In this post I am going to share the techniques that will help you drive traffic to your sites.

1. When you are unknown, socialize
Social networking sites are now hot places to network with like minded people. In the virtual world of World Wide Web, you meet a lot of people from different corners of the world. This social networking sites has the potential to open a lot of subways to your website and drive traffic to your site. This is one of the most effective and economical ways to get visitors. Some of the networking sites you should definitely consider to promote your sites on are:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Orkut
• hi5
• Stumbleupon
• Ning

2. The long tail Keyword and search engine traffic
There is a lot of targeted traffic waiting for you to be taken free of cost, if you can learn the technique of long tail keyword. Whenever you write an article, ask yourself 3 questions.

• What kind of audience will be interested in the information you are providing in this article?
• What are the possible phrases they may use to search this information in search engines?
• Where these phrases used in the past on major search engines?

The answers to the above will help you find a list of keywords for that particular post/page. Now make sure you have those phrases sprinkled in the article. Make them bold.

Try to have one of your main keyword in the title of the post. If you do this for every article you write, you will soon see your site rank high in the search results for those keywords. And you will see a surge in your traffic from search engines.

3. Stumbling your way to unlimited traffic
Stumbleupon has proved to be a great traffic sender. It helps you connect with friends and share your posts, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering. The more people stumble your site (vote thumbs up), the more traffic you get. Creating a big network of friends can bring a lot of rewarding traffic that can be beyond your expectations.

Stumbleupon users channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon recommends the sites based on user interests and display them those sites which have received more reviews and thumbs up. So the more positive stumbles your web pages receive, the more it will be recommended to StumbleUpon users.

4. Share your views with others in your niche
Search for forums and blogs which are in your niche. Make a list of those sites and keep visiting them regularly. Reply to queries of other members and share your views. Networking with others in your niche will help you gain traffic from those sites and you will also become a known person in your target niche. Make sure the content you post on others blog or forums is worth to read. Also don’t spam. Spamming can have a negative effect and make you less credible.

• If you have written some great articles, email other bloggers in your niche and chances are they will link to it.
• Make sure you have your site url linked to your main keyword in the signature of forum posts.
• Write comments on other blogs
• Write guest posts for other blogs in your niches

5. Write articles in article directories
Article directories are one of the best ways to get back links. Write quality articles and submit them to article directories. The more articles you write the more chances of your articles to be grabbed by other webmasters.

Article directories provide a Bio/Resource box where you can put an active link to your website. Many site owners visit these article directories and publish articles with your credits and links. This will not only help you getting direct referral traffic from these sites but also help you getting higher rank in search engines. The list of major article directories can be found below:

• www.goarticles.com
• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.isnare.com
• www.amazines.com
• www.articlecube.com
• www.articlebiz.com
• www.articlealley.com
• www.articlesfactory.com

6. Serve your audience like they are the king
While I will always argue that quality content is essential in drawing readers to your site I am increasingly convinced that one way to build your readership is to create spaces that people will want to belong to. Build an interactive place, where your readers could participate. Treat them with utmost importance. Give them recognition, post their comments, create spaces for them on your site. Spaces that your readers will promote for you. Let your readers take the lead. They will grow your site and will promote for you.

These readers will become your loyal fans and they are the one who will make your site grow beyond your imagination. They will visit your blog again and again and will advocate your blog to other readers. The more of these fans increases, the more your site grows in value. Remember, the online property you own appreciates in value if you have a loyal readership which is increasing day by day.

Follow the above techniques and you will see a surge in traffic. Do post in comments other sources of free traffic you are using for your site.

• How to overcome the 5 reasons for failure in Affiliate Marketing?
• Affiliate Marketing Business Models
• Strategies for making money in Affiliate Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing Tools
• Professionalism in Affiliate Marketing
• Web Traffic – The life & blood of online business

The new Google Affiliate Network cannot be able to use by everyone. They say that they are targeting sites which have US based traffic. Google Affiliate Network is similar to the Adsense Referrals program, It enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions.

(Quoted directly from the announcement)

“If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.
  
• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.“

So those of you promoting Adsense Referrals Products are advised to remove the ad and replace it with something else. They will stop working in the last week of August.
For more details visit Adsense Blog.

The ebay Partner Network will run in parallel with CJ from April 1st 2008 to May 1st 2008. You can change all your ebay affiliate links from CJ to their own platform in this period. Most of the tools ebay is providing, like Editor Kit, affiliate API, flexible destination tool will remain the same. You will find some new features like:

• Simultaneous global registration to multiple countries
• Geo targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting

Ebay is one of the most rewarding affiliate programs for many affiliates. It has made thousands of dollars for many affiliates including me. Hope it remains same on their new affiliate platform.

