giving away many of the same craft products I’m trying to sell on my BANS site plus many of these sites were built back in the late 90′s and early 2000′s by hobby Webmasters. This means they have their age working for them not to mention hundreds of old backlinks pointing toward them. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

On a very happy note, a few nights ago one of my sites turned in a $84 commission on one sale! That’s the best commission I’ve ever received from any of my Build A Niche Store sites.

Ways I’m Promoting My Build A Niche Store Sites

I’m promoting my Build A Niche Store sites just like I have any other website that I’ve owned or worked on. I’m building links slowly so they look natural. I’m using all of the Social Networking sites plus participating in forums that relate to the BANS sites I have.

One of the most effective techniques that I’ve used is buying advertising on other sites. You know the old adage of “It takes money to make money?” Well, I’m here to tell you that it works for BANS sites just as well. I’ve bought banner ads on several forums and other sites relevant to several of my Build A Niche Store sites.

I haven’t done much promoting through PPC. Most of the paid traffic has come through advertising on other sites.

Article Marketing is by far and away my best FREE* advertising to date. If you’re not using a service like Article Marketer to submit your articles to hundreds of places on the Internet, then you’re leaving a lot of traffic on the table.

It’s so damn funny to hear “Guru’s” say article marketing is dead and does not work any longer. Good for them, it means that there’s a tad bit less competition out there! Meanwhile my BANS sites are gaining backlinks and traffic!

*I say “FREE” because you can submit your articles to many directories manually for free. I prefer to pay a few bucks to Article Marketer and automate the process by sending one article to hundreds of places. You gotta work smart!

I’ve also went to DigitalPoint forums and paid someone to manually submit some of my BANS stores to Internet Directories. This has resulted in some nice backlinks as well. Eventually I’ll have all my stores in the free directories then I’ll start focusing on using some paid directories for more authority backlinks.

As I stated above, some of the Social Networking sites are sending good traffic to my sites. You’ll be surprised at how many old ladies use StumbleUpon!

Future Plans For My Build A Niche Store’s

Honestly I believe that I’m building stores faster than I can promote them properly. That’s okay because I can always come back and work on them later. There’s no problem in letting these stores sit and age for a while.

Speaking of aging, I’ve began buying expired domains and just uploading a BANS site to them, changing the colors and adding a header graphic and letting them sit until I can get back to promoting them and SEO’ing the pages. This is working damn good actually! If you have any domains parked somewhere, bring them out of moth balls and add a BANS site to them.

What Hasn’t Worked So Well On My BANS Sites

Unfortunately, Adsense has really sucked on these sites. While some have spikes in CTR, most of the CTR’s are lower than 3%. When your CTR starts averaging less than 3%, it can pull down all your Adsense sites due to Smart Pricing.

I’ve actually started pulling Adsense off of many of my Build A Niche Store sites. Now I do have to tell you that all my Adsense ads are at the lower left sidebar. This is a poor place to put Adsense on any site, so I’m not blaming Adsense entirely.

The reason that they are there is because I also use either affiliate programs and/or Clickbank products on the right side. These have been a big boost to the overall income of my BANS sites. They pay a helluva lot more than Adsense. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that Adsense ads on a BANS site is a poor move.

If you just have to have some type of pay per click advertising, check out these Adsense alternatives.

Build A Niche Store Project Summary

Okay, while most of my sites aren’t doing as well as I hoped (don’t we all have high hopes for our websites?), at the end of the day they’re still making money. They’re paying for their domains and hosting and some are doing much, much better than that. I have a few niche’s that aren’t paying off as I’d hoped. Having said that, I have some small Niches I thought would be ugly ducklings turn out to be beautiful cash generating Princesses!

Some of the first stores I built will be coming out of the Sandbox in the next month or so. So be watching for an update as my older sites start kicking SERP tail.

Also, I’ve had some really nice surprises with the PHPBay wordpress plugin. I’ll give you an update on that in the next day or so.

Don’t Forget The Special Report Bonus

The Special Report “How To Maximize Profits With Ebay Affiliate Programs” is still being offered when buying your BANS program through this site. Read my Build A Niche Store Review for the details. It has many more techniques and tactics for building profitable BANS sites.

If you haven’t looked over the features of the Build A Niche Store program, click here to see them now.

Build A Niche Store – Update

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Since I recieve several emails per week asking “What’s the best affiliate program for Blogs?” or “What’s the best affiliate program on the Internet?”, I figured this had to be a topic more than just a few of you had an interest in.

There are thousands of affiliate programs you could use on your blog, we both know that…right? What you want is the very best affiliate program to make the most money from your blog…am I understanding you correctly?

That’s what I thought.

The Best Affiliate Programs For Blogs

Okay, here’s the secret affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, I’m taking a big chance on letting you in on this secret. I mean, all us affiliate marketers have this big secret meeting each month (special hand shakes and all) where we compare notes as to how many millions we’ve made from the best affiliate program for blogs. We don’t normally share it with outsiders…just the mere fact that I’m mentioning it on this blog puts me in grave danger

Okay, enough jerking you around.

The formula for deciding the best affiliate program for blogs is simple. The best affiliate program for blogs is the affiliate program of a product or service that you’re familiar with and one you can honestly recommend to your readers.

