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by Mats Lonnstrom

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about Affiliate Marketing in the following paragraphs. If there’s at least one fact you didn’t know before, imagine the difference it might make.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Now that we’ve covered those aspects of Affiliate Marketer, let’s turn to some of the other factors that need to be considered.

Important Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

Now you can be a confident expert on Affiliate Marketing. OK, maybe not an expert. But you should have something to bring to the table next time you join a discussion on Affiliate Marketing.

About the Author:
Mats Lonnstrom is the owner of Promoteoptions Affiliate Marketing Ezine/Newsletter. Submit your article to Submit-Articles.Promoteoptions.com. Free subscription at http://www.promoteoptions.com

by Jim Edwards

Copyright 2006 Jim Edwards

Ah yes, eBay! The online auction giant that makes all your dreams come true for finding that special something you can’t find anywhere else.

It’s like a giant garage sale in the sky.

Unfortunately, eBay’s size makes it easy for people to sell stolen or unauthorized merchandise and not get caught.

To their credit, I think eBay does as much as humanly possible to police their site and shut down any offenders quickly.

However, I recently discovered that plenty of mischief still occurs, especially with downloadable products.

When checking my email yesterday, I found two messages that disturbed me.

The first was an automated message from eBay telling me about an auction selling an ebook about writing ebooks.

Another email came in from a good customer who sent me a link to another auction on eBay that, to them, “looked suspicious.”

I clicked on the links for both auctions and found identical postings by two different sellers.

Though they did not mention my ebook, “How To Write and Publish Your Own eBook… in as little as 7 Days,” the blatant similarity between the wording on the auctions and my http://www.7DayEbook.com website aroused my curiosity.

Since they didn’t reference the ebook they were selling by title, I decided to go ahead and buy from both sellers to see what they sent me.

Imagine my horror when they both delivered my own ebook, which they were selling illegally.

I immediately got the auctions shut down, but the damage was already done.

Plenty of stolen merchandise gets sold via online auction sites.

People call it “bootlegged” or “unauthorized copies” to soften the wording for what they really know is “stolen merchandise.”

Of the two sellers mentioned above, I believe one knew he was illegally selling my ebook and didn’t care, while the other person was just ignorant and thought she could sell it because she’d bought it from someone else. Regardless of their true intentions, their actions were illegal.

Now, let’s discuss how you protect yourself and your intellectual property against illegal sales and “bootlegging” on eBay and other online auction sites.

First, set up automated searches on the major online auction services.

Set them up to automatically notify you whenever an auction gets posted that includes your name or the name of your product.

You can also set them up to email you whenever an auction gets listed with certain keywords in it, in my case “write ebook.”

Second, if you find someone has stolen your intellectual property (sales copy, ebooks, photos, graphics, software, etc.) you should first contact the seller and politely, but firmly, ask them to remove it.

If they don’t, or if they take more than a few hours to respond, you should contact the auction site directly to request an immediate takedown of the offending auction.

eBay’s “Vero” program, for example, enables you to simply fax in a form or send an email to get an auction removed.

You should also go back and check periodically to make sure that an offending seller doesn’t start selling your product again once they think the uproar has died down.

Third, pay attention to emails from customers and prospects for signs of anything strange.

Watch for comments like “I saw your ebook for sale on eBay,” or “I saw it cheaper on eBay.”

Also, make sure to compare customer service inquiries to your customer database.

Anyone who asks specific questions about a product and appears to possess it, but never bought it from you, should immediately raise a red flag.

Always try to find out where they bought the product and get them to send you a copy of their email receipt, because all roads to the thief usually lead back through the credit card processor.

Finally, trust the never-failing boomerang of karma to come full circle and ultimately whack any thief in the head!

About the Author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an incredible new ebook that will teach you how to write and publish your own highly profitable ebook in a week or less… even if you failed high school English class! “How to Write and Publish your own Outrageously Profitable eBook… in as little as 7 Days!” FREE Details ==> http://www.7dayebook.com

by Terry Till

Google adsense is proving to be probably the number one method of making money on the internet. Visit nearly any website today and you will see an array of Google Adsense ads being displayed. But if youre interested in displaying Google Adsense ads on your website how can you be sure that you are making the most return from your website visitors.

Let me tell you my five top tips to increase your Google Adsense income.

Tip one.

Use articles on your website that are of interest to your targeted market. Original articles written by yourself are best, however if you are not keen on writing why not look at obtaining some Private Label Rights articles. Most important issue here being to modify the articles extensively to make them original to you and not risk duplicated content issues.

Tip two.

