It’s strange but when you know something, unless it’s a new discovery, you tend to think that everyone else must know it too.

So, forgive me if you know this already. It occurred to me that this might be a useful tip for you if you are selling things as an affiliate.

We’ve all heard, I’m sure, about link cloaking and software packages that are available to cloak links, truth is you don’t need them.

There are many ways of cloaking your links for free.

The first one, which I have used often is to enclose your affiliate link in a php file and place it on your website. Here’s the code you need

<?php $URL=”https://paydotcom.com/r/80713/scraggz/22695654/“;
header (”Location: $URL”);
exit();
?>

All you need do is paste your affiliate link between the ” “, save it with a recognisable name and upload it to your website.

My preferred method is to create a folder for whatever the offer is on my website, put the php file in there and rename it to index.php. Then I can advertise a link like this http://stancraigie.com/answer/

This hides your affiliate link in the first place but when someone clicks on it, it will show in the address bar of the site to which it takes them and 9 times out of 10 will reveal your affiliate link.

So if you want to hide it at that stage as well here’s a free method that I’ve been using for quite some time. Sign up at http://offto.net it’s totally free. There you can cloak your link for free. Not only that but it also tracks the clicks for you and by assigning a nickname you can create several versions of the link, each to track a different campaign. Something like this http://offto.net/scraggz_5164/

The only drawback I’ve found with this service is that you can’t use the links in Aweber or probably any email or email service as, thanks to some of the jugheads who decided this was a great way to spam people, the site is on several blacklists. Offto works at preventing this but as you can imagine it’s a huge task. So, I only use it in the php example or in the background on websites, purely for the tracking statistics that it offers.

Personally I don’t like the look of that link particularly, so I combine the two methods and put the offto link into a php file where the affiliate link goes. When they arrive at the merchants site they will see the offto link which just looks like one of those url shrinkers no hint of what the affiliate link is. A lot of people will still guess that it is an affiliate link though.

Now I could get started here on why people object to buying things through an affiliate link, it’s a weird bit of psychology and I could rant on about it for ages but I won’t. Unfortunately it’s a fact of life, well a fact of the internet that we have to hide the fact that we are an affiliate. With the FTC’s new rules we now have to declare the fact that we may possibly make some money out of it before people click on the link anyway. So they know we’re an affiliate which leaves me totally confused and wondering, sometimes, if it’s all worth it! Yes, it is!

So do we still need to hide the affiliate links? I believe so, for one they look better and more professional and people will still try and change the link to theirs and steal your commissions which is harder to do if they can’t see them.

I have yet another method which I think is really neat and for this one you don’t even need a website! I only found out about this one recently and it’s so good that you can appear to have as many websites as you want. I know of one person who appears to have 3,000 of them!

The site is cjb.net. On the initial screen just enter your affiliate link into the box and it will create a standard type shortened url like http://abk8o.cjb.net. Why you would want to use that when on the next screen it gives you the option to create a custom url like this http://bloghatter.cjb.net. The extra added bonus of this is when anyone clicks on that link, this is the address that appears in the address bar on the merchant’s site. It appears like it’s your site. Click it and see, it’s brilliant.

Although you don’t need a website for this you do need an email address but then who doesn’t have one of those and if you don’t, just go to Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or any one of the hundreds of free email services out there.

Just imagine how many virtual sites you could have all linking to affiliate products.

So , to cloak your links there’s three easy free methods which work really well. I hope you’ve found these tips useful.

Feel free to comment on them or, even better, if you have some good ones of your own I’d love to hear about them.

Watch out for my next post in which I list some of my favourite tools.

I’ve meant on several occasions to get back here and post stuff. I have quite a few good things to post about but other stuff kept getting in the way. I’ll just have to make more of an effort.

Anyway, enough of that. I have finally made it here because this is pretty important and urgent. I’m not sure of the implications of this virus apart from the fact I know it screws up Wordpress blogs.

Earlier this week all of my domains on one server got hit by the virus which is attacking websites hosted on Linux servers. If you have Wordpress sites they will not load and you won’t be able to get into wp-admin, it just comes up with errors in a couple of php files.

It infects index*, default* and *.js files. If you look at one of your index files you will see the virus code at the bottom it starts with ‘<script>/*GNU GPL*/ try{window.onload = function(){var‘. It can
be removed manually but it’s a long  job especially in Wordpress as there are a lot of .js files.

Fortunately there is a removal script at   http://seoforums.org/site-optimization/

I can vouch for the script I ran it on 44 domains and it cleaned them in no time.

You’ve got to wonder where these pricks heads are at!

I’m not taking anything away from Kim’s IPD, it’s still a great product but this new one is something else!

It’s the Niche Profit Classroom by Alen Sultanic and Adam Short and I’ve not seen anything like it in the last two to three years.

I signed up a few days ago and have spent most of the time since watching their videos. There is so much great information in there that it’s hard to tear yourself away.

I thought I knew a lot about niche marketing, I know a helluva lot more now and I’ve only scratched the surface of the information in there.

I’m finding it really difficult to describe this because anything I say is going to sound like hype BUT it really is amazing.

If you’ve ever struggled to pick a niche and great keywords for it or struggled to create a highly optimised site and get highly targeted FREE traffic to it then, seriously, you need to look at this.

AND for another couple of more days you can check it all out for just $1, yes ONE DOLLAR!

You can check out a couple of videos here Niche Profit Classroom Video

It’s not just the 400+ videos of pure, nothing-held-back, step by step instruction on how to generate income online, or the 5 amazing pieces of software you instantly get access to, or the buzzing community with like-minded people who are there for you when you need them.

It’s all this plus

- The MoneyWord Matrix Keyword Tool - Yep, better than about 99% of the keyword tools out there, automatically pinpoints the sweetspot keywords, high search volume low competition.

- Market Scorecard - Tells you if a market and product is going to be profitable, before you even consider going into the market. Let your competitors burn dollars on losing markets while you cherry pick the profit pulling markets.

