Hightide Web Resources Articles, News, and Reviews

Copyright (c) 2008 Jim Edwards

Tools for making online video get more common every day online. The latest craze, Flip Video cameras, make it simple and fun to snap high-quality video clips and use them for business or pleasure. Despite the widespread popularity of online video, most people think online video is only for the super-geeky set. But, with an influx of free and low-cost tools, online video has never been easier for everyone to get in on the “lights - camera - action!”

Video Blogging. Probably the easiest way for anyone to get started, video blogging or “Vlogging” combines the use of a blog with simple video “posts” on your website. You can sign up for a free blog at Blogger.com to act as your platform for making posts. Then, you can upload your videos (for free) to www.YouTube.com or http://Video.Google.com and they’ll convert your videos for online play. You can then take the copy-and-paste code either site gives you, paste that code into a new post on your blog, and voila, you’re officially video blogging. Blogger.com makes a great, fast way for you to set up a personal video blog, and it really is as simple as I describe.

If you want to put your blog on your own domain and hosting account (which I highly recommend if you operate a business), then you can get the best blogging software in the world for FREE by visiting www.WordPress.org. Once you create your blog on your own domain, you can post video exactly the same way I described above using YouTube or Google Video.

Video E-mail. Video email rates even simpler than video blogging. You can shoot your video using even a simple web cam and then email it to your family and friends. Now, this works great for smaller files, but once you get above about 3 Megabytes (MB), emailing those files becomes a pain for both you as the sender and your friends as recipients. However, you can easily share video files via email with the help of free online file hosting services. Services like www.Box.net and www.XDrive.com enable you to upload a file once, then email a special link to as many people as you want. They visit the link online and download the video file from the server rather than getting forced to download it as an email attachment.

By the way, these two services work great for sharing any large file, not just video.

Attract New Website Visitors. If you operate an online business, you know traffic represents the life-blood of your site. (If nobody shows up, it’s hard to make any money.) Video makes a great way to reach new viewers and get them to your website using FREE online hosting services. At a minimum, you should upload your videos to: YouTube.com, Video.Google.com, Revver.com, and MySpaceTV.com. You can also “announce” your video to multiple sites at once using Tube Mogul.com (which offers both free and paid options).

If you want traffic, make sure to put your domain name across the bottom of the entire video so viewers can find your website or blog. Also, if you want people to get excited about you and your business, make sure your videos entertain people (no boring content), educate them (teach them something good), and empower them (give them something they can use). Following these simple rules will massively increase the pulling power of your videos to act as “traffic magnets” for your site.

About the Author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs… Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website NOW! Click Here>>> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

by John Elley

1. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should related to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.
2. When you visit a web site you’ve enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

3. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site’s ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

4. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web sites ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

7. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what’s in your members only site and what it costs to gain access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

8. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales. People will link to your web site to make extra money.

9. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win. This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

10. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they either link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

11. When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

12. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business ad at the top of the directory’s home page.

13. Exchange content with other web sites. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

14. Allow people to download software at no charge from your web site, if they link to your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

15. Trade other forms of advertising to people that link to your web site. You could trade e-zine ads, print ads, autoresponder ads, classified ads, ebook ads, etc.

16. Give away web space to people for free. Since you are giving it away for free, request they link to your site by placing your ad or banner to the site.

17. Join or create a web ring. A web ring is a group of web sites on a similar subject agreeing to link together. To find a web ring to join type keywords “web rings” into your search engine of choice.

18. Create an online club or association. Tell your visitors what’s included in the membership and what it costs to join. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

19. Allow people to use an online service or utilities from your web site if, in exchange, they link to your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission, web page design, copywriting, proofreading, etc.

20. Offer a free e-book to your web site visitors. The ebook should be related to your target audience. Allow them to give the e-book to their own web site visitors by linking directly to your web site.

You can get free website content here and use it on your website to keep your customers coming back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Elley is the owner of Free-Viral-Advertising.com which is a Free Advertising Service that helps you to get real people to actually visit and look at your website. Click Here to see how the power of Viral Advertising can explode the traffic to your website and increase your business.

by Demond Jackson

Making money online is a dream for many, but the simple fact is that it’s often just as tough as making money offline. Making money online with selling ebooks with resale rights or recommending them through affiliate links offers great opportunities of making money online. I used to be one of those people who sometimes ask, “Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts”. People believe only the scammers and “gurus” are the only ones earning a decent living . You no longer need to be afraid to get started. The internet is ready and willing to offer you a piece of this money making pie. There are two simple things every newbie can do starting today position themselves for great wealth in the future.