You have to know your product and you have to know the readers of your blog! Stop putting sex ads on your fishing related blog! Just because I happen to enjoy fishing and having sex (not at the same time) doesn’t mean I want to see a bunch of porn ads when I visit your fishing blog. In fact, this turns me off (no pun intended) and you can be damn sure that I won’t click on any ads! I’ll hit the Back button or close the browser first!

You see, there is no “best” affiliate program for blogs. Is there a “best” car ever made, or the “best” fast food joint or the “best” computer, best fishing bait…no. There are just other peoples opinions on what’s the best.

You may think that Fords are best while I believe Chevy’s are the best vehicles on the road. Another blogger may be believe that his 1972 Dodge Dart is the best vehicle ever made.

Yet, if we each had a blog covering the subject of what the best vehicles ever made were, we’d sell you on the advantages of each of our favorite vehicles! If you read the bloggers blog about the 1972 Dodge Dart, chances are many people would be sifting through salvage yards around the World looking for a 1972 Dodge Dart because you trusted and believed what the blogger recommends!

Disclaimer: The 1972 Dodge Dart IS NOT the best vehicle every made…just ask my ex-Wife! =)

You see, you have to believe in something to really sell it. This little nugget of truth has been lost of many a car and real estate salesman, not to mention would-be A-list bloggers. That’s the simple fact.

How To Choose The Best Affiliate Program For A Blog

To begin the process, have a look at this article I posted about how to choose a profitable affiliate program.

During that process, you’ll be choosing an affiliate program based on what your blog’s niche is about (and I hope it isn’t about making money online!).

If you’re blogging about cars, then you’ll have car related affiliate programs on your site. For some people, Adsense pays more than their affiliate programs (although it shouldn’t!)

You see, affiliate programs rely on lots and lots of traffic to generate good sales. So when you’re pet related affiliate products arent’ selling well on your pet related blog, part of the reason could be those 41 rss subscribers you’re feed counter says you have.

You need lots of traffic to make a lot of money from affiliate programs! Chances are if you have low numbers you’re having low sales. In fact, I’d bet the vast majority of blogs fall into this category.

Guys (and gals), it’s like this: There is no magic money making pill out here on the Internet that will make your rich overnight…well…at least legally!

Hard work and “biz smarts” still trump the “get rich quick or walk away after my 1st failure” mentality!

Match affiliate program offers to the subject of your niche and then work on driving targeted traffic to your site. That’s the secret of the best affiliate programs for blogs!

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What?

Yeah, you heard me right. Your links suck!

You see, you proclaim to be a blogger or Webmaster. Yet, you make links like it was 1995! C’mon into the modern Internet age. Today, backlinks are probably the most important off page ranking factors for Google. And if you want to catch a bloggers attention, you’d better make them links properly!

If you’re going to take the time to make a link, then do it right and make it count!

How To Make A Link Like A Rockstar!

To make a proper link that will benefit the blog or website you’re linking to, you first need to structure the link correctly. I have several previous post on how to do this, but I’ll go ahead and spell it out one more time for those of you who are just joining us.

WordPress and many other programs with WYSIWYG editors make creating perfect links easy with the little link icon. Just fill in the URL and “Title” fields and it will take care of the rest.

If you don’t have that option, here is how to make a proper link using HTML code. Let’s say you want to link back to this site. This is how your HTML link structure would look:

<a href=http://www.affiliatewatcher.com” title=”affiliate programs”>Affiliate Programs</a>

This is how it should look when you post your article: Affiliate Programs

Now you’re probably asking yourself why I have the words “Affiliate Programs” as a link instead of something like affiliatewatcher.com. The reason is that the words “Affiliate Program” are my anchor text.

Anchor text tells Google what the page is about that you’re linking too. If you have two identical links and one has anchor text and one doesn’t, the one with anchor text will carry more “weight” with Google than the one without. So when you link to this site with the words “Affiliate Programs,” you’re telling Google this site is about Affiliate Programs.

Notice the red ‘title=”affiliate programs”‘ in the link structure above. Your anchor text goes between the quotes (“”). Your anchor text should be a keyword or keyword phrase that describes the site you’re linking to. Let’s take this site for example again. If you wanted to link to this site, you could use the Anchor Text (keywords);

• affiliate programs
• internet marketing
• top affiliate programs
• best affiliate programs
• ebay affiliate programs.

It’s also important to put the same keyword or keyword phrase (shown in red here) between the …”> and </a> signs.

If you really want to make a blogger or Webmaster notice you when you link to them, bold the Anchor Text (keywords).

Here is an example of how you might link to another blog or website:

Don at AffiliateWatcher.com had an interesting review on ebay affiliate programs. This review got me to thinking of how I could take advantage of the ebay affiliate program on my own blogs.

Notice that I didn’t link the bloggers name or their site’s name. Always use the most relevant keywords describing THE PAGE you’re linking too!

If you’re linking to a story on the front page of a blog, click the story headline and use the page URL for your link. If you just link to the domain, the post may be off the front page when your visitors click on the link.

Also by linking to the exact page, you’re helping that blogger or Wembaster build deep links to his/her interior pages which is excellent for their SEO efforts.

So now you know how to build proper links and the reasons why you should be building the perfect links. No more linking to names and website URL’s! Now that you’re a link building Rockstar, go find those linking Groupies!

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