If you are not an ebay affiliate and look to make money using their affiliate program, you can join them on April 1st when they start registration.

In this post of the 5 part series about how to overcome the reasons for failure in affiliate marketing, I am sharing some of my tips to bring professionalism in your affiliate marketing venture.

Below are the tips that will bring professionalism into your home based affiliate business:

Make your site user friendly:
A visitor looking for information wants a professional looking website with ease of use. But too often businesses think they need site with all the bells and whistles when what they really need is a functional site that attracts customers. Make your navigation easy. Give the important facts and figures and leave the not so important matter for inner pages. Understand your user behaviors and design your site accordingly.

Keep your site updated and don’t give expired information:
There are many seasonal promotions offered by merchants from time to time. So make sure you update your site regularly with these offers. And most importantly make sure you remove the promotions or coupons once these offers expire. A site with expire information will repel your readers from your site.

Don’t promote crappy products that don’t bring any value to your visitors:
There are many merchants in the marketplace who are selling products that doesn’t bring any value to the buyer. So be careful to promote these products. By promoting useless products to your readers, you will lose their trust forever.

Don’t send useless emails to your readers:
Send emails to your readers only if there is some useful information that will help your reader. You can send promotional emails, but the frequency of this should be tightly controlled. I prefer to send 1 promotional offer after every two highly informative emails with my affiliate links.

Know you audience and promote accordingly:
Understand your audience, know their demographics, and learn their visiting patterns. Promote products that are relevant to your audience. I have seen sites promoting products that are available for the west to the audience from the east and vice-versa.

Answer your reader’s queries:
Many visitors have queries about the products or the company you are promoting. So be professional in answering those queries. Be honest with your answers. Ask them for the feedback and the experience they had on your site.

And lastly whatever you write/say to your readers. Try to be honest. Honesty reflects in your writing and in your words. And the more honest you are the more trust worthy you become. And that will bring a lot of conversions.

In this post of the five part series of how to overcome failures in affiliate marketing, I am revealing all the tools that will accelerate the process of making money using affiliate marketing.

The lists of tools and resources that will aid you in your affiliate business venture are listed below. Some of these tools are free and some require you to buy them.

EMAIL AUTO RESPONDERS:
Aweber Autoresponder:
Unlimited autoresponders follow up messages, and campaigns are at the heart of the AWeber system. With 99.34% email deliverability, this is a must have tool for any affiliate marketer.
Visit: http://www.aweber.com

GetResponse Autorseponder:
GetResponse is easy, web-based email marketing software that delivers your campaigns, offers, newsletters, follow-ups and autoresponder messages. This is the second most used autoresponder after aweber.
Visit: http://www.getresponse.com

ARTICLE MARKETING:
EzineArticles.com:
The number one Article Directory. Submit your articles for distribution in front of our content-hungry audience. Also find articles to publish on your Blogs and web-sites.
http://www.ezinearticles.com

GoArticles.com:
GoArticles.com is one of more than 15 web sites comprising the Jayde Online Network. It is a well established article directory with a nice page rank. Get a lot of exposure by submitting articles to this directory.
http://www.goarticles.com

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) TOOLS:
Web CEO:
Web CEO is one of the most complete SEO software. There is a free version available. The free version offers many features, which you don’t find even in some paid SEO software.
http://www.webceo.com

SEO Elite:
SEO Elite is one of the best products by Brad Callen. It’s written for the absolute beginner, but covers things that only the most advanced search engine optimizers know. SEO Elite is one such software which I recommend very much.
http://www.seoelite.com

MARKETING & KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS:
Word tracker:
Wordtracker helps website owners and search engine marketers identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to their business and most likely to be used as queries by search engine visitors. Marketers can also determine how many competing sites are using those keywords and can identify the phrases that have the greatest traffic potential.
http://www.wordtracker.com

Keyword Elite:
Keyword elite is again one of the most powerful products from Brad Callen. And it justifies the statement on his site ‘The most powerful keyword research software on the planet!’ A must have tool, if you are serious about making money online.
http://www.keywordelite.com/

Keyword Discovery:
KeywordDiscovery compiles keyword search statistics from over 180 search engines world wide, to create the most powerful Keyword Research tool. KeywordDiscovery can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

Keyword Suggestion Tool:
This is a handy little tool that will show you the phrases that are searched more often from both Wordtracker and Overture. This tool is Free.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

TRAFFIC ANALYZERS:
Google Analytics:
The new Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners. It’s one of the best traffic analytics software on the web.
http://www.google.com/analytics/

CrazyEgg:
Create tests to figure out what people are doing on your website. This tool tracks where readers of your site click when surfing. It creates a heatmap of the results.
http://www.crazyegg.com

BLOG SOFTWARES:
WordPress:
WordPress is the undisputedly the best blogging software. The best part of the tool is that it’s absolutely free. The tool is comprehensive software which you can use for your blog or CMS. With thousands of themes and plugins, you can customize the software as you want.
http://www.wordpress.org

Blogger:
Blogger is also one of the powerful blogging platform which is hosted freely. The tool is also easy to use and widget ready. You can make your site live in minutes with this tool and that too absolutely Free!
http://www.blogger.com

These are some of the tools that will help you accelerate your journey to make money online. Do share the tools you are using in comments!