Become An Affiliate

Affiliate programs are when you promote a product or service for another website and earn a commission when you make a sale for them. Affiliate marketing is a big and profitable industry that covers a wide spectrum of topics and fields. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. They are great additional streams of income. Affiliate marketing is a skill not a get rick quick scheme. Affiliate marketing should be a really fun and exciting home business that you can run from your personal computer, or notebook.

Making money with Affiliate Programs is the process of making “feeder” web sites that drive traffic to various affiliate programs or products. Done correctly, affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money from the web. I was under an impression that making money online was difficult or uneasy to learn. Boy was I wrong. Anyone with no marketing skills can signup to be an affiliate, get the company’s marketing material and begin promotion immediately. Personally, I’ve found affiliate marketing to be the best source of making money online. If you look a bit you can find some very nice commission, affiliate products that are very easy to sell. When you combine affiliate marketing with blogging, it’s almost impossible to fail.

Blogging

Many bloggers are earning $100 to $1000 per month and more only from writing reviews at their blogs. Earning money online by blogging is a pretty straight forward way for most bloggers. It’s better than a hard sell sales page because blogs have a more personal connection with readers, so readers are more willing to listen to a bloggers’ recommendation. The mistake many niche bloggers make is they get content that is too focused on a specific keyword and only that keyword. One of the main goals of making money online blogging is to build a large RSS readership. We can also connect with like minded bloggers. Even though we are the smartest things on the earth at this point who live and breath we still do not realize the power of word of mouth. Promoting affiliate programs on your blog is a sure thing.

Conclusion

There are many opportunities to make money online. The key is to find something you believe you can be successful with and stick with it until you succeed. Another tip is that you must be interested in the products/ services you promote. If you feel good about your product, it’ll be easy to promote. For example, I recently was introduced to a program called 4 Minute Money I believe in the product so it’s easy to promote it.

Demond Jackson is an entrepreneur who looks for ways to help people earn money from home. His newest find is the 4 Minute Money System He’s written a personal review of the 4 Minute Money system or you can go directly to the 4 Minute Money website.

by Karl Sultana

The ideal world of affiliate marketing does not require having your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development and maintenance. This is one of the easiest ways of launching into an online business and earning more profits.

Assuming you are already in an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

1. Know the best program and products to promote. Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.

There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure. Have products that fit in with your target audience. And that has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time. If you cannot seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.

There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you the reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars.

Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute from your site. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short report related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.

In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With ebooks, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering.

2. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free ebooks. It is a known fact that people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may want to send out your message more than six times to make a sale.

This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and ebooks. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.

Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendor’s website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.

But when you get their names, you can always send other marketing messages to them to be able to earn an ongoing commission instead of a one-time sale only.

Publish an online newsletter or Ezine. It is always best to recommend a product to someone you know than to sell to a stranger. This is the purpose behind publishing your own newsletter. This also allows you to develop a relationship based on trust with your subscribers.

This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

3. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants. If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.

If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.

Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

Try out these strategies and see the difference it can make to your commission checks in the shortest of time.

About the Author:
Discover how to get your affiliate link in top of search engine rankings using Karl Sultana’s strategies.

I landed on a great blog this afternoon - I’m just don’t remember how I got there. It all started where everything pretty much starts for me (Google), but I can’t remember the route.

I don’t guess it matters, right?

What DOES matter is great advice - killer advice, even. The kind that can light a fire under your feet and add zeros to your bank balance. If you’re like me, you welcome both zeros and fire - so, here’s something you’ll like.

Carl Ocab has written a great post titled “I Paid 12 Months to Learn These 32 Things.” It’s the sort of information that’s well worth the effort of copying/pasting/printing/re-reading/highlighting. The whole 9 yards.

My favorite is #6 and I blockquote:

6. Act Now, There’s No Later
You have this super idea that you know if you take action, would make thousands over thousands of dollars. After sometime, you forgot about it and you were surprised to see someone did it and got the cash you dreamed of. Has this happened to you?

When you have an idea, implement it now - before anyone does. If you have to stay up all night long, sure. Just act.

Zip, zing, or zap your way to his blog and read this post from top to bottom. Then branch out and read the other posts as well. Great stuff.

I was researching something SEO related today when I cam across a great article about getting more traffic to your website or blog. The article actually lists 20 great ideas. There were some suggestions that I’ve been utilizing since the stone age, but there were more that I’d never considered - as in EVER.

