Make Money With Clickbank

So you wanna start making money with ClickBank? ClickBank.com is probably the easiest and most used product network on the web. You can sign up and have an account as quickly as today. There are thousands of products that you can resell in just about any niche you can think of.

Clickbank makes it easy to get an affiliate link for a product you would like to sell and they handle all the payments between you and the seller. So no worries about a seller shafting you on your fair share of commission. They send checks or direct deposits out twice a month. I've never had a late payment from ClickBank, they have always delivered!

Avoid Costly Mistakes

One of the big mistakes that beginners make is they try to sell a product with way to much competition. Sure these products may convert well and are very popular, but you are fighting with too many other affiliates for sales. If you are late to the show then you may end up fighting an uphill battle for traffic. I like to look at products that no one is selling, why? There is no competition and the product creator may have done poor job trying to recruit affiliates for their product. We can look at how many people are selling a product by looking at it's gravity. If the gravity is below 3o, then not that many people are selling the product. If it is at zero, then nobody is selling the product.

Testing

If the sales page looks good and I think that it will convert, I will invest a bit of time to see if I can get sales through that product. What you need to do is create a webpage or free blog talking about the article, this will act as your sales funnel to the product's sales page. Here you want to write a 400 to 500 word article discussing the product and how it can solve what ever problem it may be targeting. Put inline links in the article pointing to the product's page then have a call of action at the end of the article that also points back to the product.

Traffic

Now you will need to get traffic to your blog/website to see if you can get this product to convert. I typically have pre-written articles for various niches, if you don't you will need to invest some time writing some articles to submit to article directories.

Places to submit your articles to,

ezinearticles

goarticles

squidoo lense

hubpages

There are many article directories out there, so send to various ones and see if you get any traffic from them. After we have some articles submitted we can wait a few days and look at our clickbank analytics to determine how much traffic, or hops, we are sending to the product. If you send 100 people to the page and none of them convert, I recommend moving on to another product. If you get just a couple of sales then I recommend scaling up the traffic. Mass submit your articles to as many directories as possible to really boost the people you are sending.

The Lion's Den

If you find a product no one is promoting and it does convert well, typically I have found that you can OWN the product's keywords. The exact name of the product and hot keywords that would include review, reviews, scam, best, and etc. These are buyer keywords, they may even be people who have looked at the product in the past but now they are in a buyer mode. This is how you leap frog all the other affiliates.

It is definitively harder to make money with ClickBank with so much competition but we can help simplify it by testing products that no one is pushing. By making money with ClickBank we can create another income stream that is essentially passive income once you have made it profitable. You can set it and forget it while you move on to your next product.

The Warrior Forum Delima

I love the warrior forum, if you haven't been there make sure to check it out, warriorforum.com. But like any forum out there, they all have their own problems. The mods do a great job trying to keep it a clean and professional forum, although at times they do take things a bit too far.

For example, a user was trying to make a helpful post about about how he makes $200 per day with adsense and he wanted to have people ask him questions on his success. By doing so he wanted to share his methods so others would be successful just like him. You would think, hey this is a great post and someone is really trying to contribute to the community. Well here's the kicker, the post was deleted three times before this last one not being deleted by mods, where he had to beg for them not to delete it. If you want to see the post here it is, $200 a day from adsense, it's a great post in my opinion.

The other side of the coin is the bad products in the WSO, Warrior Special Offer, section of the forum. Don't get me wrong, there are some GREAT products and services here but there are also some very bad products. Rehashed content and e-books filled with fluff to make it look like your getting some big e-book that's 100+ pages long. Then on top of all that, these bad products get sterling reviews from well known marketers saying how great the product is. I think they would give dog crap a good review if asked. Even though they are selling information is either known already by everyone except people new to the IM world. Hey, that's fine but market it as a hand guide for newbies, don't try to lead people in thinking this is some secret method that few people know about. It's just a big lie. It really surprises me that these marketers are willing to throw their reputation out the door for the sake of a buck.

I've launched two products there, one that sold for a $1 that was a combination of my story plus some blogging advice and another that had a couple great videos on some little known techniques and I included some bonuses. I felt I offered something of real value at a low price to the forum. I will always stick to those values of offering quality. I would have to ask myself, "Would I buy this and be satisfied?" If yes, then you know you have created a quality product.

If you plan on launching a WSO here are some tips. Think of products that either solve a common problem that is going around on the forum or offer something with proof. Here are some ideas you could create products with that will offer real value.

1. PLR - (Private Label Rights) In my opinion this is the hottest product you could create. Fellow marketers love new content. You could take a lot of your personal articles and package them up for sale, 30 to 50 articles for a specific niche.
2. Web Graphic Packages - these are hot sellers because anyone who builds their own websites and sales pages need graphics.
3. Case Study - Test out a method for 30 days or longer and show your results. It can be a new technique you've discovered or even something common. Showing that common methods still and can provide serious results, can be very motivating to share.
4. Wordpress - Any type of tips or plugins for wordpress are very hot sellers. Any thing to help simplify a process for a blog or website. Selling pre-built templates for niches are big sellers as well.
5. Traffic Generation - This is a very hot topic to create a product on. If you have found method to generate traffic that no one really knows about, this can be a huge seller.
6. Offline Business - Methods on building your own SEO/Marketing company, lead generation, and other business models. These type of products sell very well.

If you do create a product just remember, provide real quality and value. Make a product people are gonna love. This will keep them hungry for more content from you plus give a real boost to your reputation. Hey, this guy knows a lot about IM and how to make money. You don't want to look like a used car salesman.

Building Niche Sites

Building your first niche website is your first step to building a passive income. There are too many niches, sub niches, and micro niches out there to name them all so there are many opportunities for you to make money online.