- Market Profiler - Let’s you *Profile* a market and know exactly who’s doing what. You get a bird’s eye view of the entire market in a single snapshot.

- Market Checklist - Lets you milk every single dollar out of the market (you don’t miss a beat when it comes to generating profits online with this tool).

- 15 Minute Sales Letter Wizard - Let’s you create a converting sales letter in minutes…yes minutes…and it’s better than what most *professional* copywriters would charge you an arm and a leg for.

- How to to create a whole profit producing info-product line for pennies on the dollar (70% less than anyone else is paying). Plus these products are such high quality that your customers will be practically begging to buy more stuff from you. This gives you a HUGE advantage over every single one of your competitors.

- How to cherry pick the most profitable markets out there (using information that other companies spend millions of dollars to collect - that you can use for FREE). You just have to know where to get it..

- How to tap into an unlimited source of FREE traffic from the search engines and slip right under the radar so that *NO ONE* has a clue as to how much you’re really raking in.

- How to set all this on autopilot so that that the *ONLY* thing you have to do is check sales and collect profits (you don’t even have to spend a single minute on customer service).  Plus, a little place to ‘outsource’ your customer service that all the gurus use, yet none talk about…

If you’ve been struggling at any level, if you’re only just getting started or wanting to get started this is the one product that will get you there. If this doesn’t do it then nothing will.

There are a lot of great products out there but they all leave you, in the end, to do it on your own. This one holds your hand every step of the way. I know that I’m going to be successful with it.

Niche Profit Classroom

As we all know the single most important factor in getting your site ranked is backlinks. However, we also know there are backlinks and then there are backlinks. Some are worth a lot more than others!

That really translates to the higher the page rank of the site linking to your site then the more valuable that link is in Google’s eyes.

To get to the point, Chris Rempel ‘The Lazy Marketer’ has just brought out a piece of software that gives you the ability to locate those sites and place your links on them.

This is the most powerful - and simple - linking software and it’s just gone LIVE…

It’s phenomenal.

It lets you place your link on thousands of MAJOR authority sites, who would otherwise NEVER do so without this “exploit”…

Check it out here: The Authority Loophole

Oh - and I think you’ll like the price

Short post but that’s it, all the info you need is on the link page you’d be mad not to check this one out!

That’s a bit blunt isn’t it! But let’s be honest here, I’m having a bit of a bummer of a day and I’m just sick and tired of all the crap that’s peddled around the net about Internet Marketing!

What I said up top is the bottom line for most of us. I don’t deny there are parts of the net where there are genuine selfless souls whose only purpose is to provide assistance to others but that’s not Internet marketing.

Now, having said that, if you’re still with me, It’s no good me recommending rubbish to you. If I do then I lose all credibility, if I’ve got any left after that, because I can only be successful if I help you to be successful. So, I’m only going to recommend products that I believe to be

• Worth the money
• Give real value
• Help you to achieve your goals
• Actually work

So, let’s get to the subject of this review. I’ve been lucky enough to receive a review copy from Chris who I’ve known for while. I won’t be so bold as to call him a friend because we’ve never actually met, yet. However I’ve spoken with him and we communicate via email so I know where he’s coming from and what he’s good at.

Chris has been making a good living, $30,000+ a month, on the net for years in many different niches. If any one can tell you how to dominate a niche then Chris can. Chris already has several successful products to his name,  Automated List Builder, Sneaky Affiliate Cheat, Clickbank Inner Circle to mention a few.

So what will Dominating Niches do for you?

• How to be accepted in any niche.
• How to spot hot trends before they happen and cash in to the fullest (Jump on massive niches like Sudoku long before the competition!)…
• 5 golden rules for keeping your passion out of the way of your profits (The key is making your business pleasurable!)…
• The little-known secret to choosing pen names that inspire trust and loyalty (plus his unique formula for creating easy to remember names)…
• How to easily post traffic blasting audio and videos up in just minutes (employing this simple tactic takes thousands off the table and into your pocket)…
• The sneaky secret that alerts you to the hottest Internet trends by the hour – and how identifying them can mean long-term repeat sales for you…
• Why you should never pay $1,000 for a domain name at auction — and how you’ll dominate any niche just as quickly with a new or expired domain for a tiny fraction of that price…
• His secret weapon for scooping up recently expired domains that thrust your site to the front of the SEO line in any niche you choose…

and heaps more. It’s a massive package.

• A 150 page Dominating Niches PDF
• The Dominating Niches Quick Learning Video Series
• Untapped Niche Explorer Exclusive Software, automatically finds untapped niches
• Dominating Physical Niches “How To” handbook

I could go on and write reams about this product, there is so much in there. This really is a comprehensive product and I’ll be first in line next Tuesday 30th June at 12.00pm EST.

I will be offering bonuses for anyone who purchases through my link next week. Here’s a look at them, click on the links for more information:

• My own Gimp Video series can’t be had anywhere else. Become a Graphics Guru
• Web Traffic Secrets - Video series
• Clickbank Cash Blogs - Video series
• How To Research A Product - Video Series

The last three all have sales pages and rights so you can sell them as your own. Three great products to get started with!

That’s just for starters. There’s a few days to go, I’ll add to them between now and then. In terms of dollars this isn’t the most valuable list of bonuses I’m sure but I’ve aimed at putting together products that will complement and be useful with the information in Dominating Niches.

The pre-launch begins on Sunday 28th June 2009 at 12.00pm EST. But you can click here and sign up for a report which reveals Chris’s secret profitable niche for FREE! It is in fact a full in depth guide of the campaign for this niche. Very educational!

Signing up will also get you a notification of the launch of this fantastic product. I don’t want to sound too hypie but it really is good and packed with value!

Using ezine articles is a great way to promote your favorite affiliate program. What I’d like to do in this article is provide you with a simple system for effectively writing an ezine article that strategically promotes your offer.