Keep your web page layout simple and don’t include links to other products or services, which could distract your visitors from clicking on your Google Adsense ads. Remember this strategy is to increase your Adsense revenue, if you want to promote an affiliate product design a webpage with just your product links on and remove any adsense ads.

Tip three.

Design your Adsense ads to blend in with the background colour of your webpage and also position them in the most profitable positions available. You can get a clear idea of this layout by clicking on my website link below.

Tip four.

Keep track of your visitors and the income they produce to your website, you can do this by creating a channel in the Google Adsense backoffice. Again remember, that if your website is not producing a decent income then you need to look at different subject matters, subjects of interest that people want to read more about and are willing to visit your website in order to read more.

Tip five.

Traffic generation is the real key to success and without visitors to your website you wont make any money. This fifth tip is a complete subject on its own and I will be producing further articles on this subject which you will be able to read by visiting my website below.

I will be adding regular articles on all these subjects and more over the next few days and months so it realy will be worth a visit to see what tips and ideas you can use to increase your Google Adsense income.

About the Author:
Copywrite 2006 Terry Till

Visit my website for more tips and tricks on earning more from Google Adsense ads.

Google Adsense Rock Solid Tips

Webmasters and ezine owners can use this article provided they leave the resourse box and all
links fully intact and without alteration.

by Ratliff, J

What is an affiliate program? An arrangement between a company and a website owner or individual who would like to promote that company’s products. The person promoting the projects is the affiliate, and the company with the products is the merchant. The merchant(company) pays a percentage of any sales resulting from any click through (via banner or text link) to their web site from an affiliate partner’s website. Many webmasters and internet gurus are doing very well with only a handful of affiliate programs. Once you find a good one, you kind of seem to get stuck on it until you are positive you are making every penny possible. Before spending a lot of time and money marketing an affiliate program, always check it out first.

Once you start making sales, you will want to keep good records of the transactions. Personally, I use an Excel spreadsheet for the daily sales, and then input everything into Quickbooks once a month. It is also a good idea to keep all emails you get regarding sales. Many programs give you an option of receiving an email everytime a sale is made. This is a great way of staying on top of your sales and also provides you with a record of transactions.

You are probably wondering how to get started with Affiliate Marketing. There are tons of places to learn more about becoming an Affiliate. I have written a great program to help people get started in the business. You can find it and my affiliate program directory at my website below. You will need an arsenal of tools to be a successful affiliate, and so I recommend reading a few different ebooks or guides on the subject and comparing the tools. The small investment you make in these educational materials will well worth the money.

Many people try Affiliate Marketing for a few days, and then when they do not have a sale, they give up. It does take work, so don’t expect to get rich overnight. However, if you put some time and effort into the business, you can reap great rewards.

About the Author:
Jamie is the author of the Affiliate Cash Pilot.

Every now and then it’s a great idea to give your website a check up. Not only does time provide better vision, cyber gnomes have been known to wreak trouble while the webmaster or webmistress is away.

I’ve found that when it comes to blogs, e-mails, or websites - a quick once over is necessary as you go along. After all, when our fingers are flying along, they’re liable to hit any random key thinking it’s the one we were aiming for.

However, that initial once-over sometimes isn’t enough. We need to make a habit of periodically looking over our websites and blogs with a magnifying glass - finding the things that could possibly be problematic and making certain that they aren’t. We should act like we’re a visitor coming to our website for the first time. Do we immediately know what the site or blog is about? Can we locate the navigation quickly? Is our e-mail prominent? Have we set a friendly, welcoming atmosphere?

A few other things we should look for are:

1. Do our outward links work? If we’ve set them to open in new windows, do they do so?

2. If we have affiliate buttons up, are they showing rather than x-ing out?

3. If we’ve linked to certain products, are they still available? Is it still on sale, as advertised? Seeing a link for a product that claims to be on sale, then arriving at the site to find that it no longer is - is a frustration we should save our visitors.

4. How does our site look on different browsers? FireFox and ie look incredibly different - and there doesn’t seem to be any way to make a website look exactly the same on both - BUT we should try very hard to make our site at least presentable for all visitors - irregardless of their browser. It takes a lot of work, but it shows that everyone is important to you, not just people who use the same browser that you do.

So, how long has it been, its it time for a check-up?

I can see it now, in the near future there’ll be bullet-pointed signs and symptoms for spotting a YouTube addiction. The only problem is, everyone will display the same symptoms, so what’s a body to do?

Join in???

There’s a great article waiting for you on the other side of this link>>>>> Video Napster?
Only a year old and YouTube has already rocketed past Google and Yahoo to become number one in Web video. But can it survive the fear of a copyright crunch?