It’s a great read and I think the suggestions will lead us all to the type of traffic jam we’re all looking for.

20 Simple Ways to Get Massive Traffic to Your Web Site

by John Khu

An expired domain name could be a wonderful opportunity for you to make money by using its hidden advantages and benefits. It is a boon to those people, who make it a point to study and understand its essential principles and meaning. Here are some salient points and issues that make up an expired domain name:
a) Most people buy an expired domain name either to build a web site over it or to sell it at a higher price. Of late, trading or reselling in expire domain names is a cherished industry for many people.

b) With it, you can make money from the traffic arriving at that domain during the time tenure that you own and manage it. If you feel that you have a good amount of targeted traffic that comes to your site, then you are probably sitting on a gold mine.

c) Expired domain market is a busy place, where people buy and sell hundreds of domain names everyday. Though most of the domain names are available at cheaper prices, some of them are quite costly and premium.

d) All expired domains in the market are unique in their own respect. No two names are similar! However, there may be some names that may carry similar meaning and syntax, just to confuse site visitors.

e) When you buy one, there will be general costs attached to it, apart from the ones that you need to pay to the reseller. Costs involved are registration fees and penalty fees, if you are buying those domain names that are on hold and redemption.

f) Maintaining it will also involve some costs like an annual maintenance fee to be payable to the registrars.

g) Expire domain names are very liquid in nature and highly volatile in their behavior. You may need to keep your domains for a log time before you can expect them to sell to others.

h) Once you buy it, you must ensure that you are not keeping it inactive at any time; it must either produce a substantial amount of traffic or sell at a higher price. Otherwise, it will have a zero value.

i) An expired domain market could be a busy and bustling place with many players vying for a breathing place. There are many conflicting and contradictory scenes that make up a domain market.

j) If you are intending to sell it, you may need to incur some costs as well, like paying a fee towards auctioning or a commission payable to a reseller.

k) It is always very difficult to know and fix an exact cost of a particular expired domain name. The real value of them may vary at large and from time to time.

l) Right now, the available data on the expired domain names and their volume of trade is very scanty and rare, as most of the inferior domain names are still unsold.

m) The price for a particular expired domain name is always uncertain and unsure, as the price is always negotiable between the buyer and seller at the point of transaction.

n) Dealing in domain names could be a risky venture, as wrong expired domain names could spell a big trouble to you.

As of now, effective and profitable trading in expired domain name depends directly on your knowledge and skills in choosing the best and most practical names and later registering them for either reselling or to develop a web site over it.

About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is the owner of the path breaking web site called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

Love it. Starbucks on a rainy day love it. Starbucks on a rainy day when someone else pays love it.

The Computer Desk - Kool Kolor KK206 is as cool as the underside of a penguin’s pillow and he knows it. I have to admit, the knock out color attracted me to it in the first place, but then I flipped for the style. The compact design makes it ideal for tight places, when your ideas exceed your space.

Specifications:

But, back to the color for just a minute. Not only is it a spectacular shade of lime green - it’s glossy! A glossy spectacular shade of lime green. If, for some reason, that’s not floating your boat, this hot desk is also available in orange and black. And, yes, they’re sporting the high gloss finish, too. See the other colors and learn more by clicking the link: Computer Desk - Kool Kolor KK206

If you have a product that you want to sell, whether it’s an e-book, audio or video, it’s usually a very wise idea to create an affiliate program around it.
If you have an affiliate program for your product, you will get a ton of traffic that you would not normally have received.

The reason is because a lot of people will promote your product for you when you’re paying them a commission to do it!

Would you rather have 100 people buy your product from you? Or would you rather have 100 affiliates when each has a hundred people buying your product from them?

It’s a no-brainer when there can be a better way to boost your income by leveraging on the combined efforts of hundreds of affiliates to sell for you. This demand for a better way creates a market for affiliate management software which makes the whole process of setting up, recording and releasing commissions so much more…well, manageable.

Without such a software, you would never have been able to get the amount of traffic and sales multiple promoters could give you, compared to achieving it all by yourself. It would have been impossible to ‘promote’ every customer into an affiliate automatically. Talk about missing out on an exponential effect on your financial bottomline!

Let’s begin with explaining what an affiliate program is.

An affiliate program is a way to offer partners who are interested in promoting your product or service a share of the profits generated after they make a sale. Your affiliate partners are “commissioned salespeople” who will take your marketing message to their audience, convince them to buy from you, and then get paid a proportion of the profit they create for your business.

Click here to become a LinkShare Affiliate!