There are five steps…

1. CHOOSE THE OFFER YOU WISH TO PROMOTE

This one is kind of a no-brainer. It all begins with deciding what you want to promote. What offer would you like to send traffic to.

HINT: You can promote your affiliate link directly, but what works better is to promote a list at YOUR site which you then use to promote your affiliate link over and over again after the visitor becomes a subscribers.

2. DETERMINE YOUR “USEFUL, BUT INCOMPLETE” APPROACH.

I love to use what I have coined as the “useful, but incomplete” approach when using freebies of any kind. (Ezine articles, free eBooks, reports, eCourses, etc.)

What I mean by that is simply this: You provide your reader with “useful” information (something they find of value and are able to actually apply) but make certain that it is
“incomplete” in that they can better use the information by making a purchase.

That’s “useful, but incomplete.” And it works like a charm.

The idea is to use your content to build up to your desired response. You provide the reader with content, and then you make an offer that allows them to fully utilize the
content, gain extra insight from the content or maximize the content in some additional way.

Let me give you an example -

If I wanted to promote an autoresponder service in an ezine article, how could I do it? I’d write an article that explains how to benefit from using autoresponders. My article would exlain different uses of autoresponders and how the reader could profit from implementing the ideas.

** For Example: 7 Ways To Create Revenue Streams With Autoresponders

Naturally, they will need an autoresponder service in order to use the information, right? And I just happen to know of a great service they can use. More on that later.

OK, so that’s an example of how to promote a SERVICE offer with your ezine article. What about a software product or an eBook?

Want some examples?

Good, because I’ve got two…

TO PROMOTE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT. Let’s suppose you want to promote a software program that creates “ecovers”. How can you do it?

– Write an article outlining how important presentation of your offer is, and how creating a cover graphic can increase response rates by up to 1300%

– Write a step-by-step tutorial article for “do-it-yourselfers”, explaining how to design your own graphics from scratch. Then promote the software as a super-simplified way of doing it.

TO PROMOTE AN EBOOK. Let’s suppose you want to promote an ebook that teaches advanced list-building strategies. How can you do it?

– Write an article that covers the “basics” of building lists, and then promote the eBook as the “advanced” tactics.

– Write an article on how to profit from a list, and then promote the eBook as the “how to build the list.”

See how easy this is?

That’s how it works. Determine what your “useful, but incomplete” approach will be, and then…

3. TURN YOUR APPROACH INTO A TIPS OR TUTORIAL ARTICLE.

Let’s use my example again. I decided that I would describe various uses of  autoresponders and how the reader can actually profit from them. What kind of tips list or tutorial could I create?

* How to Generate More Subscribers, Sales and Profits With Automated Follow-Up Messages”

* 7 Powerful And Profitable Ways To Use Autoresponders To Skyrocket Your Sales and Subscribers!

* Want to Increase Your Online Profits And Leads? Here are 7 Ways to Do It…

I actually went with the middle title. I wrote my list of the 7 ideas that I wanted to share. And I had the makings of a perfect article to promote an offer.

That’s all you need to do. Determine your end result. Decide how to get there with your “useful, but incomplete” approach. And then develop a list, or even a step-by-step tutorial for your article that leads the reader along.

With each new “idea” or “way” or “tip” or “step” or “strategy” that you share, you can further direct the reader towards realizing their need of your upcoming offer, and lay the
foundation for them to accept the offer.

4. EXPAND ON EACH POINT TO BUILD YOUR CONTENT.

Here’s more of the easy part. Just “fill-in-the-blanks” to complete your article. Write 1-2 short paragraphs for each of your points. Make them good. Provide quality content. The offer you will soon make will see poor results if your information isn’t useful.

Remember, you are trying to presell the reader on the idea that they are going to need your offer. If you don’t provide them with quality information that they WANT to begin using immediately, then why will they want to buy what you are promoting?

Light a fire in them. Motivate them. Challenge them. Give them such nuggets of gold that they want to keep mining until they hit the mother lode!

5. PUT ON THE FINISHING TOUCHES WITH THE “FIVE PILLARS”

There are five things that you should always do to finish up your ezine article. Don’t skip any of them. They are all critical…

* POLISH. Re-read your article. Does it provide information that really is “useful” to the reader? And yet leaves them wanting even more? That’s what you want. Polish it. Put
on the wax and make it shine. It has a very specific purpose — make certain it has the means to achieve it.

* PROMOTE. Use your resource box to promote your offer. This is why we’ve written the article, right? Remember step one? It’s time to put it into play. Give the reader what they
(hopefully) are wanting…a way to maximize the information you gave them.

* PROOF. Don’t do this yourself. Have a trusted friend, relative or co-worker check your article for grammatical and typographical errors. The last thing you want to do is present
a poor image after sharing some high quality information.

* PUBLISH. Zip your new article out to your favorite list of publishers. Submit it to the announcement lists and the ezine directories. Don’t forget to publish it yourself in your own newsletter!

* PROFIT. If you’ve covered all the bases that I’ve mentioned, then profits are almost certain to start coming in when your ezine article is published. You deserve it. Be proud of your accomplishments.

And then start it all over again!

That’s how you promote your favorite affiliate program in 5 easy steps using ezine articles.

Obviously, there are many other ways to promote your affiliate program, as well as a considerable more “details” in the strategy we’ve looked at today. If you’d like 52 great ways to promote your affiliate link AND complete step-by-step details for each of them, be sure to read the important details below…

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliatenaire”, teaching you how to create big-time affiliate commission checks in only 1-3 hours each week. Discover how you can get cash in
the bank without a website, experience or even an idea!
Download a free copy of Jimmy’s Bigtime Commission Checks report here.

Why I never made a post about it, I don’t know! Too many things on the go I guess.

Anyway, it was leading up to the launch of his latest project which, as the title suggests is called Resell Rights Fortune. I know what you’re thinking, so what, there’s tons of resell rights products and sites out there, yeah?