A strategy is a plan of action created to achieve goal. And your goal is to make money. In this post I will reveal some winning strategies that will help you make money as an Affiliate.

Choose your Advertisers carefully:
Every online advertiser wants affiliates to promote their product. So choose your advertisers carefully.

• Before you start promoting any product, make sure you read the Advertisers terms and conditions.
• Many companies set a minimum payout level. Make sure the minimum payout level is not too high. Many companies try to fool affiliates by setting the payout very high, knowing that most of the affiliates will not reach there and hence they don’t need to pay for the hard work of affiliates.
• Many merchants use cookies to track your referrals. As most people don’t purchase on the first visit to a site, a cookie allows tracking your referral, even if he purchases after some days, you will be still credited for the lead or sale as long as the cookie is live. So the longer the cookie life, the more chances of getting paid for the sales.
• Make sure the affiliate links are setting cookies properly. A software malfunction or a buggy affiliate tracking software can rob you of commissions you deserve for the sales. So test your links whether they are setting cookies or not, before you start promoting the program.

Communicate With Your Advertisers:

• Communication with Merchants is very important when you are promoting their products. Contact the merchant, let them know how you are promoting their product and ask their advice for improvements. Merchants Affiliate Mangers will be eager to help you. After all you are bringing sales for that merchant. They may also share techniques used by other successful affiliates, which can give a real boost to your earnings.
• Communication with your Advertiser will also help you understand his genuineness. If your advertiser is not responding to serious issues, think again about promoting their products. Remember some Advertisers may have a lot of emails to answers, so at least give them some time. If you don’t get reply within 3 days, shoot one more email. Wait for another 3 days and if the Advertiser doesn’t reply, then should reconsider promoting them.
• If you are bringing good number of sales or leads for the merchant, negotiate for higher commissions. Sometimes, a merchant may not offer higher commissions, but he may provide you with some special coupons, to be given to your end users that will get your conversions even higher.

Do not depend upon one advertiser or one product:

• Diversification is one of the most important strategies in Affiliate Marketing. Don’t depend upon one advertiser or a product. If that program dies, your income source dies too. Choose different products and different Advertisers and build your affiliate business around them.

Know your Audience:

• It is very important to know who your visitors are. Where there are coming from? Knowing your visitors demographics is very important because the offers you target to them will be relevant to them. I have seen affiliates promoting products which are available only to the west to the audience from the East.
• Learn the patterns your visitors are following on your website. There are lots of tools available in the market to track visitors’ patterns on your web pages. Study those patterns and build sites that are audience friendly. I will list the tools that make an affiliate successful, in the next post of this series.

Don’t Miss the seasonal Trends:

• Every Season has some special products which can make your cash box ringing. Do some research on the buying patterns of consumers and find out the products which are hot in season. Promoting hot products lead to more conversions.
• Don’t forget the holiday season. It is one of the best seasons for both merchants and affiliates. Prepare for the holiday season in advance. Be up to date with Advertiser offers and inform your visitors as fast as you can. I will give you the tools to inform your visitors as soon as you get some exciting offers in my next post of the series.

These are some of the strategies which helps you build a affiliate marketing business model which is solid and reliable. In my next post, I will give you all the tools that will get your affiliate commissions rolling!

So why are most affiliates failing to make a decent earnings from affiliate marketing?

The five reasons why affiliates fail to earn decent commissions are:

1. Not Having a Proper Business Model
2. Not Having Proper Strategies
3. Not Having Proper Tools
4. Not Having Professionalism in doing business
5. Not Having Enough Traffic

In series of five Posts, I will give you the information to overcome the above reasons and succeed in Affiliate Marketing, starting with Affiliate Business Models below.

Affiliate Marketing Business Models:

Affiliate marketing industry is one of the fastest growing industries. The reason being, it’s easy to start. And since it’s easy to start, many people take it easily. And thus they fail easily. If you are serious about your affiliate marketing business, then you need to have one or many of the below listed business models. These Business models have proved to be successful and are making money for many affiliates:

Below are the proven business models for successfully making money in Affiliate Marketing:

1. Product Comparison Site:
Product comparison site is a proven business model. Consumers are searching for products and they want to compare them. They want the information about similar products before they make their buying decision. And if you can provide this comparison, you make lots of commission.