The advantages of having affiliates (or associates) build your business and help you with marketing is that you have no upfront expense to cover. Apart from setting up an infrastructure to manage affiliates and create marketing material for them to use, you pay nothing until after a sale has been made. Contrast this with conventional advertising where you pay first, and then hope you make enough sales to make back your investment. Another benefit is you can reach an audience through your affiliates which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to by yourself. This multiplies your reach and can explode your sales and profits.

Unfortunately, despite the benefits, running an affiliate program is not as easy as it seems because the symbiosis or synergistic relationship between affiliates and merchants is not always and fully understood. The most successful programs are based on mutual respect, open dialogue, and proper recognition and reward for success.

The affiliate management software can only go so far with proper reporting of up-to-date statistics like number of impressions, click-throughs, leads, sales, 2nd-tier affiliates and others on a monthly and daily basis. But of course it wouldn’t be called an affiliate management software if it can’t process these data, so there are features that affiliate managers must look out for and diligently evaluate before they prepares to invest in a software. Affiliates would want to know what statistics are available so that they can determine how well they are succeeding.

On the managers’ part, they are obliged to provide all the sales tools and material affiliates need to sell their products as effectively as possible. This is not easily done because:

1) they become lazy

2) they presume affiliates know what to do.

Affiliates must feel they are well equipped to sell the merchants’ products because even if they have not reviewed the products themselves, only the merchants know their stuff best and how to present them to the audience in the best possible light.

Besides the standard affiliate link, the tools for online promotion include banner graphics, e-mail messages, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, a giveaway viral report, a review article, PLR articles, testimonials, one-time offer (OTO) page, forum signatures, press releases, popup HTML codings and other affiliate marketing suggestions affiliates can take up.

The truly successful affiliate managers are the ones who can respond and better still, pre-empt the kind of help affiliates typically ask for, thus providing an optimal level of support affiliates require, leading to every possible sales conversion whenever the opportunity arises.

Successful affiliate programs have dedicated personnel that work with the affiliates to ensure that they have the tools that they need, the reporting that is required, and to ensure that they are compensated fairly and in a timely fashion. Again these services are either provided to the affiliates by an individual or team that works directly for the merchant, or by an independent affiliate management company. Either solution is acceptable to affiliates providing that they receive the level of support that they require.

Providing that the affiliates are successful in delivering prospects to a merchant-customers that convert into paying customers-and they earn money, they will continue to promote them, and the more that they earn, the better the promotion is likely to be. Online affiliates have a set amount of “real estate” on their sites for promotion-they of course have to provide content to their visitors-and this is allocated to those merchants from whom they earn the best return. In return, the manager can reward better-performing affiliates according to the results they have achieved.

But bear in mind the reality is that 80%-90% of your affiliates will be inactive under normal circumstances. The Pareto principle also applies that 20% of your affiliates are likely to be responsible for 80% of the total sales.

To keep affiliates motivated, merchants should work with them to create incentive programs and special events that will provide them with opportunities for increased recognition and revenue; for example, increase affiliate commission for a certain time period. They should also take the time to communicate with them whenever possible to help them with their promotions. One method is to publish regular affiliates-only newsletters that contain their statistics for the week/month, affiliate marketing tips, product and promotion updates, interviews with successful affiliates etc. Your affiliates will never forget they joined your program.

About the Author:
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at Internet Mastery Center.

If you’re serious about making money online, Adsense Code: What Google Never Told You about Making Money with Adsense should be the next book you purchase online. The author, Joel Comm, gives tested, tried, and true advice and tips on getting the most from you google ads.

If you want to see your Google checks increase (and who doesn’t?!), don’t hesitate a minute before clicking through and buying this very informative book.

From the publisher:
Hidden on the Internet, scattered among billions of Web pages, are the clues to an incredible secret.For those who know the secret, the result is untold wealth. Each month, a small group of people an elite club who have uncovered the mysteries of The AdSense Code put their knowledge to use and receive checks for tens of thousands of dollars from Google. And untold numbers of additional site owners are regularly generating supplemental income via AdSense while they play, sleep and eat. The AdSense Code is concise and very focused on the objective of revealing the proven online strategies to creating passive income with Google AdSense.The AdSense Code reveals hands-on solutions to many of the concerns and challenges faced by content publishers in their quest to attract targeted traffic, improve content relevance and increase responsiveness to AdSense ads using easy and legitimate techniques that have worked for those who know the secrets. Google AdSense expert, Joel Comm, provides you with the keys you need to crack The AdSense Code and unlock the secrets to making money online.