Well, honestly not like this one. Socrates has built a database of just about every resell rights and PLR product out there so that you can search for what you want by title, subject whatever. This means you can find the product you’re looking for in seconds and be on your way.

That’s great on it’s own but Socrates has included tons of extras all aimed at you maximising your use of the products.

If you didn’t get to see the first two videos, both of which exposed incredibly easy ways to build your list and make money in the process. Then go to this page which has a sneak peak tour of Resell Rights Fortune and you can access those early videos in the right hand sidebar.

These first two videos could easily be sold for a substantial price, they really do contain great, usable information from which you can easily profit.

Now, the thing is, Resell Rights Fortune is still in pre-launch until 16th June and is discounted until then.

So, if you are ever considering using resell rights or PLR products in the future now is the time to get in or pay more in a few days time.

If you’ve seen the videos or just want to see the whole package then head over to Resell Rights Fortune before it’s too late.

Why I Love Affiliate Marketing - Part 3

By Jimmy D. Brown of “Affiliatenaire”

Some people have the ability to persuade others and talk them into just about anything. Especially when it comesto influencing their buying decisions. They know how to push the right hot buttons, say things the right way and generally get consumers into an emotional frenzy to the point they are ready to click an order button.

There are two key words in that paragraph that really needto stand out in your mind: “some people”.

Not everyone has this ability. In fact, only a few do.

That brings me to the third reason why I love affiliate marketing…

** You don’t need to write a world class salesletter**

Have you ever tried to write a salesletter? There’s a reason why professional copywriters charge up to $10,000 (and sometimes even more) for a SINGLE salesletter. It takes a lot of experience and skill to write a top-gun salesletter, which is why most people have a hard time convincing people to buy if they do create their own products and website.

They simply don’t have the right salesletter in place to make it all work. Without good copy, it really doesn’t matter how spectacular the offer is, you’re simply not going to get many sales.

SIDEBAR: The average conversion rate of site visitors who become buyers is reportedly less than 2%. That means 98 out of every 100 do NOT buy. That’s why sales are so incredibly bad for a poor site … you *might* get 2 sales out of every 300-400 visitors.

BUT, with affiliate marketing, you don’t need to write a salesletter! You simply direct people to someone else’s high-octane salesletter for THEM to convert your leads into commissionable sales.

That’s why I love affiliate marketing.

You don’t need to write a world class salesletter.

…………………….

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliatenaire”, teaching you how to create big-time affiliate commission checks in only 1-3 hours each week. Discover how you can get cash in
the bank without a website, experience or even an idea!

For more information visit http://freeinfo-zone.com/affpay/

…………………….

Gareth at youshouldreadmore.com  advised me that he had been warned that the use of iframes was against Clickbank’s TOS. Now, I couldn’t find it in their TOS or policies but it is in the Hoplink FAQs items 10 and 11.

10. Will I get referral credit if I hide HopLinks by making them open into a frame, iframe, layer, applet, image, or other sub-window object?

No. These are illegal HopLinks. For security reasons, and to ensure proper tracking of your referrals, all HopLinks must be targeted to the top level of a new or existing window.

11. What happens if I do make illegal HopLinks?

The short answer is that if you make illegal HopLinks you will lose money.

HopLinks targeted to frames or iframes are automatically retargeted to fill the top level of same window, with full affiliate referral credit awarded. Note that this retargeting may have the unintended effect of displacing your entire web site.

HopLinks targeted to images or other invisible html objects give you no affilate referral credit at all. In some cases they will also prevent you from receiving affiliate referral credit for legal HopLinks on the same page.

Accounts that are found to be abusing the HopLink system may be terminated without notice.

I don’t want to be responsible for anyone getting their accounts terminated so I mention this here as a disclaimer and I guess you use iframes at your own risk. On the face of it though, it doesn’t seem to be a good idea as the implication is you won’t get paid anyway.

So, going on from this, if you still want/need to cloak your affiliate links then you could do worse than look at a site of Jonathan Leger’s Offto net. This is a free service and converts your long links into this http://offto.net/wed6vk/. There is an added benefit of Offto links that helps you to get additional traffic.

Here’s an excerpt from Jon’s blog (15th April 2009) on the traffic that Offto gets and how it can benefit you.

“The site has cloaked over 4,500 new links in the last 30 days, and has delivered 9,616,267 raw clicks in the last year and a half. It’s averaging 200,000-300,000 unique visitors per month, and has built my email list by more than 4,600 opted-in users.

That’s all great, but how does it help you? I’m getting to that part.

You see, more than 20,000 of those visitors each month are coming from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. At first I was scratching my head about this, asking myself why on earth the site was getting so much love from the search engines (not that I was complaining, mind you!)

So I started taking a look at the keywords the site was ranking for, and it only astounded me even more. Only about 10% of that traffic was coming from keywords relating to the name of the site — people just looking for OffTo.

MOST of the traffic was coming from keywords ranging everywhere from “free tee shirts” to “hypoglycemia diet”.

That’s when it hit me — the thing about OffTo that should motivate you to use it when cloaking all of your links.

You see, ol’ OffTo has racked up a HUGE number of links to its pages (76,259 according to Yahoo! Site Explorer). That massive number of in-bound links has given OffTo a lot of authority in Google’s eyes, and so its pages are ranking very well for the keywords the engines are finding on those pages.

It’s the same kind of effect that causes the pages of Wikipedia to rank for so many different keywords. Tons of links means the pages will rank for just about anything.

How does this benefit you?

In case it’s not clear yet, this benefits YOU because when you cloak your links using OffTo, your cloaked links will often end up ranking for the keywords on the cloaked page (especially if you choose a link name that has your keywords in it). That means EXTRA traffic from the search engines, for free!

In order to benefit from this extra traffic, you want to be sure the “Hide links to affiliate program on landing page” box is checked when you create the cloaked link, since that’s what causes the page to get cached and ranked in the engines.