2. Shopping Comparison Site:
It’s slightly different then product comparison site. People who want to buy a product are looking for shops that are offering the best price. So with the shopping feeds provided by major networks, you can set up your comparison site and give your visitors, prices of a product from different shops. This is again one of the most successful business models and could make lots of money.

3. Product Review Site:
This is one of the easiest business models to do affiliate marketing. And since easy, thousands and thousands of review sites has emerged in almost all niches. For a review site to be successful, you need to build trust with your visitors. I always recommend my visitors to leave their own review. I follow up them with their buying experience and I put their reviews on my site. Honesty is the best policy on a product review site. And the more honest you are with your review, the more it shows in it. And this build a trusting relationship with your visitors, that will bring you many more commission checks in the future.

4. Coupon or Promo codes Model:
A coupon sites collects and build a database of all the available coupons from advertisers. These coupons are logically stored in database. Visitors can search for coupons for a product or for a particular shop. As the person searching for a coupon is in a ready-to-buy mindset, the conversions are very high. You need to be up to date with your site by adding new coupons, removing expired coupon etc. This business model is also very rewarding.

5. Paid Search (PPC):
PPC (Pay per click) as the name says, you pay for your ads only when some body clicks on them. On major PPC networks like Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture, you bid for the keyword. And if your bid is higher, your ads are displayed on top and are displayed more often. There are also various techniques to optimize your ads for them to get better ranking. If a click converts to a sale or lead, you earn commission, and hopefully profits from the difference in keyword cost versus earned commission. This is also known as ‘arbitrage’.

All the above business models above have proven to be successful. You can use one or more of the above business models. I recommend mastering one business model at a time and moving to another.

I will give you the best strategies that are proven to be successful in my next post!

The easiest way for a new online business to follow-up with visitors is by email. Email is free. If you can use the power of email by offering mailings that are informative, creative, interactive and valuable, you can actually make your prospect happy and a fortune for yourself.

So how do you follow-up with your visitors easily?
The answer is automation. Setting up an autoresponder to automate the task of follow up. An autoresponder is a program that will send follow up messages to your opt-in list at the scheduled interval set by you. Once you set up the interval and messages, the process is completely automated and hence the term autoresponder.

If you are using your own autoresponder program, only send emails to those who have personally opted in to your list. In other words, DON’T SEND SPAM. Governments of many countries are trying hard to stop SPAM. Companies are being fined heavily, blocked, and kicked off of their hosting services if found spamming. Also, make sure that each email you send out clearly has a link for the person to opt-out of your list. Many autoresponder services will automatically include an opt-out, or unsubscribe link, in every email it send.

You can also use Autoresponder services provided by third party companies. The leader in autoresponder service provider is Aweber. If you have received an email from any affiliate marketer, 90% chances are that it was sent from Aweber’s autorespender. Aweber is the market leader with 99.34% email deliverability.
Some of the features include:

• Unlimited campaigns, lists, follow up messages, and newsletters.
• Easily create and add opt-in web forms to your website.
• 51+ Templates for newsletter and follow up design.
• Free training guides and videos.
• Expert unlimited free customer support.

WAIT! WAIT!
BEFORE YOU SIGN UP, BECOME AN AFFILIATE OF AWEBER AND GET PART OF THE PRICE BACK AS AFFILIATE COMMISSION.

Yes! Aweber is having one of the best affiliate programs in the industry. So signup as an affiliate and buy your autoresponder service using your affiliate link.

Click here to signup for Aweber affiliate program.

So follow up with your prospects. This is going to bring a lot of wealth as you build your list and keep following up regularly!

You can prevent these thefts or at least reduce the chances by following some simple tricks to hide your affiliate links. I have listed below three commonly used methods to hide your affiliate links from your site visitors.

PHP Redirect:

Create a PHP page for each of your affiliate link and place them in a separate directory of your choice. For example you can create a directory called redirects and put your PHP pages with affiliate links in them into that directory. Your PHP page is simple with 2 lines of code as shown below:

It’s a good practice to name your PHP page as that of the affiliate program you are linking. For example, if the affiliate program is text-link-ads, you can name the page as text-link-ads.php.

Hiding Link in status bar:

You can also hide the affiliate link from being displayed in the status bar by placing some JavaScript in the link. This method is not very effective because viewing the source will reveal your affiliate link.

HTML Meta Refresh:

This is one more commonly used method by many affiliates to hide their affiliate links. It uses the Meta refresh tag. You will need to create html pages with Meta refresh tag for each of your affiliate link. Below is an example of the same.

I love the PHP redirect method. And I am in the process of changing all my affiliate links to PHP redirects.