Posted by Andy Crofford
 On Sunday I went over the basics of article marketing. Today I thought I would cover the basics of affiliate marketing.
Regardless of what some people say there is still money to be made in affiliate/internet marketing. Whether you want to make a little extra money or go full time affiliate marketing is a great option.
First I want touch on What exactly affiliate marketing is. Affiliate marketing is a method that allows you to earn passive income by promoting products and services other online businesses are offering. You can earn commissions by generating leads and sales for these companies.
To find these offers you will need to sign up with an affiliate network. Some of the affiliate networks I recommend are:
Azoogle
NeverBlueAds
Market Leverage
Xy7.com
These are just a few that I belong to. You want to make sure you belong to many affiliate networks so you have a wide range of offers to choose from.
If you would like to give affiliate marketing a try here are some tips to follow:
Select Your Niche
This is the most important factor to consider when doing affiliate marketing. The niche you choose can make or break you as an affiliate. My free guide “Niche Store 101 - A Beginner’s Guide to Building a Niche Store” has several methods for finding a niche that will provide you with a great starting point if you are not sure where to begin. To get this guide simply sign-up for my newsletter in the upper left hand corner.
Split Test Your Landing Pages
The most important thing after picking a niche is making sure your landing page works. To do this you will want to split test your landing pages. Split testing is really no fun at all but you must do it if you want to be successful long term. To split test a landing page create two pages and track how each one converts. This can be easily done by using a tracking code in your affiliate link (which you can setup in the affiliate network’s control panel) and a program called Adtrackz. This application will generate a link and split the traffic up evenly between your two landing pages. Once you determine that one landing page works better than the other replace the poorly performing page with another and keep split testing until you have your page fully optimized.
Offer Freebies
There are people out there who make a great deal of money offering freebies. That is because the write a report or eBook on a particular subject and make sure they include plenty of referral links in their free guide. Even if you are not an expert you can use the internet to do research and come up with a great report any way. Plus, after your research you will most likely be very close to being an expert.
Get Targetted Traffic
Now that you have found your niche, created some landy pages and created an awesme freebie it is time to get some traffic to your site. You can have the greatest landing page in the world but it won’t do you any good if you don’t have traffic.
There are several methods you can use to drive traffic to your site. First there is article marketing, which was covered on Sunday. The second is building backlinks to your site. The best way to do this is to set up and maintain social network accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed…) and let people know about your sites as well as comment on blogs that cover your niche. To find blogs within your niche you can use the LinkBuildingBible’s DoFollow Diver search engine. The LinkBuildingBible has a lot of great tips on building backlinks. You should definitely check it out if you want to increase your backlinks.
This article was intended to be a basic overview of affiliate marketing. Hopefully I was able to provide some helpful information.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 The truth It seems since I returned from vacation I have been way to busy to get any of my Internet projects completed. I stress the term Internet because I have actually accomplished a few things around the house in preparation for the baby that is due in November. Here is the reason I wish days were 36 hours long instead of 24:
1. Working on Build a Niche Store websites.
2. Need to complete the PPC Formula course.
3. Trying to work on a couple of other sites that I have domains and ideas for.
4. Thirty Day Challenge
5. Learn PHP
On top of this when I do get the sites done that I want to I then have to go to work promoting them and building backlinks. I did find a great blog called LinkBuildingBible that has some great information on how to build back links.
On the bright side of things I would much rather be busy than bored. I guess I will have to sit down and prioritze the above list so that I can get all my projects completed.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 Write articles, it is beneficial to you. What is article marketing? It is a form of advertising where you can either hire a writer or write a short article yourself promote your website/affiliate offer/whatever else you wish to promote. These articles are written for distribution and publication which means you have the potential to have a lot of people reading them either in print or online.
At the bottom of each article there is typically a bio box and byline which shows the references and contact person. If the reader liked the article they can visit your site you should have linked in your bio and hopefully you can look forward to a sale.
Article marketing has been around for a while now. Some say it was first used when mass print became available. In the print form this type of advertising was used by business owners to obtain free space. The article was given to the newspaper free of charge in exchange for the contact information of the business being printed with the article. Most newspapers were more than willing to accept this kind of deal because their budget was very limited. Basically it was a win-win situation for all parties involved.
This arrangement is not all that different in the online article marketing world. You can write an article and post it to one of many article directories, usually for free. As in the print world this is beneficial to botht he website/business owner and article directory owner because you are providing content for their site and they can sell advertisements.
The benefit to online article marketing over printed articles is that it is much faster and easier to search for a particular article online because keywords are often used for search engine optimization. This allows you to search for a certain topic or niche in a short amount of time.
Another benefit to using an article directory is that the articles can be used on other sites such as blogs. However, this is only beneficial if your byline is kept intact and you are given proper credit for the article.
Many online marketers believe that the increase in the number of people who use article marketing has a negative effect because poorly written articles. This is why you always want to make sure you write a good quality article that is both relevant and informative.
Article marketing is just one way of getting the word out about the service, product, or site your are promoting. This is a great way to market if you are low on funds. Just remember that when you write the articles make sure you use relevant keywords so you can get valuable targeted traffic.
To do this you have to think about what words a person will likely search for to see your site. Finding the right keywords for whatever you are promoting should translate into traffic that generates sales.
Some good article directories:
Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
Go Articles
Posted by Andy Crofford
 Michael Phelps My wife and I just finished watching the 4 x 100 m medley relay where Phelps won his eighth gold medal in the 2008 summer games. He now has 14 gold medals (16 total with two bronze medals). To say the least that is quite the accomplishment.
I wonder what it would be like to dominate something the way Phelps has dominated swimming, or Lance Armstrong did with the Tour de France, or even Tiger Woods with golf. It is really hard for someone like me to imagine that. I wish I could be in the top 25 of something let alone the best ever.
So I guess I will sit here and just keep plugging away in the hopes that one day I will be recognized for something I have done. This, I believe, is what truly drives me. It isn’t money (don’t get me wrong that is nice) but the drive to be just one of the best at something.
Who knows, maybe if I keep at it long enough it will happen. One thing is for certain, it won’t happen if I don’t try.
Posted by Andy Crofford
 In typical WordPress fashion a .1 software build has been released shortly after a .0.
There are approximately 60 issues fixed with this release. You can view them here. This is not a security release so upgrading is optional.
I have not yet upgraded but plan to do so this weekend. If anyone has any issues please leave a comment here. I never had any problems with 2.6 as others have reported. The issues I did have were normally related to a plug-in which was easily fixed.
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