So the next time you need to use a link cloaker, I strongly recommend you do yourself a favor and get some f.ree traffic by using OffTo.net.”

Here’s the Link

Offto.net

This is becoming a long post but there is one more thing I HAVE to tell you about.

You know I like to try and bring you Free stuff and this has to be the freebie of the year!

The one thing that will help you make it on the net is traffic and/or subscribers, preferably both.

Socrates Socratous, the creator of MyDD digital download software is releasing a new site, Resell Rights Fortunes but he has just released a free video showing how you can get a 3345 subscriber list completely on autopilot. He also points you to a free version of the software that he uses to do this ($47 value). Free video

If you don’t grab this then you aren’t serious about building a business and making money on the net! I’ve already watched this and implemented it in less than two hours! I will do more. Imagine the results from one a day for a couple of weeks!

Seriously, this is, without exception, one of the most useful things I’ve ever seen, paid stuff included. Grab it while it’s still there. Free video

Why I Love Affiliate Marketing - Part 2

By Jimmy D. Brown of “Affiliatenaire”

Pop quiz time. What does “HTML” stand for? Don’t know that one? How about this - what does “FTP” stand for? OK, one more chance. Do you know how to work with either?

That brings me to the second reason why I love affiliate marketing…

** You don’t need to build a website **

What scares people more than creating a product is building a website!

•  What in the world is HTML? Or FTP?
•  How much does the software cost? And hosting?
•  How do I upload files?
•  Why isn’t it formatted correctly?
•  Why don’t my graphics look like the ones the pros have?

If you are a complete beginner, it can be very difficult (even using templates) to get an attractive website in place.  And hiring a professional to do it fo ryou is out of the budget for most people.

But, with affiliate marketing, you don’t need to build a website. You simply send visitors to someone else’s professionally designed site through your affiliate link.

SIDEBAR: Just in case you’re interested, HTML stands for “hypertext markup language” and is the coding used to build webpages. FTP stands for “file transfer protocol” and is the process used for moving files from your computer to a website, or vice versa.

Really, in a manner of looking at it, you get to take advantage of the time and money invested by someone else to develop the site. Think about it: when you promote an
affiliate link, it reflects firstly upon YOU. You are the one who is advertising the link, recommending the product, sending people who have interacted with YOU to the website.

The professional site of someone else really represents you as the promoter, in the eye of those who have clicked through your link.

You get the benefits without the bother.

That’s why I love affiliate marketing.

You don’t need to build a website.

…………………….

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliatenaire”, teaching you how to create big-time affiliate commission checks in only 1-3 hours each week. Discover how you can get cash in
the bank without a website, experience or even an idea!

For more information visit http://freeinfo-zone.com/affpay/

…………………….

Why I Love Affiliate Marketing - Part 1

By Jimmy D. Brown of “Affiliate Payraise”

Do you find yourself “starting” to create your own product to sell online, but never finishing” it?

One of the things I love about affiliate marketing is –

** You don’t need to create your own products **

Many people find the idea of creating their own products to be an overwhelming and even paralyzing task.

•  I don’t have any good ideas!
•  I’m not a writer!
•  There’s too much competition!
•  I don’t know how to set everything up!
•  I can’t figure out where to start!
•  It’s too hard!

These are just a few of the valid reasons many people give when it comes to not creating their own products to sell. I’m sure with a few minutes of brainstorming, we could come
up with a list of many more.

With affiliate marketing, you don’t need your own products. You simply promote someone else’s already proven successful offer for a commission.

And, truth be told, even if you ARE a writer and you DO have lots of ideas and you CAN figure it all out…

** Nobody wants to create new products all the time **

As good as you may be, you don’t know everything!  Why try to create a product on every topic imaginable in your market when you can earn just as much money by simply
promoting someone else’s really good offer as one of your profit streams?

That’s why I love affiliate marketing.

You don’t need to create your own products.
…………………….
Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliate Payraise”, teaching you a whopping 27 ways to increase your affiliate commissions! Tired of “tiny” commission checks?  Grab your copy today at… http://freeinfo-zone.com/affpay/
…………………….

Oh yeah! I was talking about stolen commissions and affiliates in the first half of this post.

Do you like sneaky? I like sneaky! Not black hat or anything nasty, just sneaky.

I’m referring to the use of iframes to link to other peoples products. Using iframes totally hides where the link has come from. It does way more than just that though.

With an iframe you basically display the target site within your page this means that you can put your own page title with keywords of course. Talking of keywords you can also put your own keywords into the page and therefore go after your own ranking in the SERPs.

See why I say this is way more than just simple cloaking. There’s no way you could hope to rank for a normal cloaked link and with an iframe no one would even guess that it was an affiliate link.

I’m now going to contradict myself and tell you about another free service for cloaking your links! Why would I do that when I’ve just pointed you to a better way?

Well, this one has a couple of useful advantages that don’t relate to affiliate type links. It’s similar to the old tinyurl in that it shortens your links. It’s also reputed to help with backlinks, never a bad thing.

Where I use it mostly is in emails to my list and in Twitter posts. You need to keep things short in Twitter.

So what is it? It’s a new service from Jonathan Leger. How does he keep coming up with stuff? Offto.net is his latest brainchild. Here’s an example of a link http://offto.net/rufolx/  which just happens to take you to offto.net to find out more, all totally free!

Just drifting off subject for a minute with the mention of Twitter. I have been on Twitter for a while but I’m still not sure that I get it!

I’ve read a few books. listened to a few people so I guess I’ve covered it all but I still don’t quite get it. It seems a bit like a free for all. Like the traffic exchanges where you have to look at everyone else’s links and everyone else looks at your links and you hope  someone clicks on them.

Everyone’s putting links in Twitter with the same hope. Apart from a few people with big reputations and big lists already I don’t think it happens. Still, I suppose, you’ve got to be in it!

On the subject of getting ranked in the SERPs, it’s a well known fact that Wordpress blogs get ranked a lot easier than normal sites, Google likes ‘em.

It therefore makes sense to use Wordpress to create your sites instead of standard HTML. I’ve been doing this for a while with some good results but in keeping with not wanting to re-invent the wheel and tell you how I do it, last week I found a really handy little guide to doing just that. Caroline Middlebrook has produced this free guide and you can get it from her site at http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/.

While we’re on Wordpress I just found a salespage theme for it. It’s template driven and you can create a very professional looking salespage in minutes at $5 it’s cheap as chips.

Without ANY knowledge of HTML you can quickly get one of the 8 styles of the salesletter on your blog. The theme is done very professionally and has lots of nice, neat design elements. You can see it here: http://offto.net/09jiak

Well, this half of the post has gone on a bit as well! I’m sure I’ve given you lots to look at and be going on with. I’ve got a few more but I’ll leave those for next time.

If you have any useful tips or tools you found I’d be glad to hear about them so feel free to post a comment. It’ll get you a backlink and every little helps.

I can’t say that it was the most productive ever but it came pretty close. What it was exceptionally good for was the discovery of tons of free tools that are going to take my business to the next level. And, I want to share them with you! So, grab a drink and sit back there’s quite a bit.

First up. We’re all aware that one of the most critical factors in getting you’re site ranked is backlinks. Generally it’s not easy. It needs you to contact, basically, your competitors in your market and request that they link to you’re site. Very time consuming and frustrating ‘cos you’ll not get replies and you’ll get knock backs.

You can join a service like Linkvana which is excellent but expensive, $147 a month I believe.

What if you could get Linkvana for free? Well, you can’t but you can get something which is practically the same, for free. I’ve never used Linkvana so I can’t say this is identical but I’m told it’s very similar.

The Free Traffic System. Totally free, no hidden costs, no OTOs. It works like an article directory except that your articles are posted on relevant co-operating blogs with your links in your keyword anchor text. There are two links per article and this can get you up to 60 backlinks for each article and no limit on how many articles you submit. Pretty cool, huh?

There’s a lot more to it than that but that gives you the basic idea. Go here and get into it!

Next. Even if you are not into article marketing and you should be, we all have to produce content. Now the duplicate content debate will go on forever, whichever side of it you’re on it can’t hurt to vary your content. I have two tools that will help you with this one free and I’m afraid the other one will cost you a bit, not a lot.

To easily compare content there is a fantastic free tool - Dupefree Pro - I can’t believe this is free, it’s a very classy piece of software.

It’s all for free, get it here Dupefree Pro.com.

Now here’s the one you are going to want to get your wallet out for. Magic Article Re-Writer. As the name suggests it helps you re-write articles, duh! I know, most of them are crap and I’ve shied away from them in the past also, despite having paid over $100 in some cases. I refunded them. One would have been good but it would have taken about a year before it was useful as you had to build your own thesaurus over time!

This one you can use straight out of the box and intelligently re-write/spin content in minutes, up to a 1000 copies! I’m not sure about that, it could be more but who cares, would you want that many copies? It produces good English no more crappy grammar.

I said I was busy last week, this piece of software is one of the reasons, I’ve been re-writing content and spinning articles like crazy. It really is brilliant and not expensive.

There’s the usual money back guarantee so there’s no risk. Seriously, you have to try it, - Magic Article Re-Writer.

This post is going on a bit and I’ve still got more, quite a bit in fact, so I’m going to take a break, grab a coffee, go to the can, too much information? OK, delete that bit. I’ll be back a bit later and carry on in the next post.

You will not want to miss it. If you operate as an affiliate the next tool will knock your socks off! Ever had commissions stolen? Yeah sure, you’ve heard of cloakers etc. but not like this. This one can also help your ranking in the search engines!

Tune in later, you won’t be disappointed!

Story Number One

Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed ‘Easy Eddie.’ He was Capone’s lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie’s skill at legal manoeuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well. Not only was the money big, but also, Eddie got special dividends. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.

Eddie did have one soft spot, however.. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong.

Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was. Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn’t give his son; he couldn’t pass on a good name or a good example. One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done.

He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great… So, he testified.

Within the year, Easy Eddie’s life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street.
But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay.

Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine.

The poem read:

‘The clock of life is wound but once,
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.’

Story Number Two

World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O’Hare.

He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.

One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission.

After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.

He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier.

Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet. As he was returning to the mother ship he saw something that turned his blood cold: a squadron of Japanese aircraft was speeding its way toward the American fleet.

The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenceless. He couldn’t reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger.

There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet. Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes.

Wing-mounted 50 calibres blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another.

Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly.

Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction. Deeply relieved, Butch O’Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier.

Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch’s daring attempt to protect his fleet.

He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942. and for that action Butch became the Navy’s first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honour.

A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His home town would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.

So What Do These Two Stories Have To Do With Each Other?

Butch O’Hare was ‘Easy Eddie’s’ son.

(Pretty cool, huh?)

One of the questions that has always bugged me is the value of subdomains in terms of SEO. There are as many differing opinions about subdomains as there are people on the net, almost!

I like subdomains, that doesn’t mean to validate their usefulness but here’s a couple of reasons I like them.

• Having some Scottish blood in me I’m careful with my money, most of the time! If you’re wanting to put up lots of mini sites then a generic domain like freeinfo-site.com lends itself to subdomains like identitytheft-freeinfo-site.com and you aren’t shelling out for a new domain name every time you want to put up a new site. Once you’re making squillions of dollars it probably isn’t a problem but when you’re starting out it can be a killer of an expense.
• Financials aside one key SEO strategy is to have your keywords in the URL of your site. What better way than to use a subdomain? Try and get a TLD of makemoney.com whereas makemoney.freeinfo-site.com you can have for nothing. BUT does that mean it’s useful?

There are so many other factors involved in getting ranked in the search engines that it’s difficult without extensive testing, over a long period of time, to isolate one individual aspect’s effect.

I asked Jon Leger this question and he has had subdomains that have ranked highly. He also pointed me to a post, Google to Begin Treating Subdomains as Folders: Max 2 Results Per Search, which he believes has made people think subdomains aren’t as valuable. Where, in reality, if you read that post, it is just Googles continued mission to provide the best variety of results to searches.

By implication a single domain name wasn’t getting ranked multiple times, for that reason, so webmasters tried to circumvent the algorithm by using subdomains to get their TLD listed more often. The change there just brought subdomains back in line with domains.

My personal opinion, I can’t see any logical reason why subdomains shouldn’t be as effective and I certainly have two positives for using them.

I really am interested in other people’s opinion on this so please leave a comment. At the very least you’ll get a link to your site. Always good for SEO and feel free to link to here.

Non profit and social sites will get traffic by their very nature. The sites are there to fulfill a demand as people are already interested in what they are about. If you have a business site unless you are a branded corporation no one will know it’s there. So, assuming there is a demand for what your site offers you need to let people know it’s there. You can pay for traffic or work at getting it for free. There are heaps of sources for free traffic.

There are, of course, all the evergreen methods for free traffic. Article marketing, link building (exchanges etc.), Ezines and Newsletters, Forum marketing, SEO, Press releases. All these methods are still valid, article marketing particularly so but the world of Web 2.0 is taking over.

So what is Web2.0? Lots of people have different ideas on what constitutes Web 2.0 but here’s a quote from webtrends.about.com which I reckon comes pretty close.

Web 2.0 is the move toward a more social, collaborative, interactive and responsive web. It is a change in the philosophy of web companies and web developers, but more than that, Web 2.0 is a change in the philosophy of society as a whole.

Probably the beginning of web 2.0 type sites has to be traced back to blogs. In the beginning they were pretty much diaries or soapboxes where people would write about the life, happenings, hobbies or rant about politics and things that concerned them.

Now they cover every subject imaginable, like this one! A few years ago the other type of web 2.0 sites appeared, the social sites. Facebook, Myspace etc. Then Squidoo, Hubpages, blogger and many, many more.

So now we have an idea of Web 2.0 how do we use it? There are reams of books on using these Web 2.0 sites but the basic premise is to be sociable. Join these sites put up your own pages on the subject of the market you are in, provide quality content and interact with other people with the same interests.

It’s necessary to establish credibility before you can start marketing to these groups and even then it should be done in a helpful way rather than an in your face fashion. Direct people to sites, like your blog, that also have information relevant to the subject and of course affiliate links or links to your products.

The idea is to lead people rather than push them.

The one thing about all these sites is that they are free to join and participate and, therefore, so is the traffic that originates from them.

As I said there are reams of books on Web 2.0 and Social site marketing, if you would like a quick, free, informative 5 part e-course on Web 2.0 traffic you can access one at http://web20traffictricks.com. There is also a free report ‘Social Networking Exposed’ which gives a concise but detailed, no fluff, how to get started with the social sites.

As always I am very interested to learn your thoughts on the information I provide so please feel free to leave your comments.

OK, it wasn’t a huge list to start with but never the less you’ve got to be happy with that. I am!

So how did it happen, bearing in mind that it didn’t cost me a cent?

No big secret really, it was a giveaway. I signed up, contributed a gift and the optins followed.

At the moment there are a ton of giveaways on the go. Ordinarily you’d think that they’d be full of the same old stuff. It’s true that some of the same products pop up in all of them, mine will.

I’m going to make the most of this while I can because as everyone knows if you want to really make it on the internet, business wise, you need a list! Although everyone kept saying that, it took a long time for it sink in with me but the last couple of months have proved it’s true beyond any doubt. You need a list!

It goes a little further than that though, in that having a list is how you reach the people you are trying to help.

This is really the subject for another post but briefly your list is the group of people you are trying to help, not just bleed money out of. You make money when you help others with what they want or need. No deep philosophy there, it’s just the way the World works.

So back to the giveaways. As I said there are a lot on the go and I really recommend you get into them. I’ve listed a few that I have checked out and they have a good variety of good products on offer. There’s software, ebooks, templates, graphics, videos….all sorts of stuff.

I want you to be able to take part as a contributor. For that you need a product. It doesn’t have to be your own, anything that you have giveaway rights for can be used.

It’s better if you have your own for obvious reasons. You won’t be competing with someone else with the same product. It’s not hard to do that, rework a PLR product it’s really not that hard and shouldn’t take that long. Open Office is free and you can open word documents in it and output them as PDF’s.

Turn a PLR PDF into a slide show, make the slide show into a video and give that away. It will definitely be yours and unique. Again Open Office has a Powerpoint type app that creates slideshows. You can get a free copy of Camtasia 3 here. It’s not the latest version but it works fine. In fact it’s the version I’m still using.

Anyway, here are the giveaways:

Back To Basics Giveaway

I really like this one. It’s being run by Scott Case and Scott has stipulated that all products for the giveaway have to be less than six months old. So no chance of it being full of old rehashed stuff. Last I heard there were over 200 products. It starts on the 6th April.

100% Giveaway

Another great givaway. This one runs until 20th April. The link above will take you to the contributors signup if you just want to join to get free stuff go here.

Easter Giveaway

Some really good packages in here too. This is open until the 21st April. Again if you want to sign up as a contributor use the link above, otherwise you can just join here.

I’ll leave it at those for now. Try and join as a contributor, with a unique product if you can. It really is a great way to increase your subscribers.

I bought this product a couple of days ago because I’m always open to new ways of market research. In the past I’ve bought tons of information on this subject most of which has been the same old stuff with the odd extra little bit.

In truth I’ve spent a small fortune on it. Being the perpetual optimist I keep believing and looking for that product that will give me more. I always knew there had to be more to it than I’d already seen. This time I believe I’ve struck gold!

Kim Roach, a lady from Kentucky has come up with the most complete method of getting going on line from start to finish, especially if you’re just starting out. I wish I’d had this a couple of years ago!

Now, I only mentioned market research but that’s just the start of it, throw in Squeeze pages, Traffic, Link Building and Email Marketing. 30 Videos and a 182 page instruction manual.

I’ll let Kim explain it to you, she can do it a whole lot better than I, just press play

[payday]9XjBclJzACs[/payday]

So far I’ve only watched the first 2 videos on market research and I’ve already learned a heap of new techniques. I’ve also watched the first traffic video and ditto, picked up so many new great ideas.

This is either stuff, the so called gooroo’s have been keeping quiet or Kim is just brilliant. ‘Course I may just be a bit slow and some of you may have figured some of this stuff out but I now know a helluva lot more than I did after just 10% of the content.

There is one drawback to this. There is so much stuff that you will have to watch the videos over and over to get it all to sink in.

Now I didn’t tell you this but if you exit the sales page you’ll pick up a discount, shhhsh! I had heard that the discount was to finish a few days ago but when I just checked it’s still there. Kim also offers her 8 week ‘Love It Or Shove It!’ money back guarantee, you cannot lose! You owe it to yourself to try this, really, it’s the best thing I’ve seen, ever!

I’m off to watch some more videos.

Now where was I?…… Sorry, I drifted off there, I sometimes give in to that day dream too easily!

Oops………. it happened again. What I hope to do is to give you a feel for how to approach the whole thing.

There are numerous ways to approach making money on the internet and just as many different ways of approaching each of them.

Before you decide on the method of actually making money you need to decide where you are going to make money. In other words you  need to find your market. Which brings us to market selection and more targeted, to niche selection.

You have more than likely heard the phrase ad nausium  but it really is crucial. I have wasted hours of time and not a little money in the past on bad niche and product selection.

I don’t believe that niche selection was so important in the early days of net, like 6 or 7 years ago when a lot of the big names made their names but as the internet has increased in size it is now critical. To define what it is, a market would be something high level like ‘Golf” and a niche could be ‘ladies left handed nine irons.’

Now, at this point I could take you through a niche discovery tutorial for the rest of this post but I’m not going to, pretty mean huh?

One other lesson I learned a long time ago is not to try and re-invent the wheel so I’m going to point you to a free download.

‘How To Uncover Red-Hot Niches With A Simple, Step-By-StepFormula’ otherwise known as ‘The Niche Inspector Formula‘ by Myleena Phan creator of the Niche Inspector software. The information in this ebook was the formula behind the Niche Inspector software which I used for long time, it was brilliant.

Sadly, it no longer works. The software used to validate users when it was started up. The validation no longer works as it appears the database behind it no longer exists. Even sadder, it appears that something may have happened to Myleena as she was always very responsive with her support but nowadays is not contactable.

Bee in the bonnet time. I believe every product owner has the right to protect their work but this sort of protection is flawed as there are now hundreds if not thousands of people, me included, who can no longer use a product that they paid good money for.

Anyway I digress, back to the book. There are some links and references including a video about Niche Inspector which are obviously redundant so you can ignore those.

Myleena used to use the Overture Inventory Tool although later versions of the software moved to Google as Overture became defunct. So references and links to Overture are also useless. I think it takes you to Yahoo Search Advertising.

Apart from those little issues the bulk of it is still an excellent grounding in Niche selection and this is the first skill you need to master whether you’re just starting out or have been at it for a while.

No opt in or sign up you can just grab it for free here.

That has to be the shortest post in blogging history!

Tempted as I am to set a new record, I really can’t leave it there.

If, like me you’ve been nutting away at this thing for what seems like years and probably is, there will have been times when you wonder if it really is possible.

When I start to think like that I look at the numbers. It is a numbers game. According to the latest statistics, globally, there are 1,574,313,184 internet users. Asia has the most at 650,361,843. Europe is next then North America with 246,822,936 online.

How many of those do you need in order to give up your job? 1000, 2000? 5000 is .00002% of the people online in North America. With 5000 customers at only $20 you would have an income of $100,000.

So, you really don’t have to grab much of the online population to make decent money.

However, what’s the percentage of those users who are also trying to make an income, your competition? I don’t know!

When I get to thinking about that aspect of it I look in the Yellow Pages. Go on take a look. The Yellow Pages is usually two volumes, if you live in a reasonably sized area and pretty thick too. Check out vets, plumbers, electricians you’ll find hundreds of them and they must all be making a living and paying for Yellow Pages ads which aren’t cheap! OK, one aspect of the Yellow Pages is location within the larger area but the larger area, a decent size city is what, maybe a couple of million. A pinhead in comparison to the internet!

What if you had a $97 product for your 5000 customers? That’s $485,000. $97 products aren’t that unusual and plenty of them get sold. Frank Kern just released Mass Control 2.0. I believe there were 500 copies, I know there were at least 500 copies, it cost $1997, that’s $998,500 from only 500 sales.

Now I know we’re not all Frank Kerns but we don’t have to be. Do you see what I’m getting at. The numbers, it’s a number’s game. you only have to capture a small, heck, a minute, part of the online population to make substantial returns.

Easier said than done, I know but then isn’t everything?

Obviously you need to do a lot of stuff to get there but before you get to do all that stuff you have to believe it’s possible.

That’s been the point of this, I’m not there yet, I’m starting to do OK but I really believe it’s possible if only because of the numbers.

My biggest failing is I keep wanting to learn something new and I get distracted. Unfortunately that was the nature of my job, I had to keep learning and getting certified on the latest OS or network gear, it’s become ingrained and I have to resist it and get on with what I’m doing at the time.

Surprisingly, whenever I focus and see a project through it’s usually successful.

So, here’s my advice, FOCUS and PERSISTENCE, don’t give up and believe it’s achievable, believe in the numbers.