Finding A Niche

First step is to find a niche that you can start building a website in. Is there a niche that you are passionate about already? Consider yourself an expert at something? Maybe it's car repair, home remodeling, brewing your own beer, etc.. Find something that you enjoy writing and talking about so that way you don't find yourself burned out down the road. If you want to be successful at making money online you have to start out enjoying what you're writing about. You wouldn't want to write about cooking food when you hate cooking.

Finding A Domain

Once you have found the niche you want to build a website about, you will need to do some proper keyword research. You will need to find a keyword that receives some good traffic in the niche that you are targeting. I would recommend using SEO Book's keyword tool or Google Keyword tool to find keywords that receive good traffic every month. The reason why you are looking for a good keyword in your niche is so you can find a keyword that you can match up with your domain name. If you want to rank in Google for a keyword that receives a ton of traffic then you need to target that keyword by buying a website domain name that has the keyword in it.

Exact match keyword domains are the best for search engine optimization and are easy to rank for. If you want to write about the dating niche and a high traffic keyword might be "Pickup Lines for Women" then you would want to buy a website domain like, pickuplinesforwomen.com or bestpickuplinesforwomen.com. This will give you an easier time ranking in Google for that keyword compared to websites that do not have the keyword in their domain name.

I buy my domains through Godaddy.com, I recommend searching for an online coupon if possible, then I transfer the domain to my bluehost web hosting account. Blue Host is a great hosting site that is fast and is super easy to install WordPress from. Install WordPress then start writing up some useful content on your site. After you are finished with the content you will need to get your site indexed by Google, I recommend Bulk Ping's fast index tool. This tool will get your website indexed within 30 minutes.

Monetization

Once you have the site built you will need to monetize it. The easiest monetization method is signing up for Google Adsense. For the quickest adsense approval method I recommend creating a blogger account and setting up a fake blog with some content. Then apply for adsense from within that account. You can typically get your account approved within a couple days. It's much easier to use a blogger site to get approved compared to a private domain. Once approved put some ads on your site so you can start having some income coming in.

Also, look for affiliate offers you can promote. Head over to clickbank.com and sign up for an account. Look at the marketplace for products that are in your niche that you can promote. Post clickbank ads or write reviews for these products.

Ranking in the SERPs

Next is ranking in Google to build some organic traffic to your website. Remember that keyword you were targeting? We want to build backlinks to your site using that keyword. We can target that keyword by creating hyperlinks with the anchor text of our keyword on other websites. This gives your site credit within Google when it calculates keyword rankings for a given keyword. You can do this by writing articles and submitting them to article directories or by commenting on blogs in your niche.

If you want to read up more on article marketing and other methods of traffic generation check out two of my previous posts on the subject,

Make Money with Article Marketing

8 Tips To Generate Massive Sticky Blog Traffic

Profit?

Once the traffic comes rolling in then that when you make your profits. Once a niche site is profitable you can either sell it or let it build passive income. If you go the passive income route you will want to quit working on the site when it becomes profitable then move on to building another site in another niche. This is a rinse and repeat method that can create multiple streams of income over and over again.

Ezine Article Spying

Short post today but I wanted to show everyone how you can spy on ezinearticles.com and see all the articles with top views. You can either do a general search or be keyword specific. This can help you determine what keywords to target when writing articles for your niche. We want to maximize the amount of traffic we can pull from our articles so we might as well see some of the top producing articles in action.

This is the code that we will be using,

site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2011"

Enter this search string into Google and this will pull up all the articles on ezine that have over 2000 article views. If you want to be more specific by targeting a specific keyword you will need to enter the keyword first then a space, then the search string. Like this,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2011"

This will bring up all the top producing articles in the dating niche. We can also modify this search string where you can narrow down the search results by article views. Change the 2000 number to a higher number, say 10000 views or more. This way you will only see articles that have some serious traffic. You can also change the date if you want to expand beyond the current year.

This method of spying can show you which long tail articles to target in your niche plus how you can write eye catching titles that will get visitors to click on your article. We all want as many visitors as possible and this is one of the best ways of boosting the production out of our articles.

5 Types of Online Passive Income

Today I want to discuss the 5 types of online passive income that you can build for your websites. Passive income is the best type of income that you can build, in my opinion. Who wouldn't want want to make money while you sleep!

Initially there is some hard work involved but the reward is a huge payoff. I think most of us would gladly work hard for a month or two only to be paid for that work every month afterwards. I highly recommend building multiple income streams from different sources. If you start making money from one source, then start working on another. The advantage of having multiple income sources is the ability to absorb a hit financially. If one stream dries up or does poorly, you have many other income streams to keep you afloat. This is why it is crucial to build multiple streams of income to secure your financial future. There are a few different types of passive income that we can target so let's take a look at them.

1. Affiliate Marketing - This is probably the most used typed of passive income out there. Affiliate marketing is where you sell other people's products for them and for every sale you receive a commission. This is where you would build an e-mail list or website that targets a specific niche then begin selling products to your targeted visitors. This typically includes reviews of these products to help assist your visitors with their buying decisions. The biggest affiliate networks you can sign up for are clickbank.com, amazon affiliates, or cj.com.
2. Selling Ad Space or Adsense - Online advertising is one of the most used revenue generators out on the web. Similar to affiliate marketing but you build websites for specific niches that have the potential to generate a large amount of traffic to. The hope is your visitors will click on your advertisements making you some nice cash each day. Google Adsense is one of the biggest ad networks you could join.
3. Product Creation - This is what I consider a step up in the internet marketing world. This method is when someone wants to build their own informational product and sell it through their website or another medium. Product creation is as simple as someone building a product that they consider themselves an expert at, which can be in any niche. We are all good at something, think about something you may be good at that you could create and sell.
4. Referrals - How about that product you just created? Wouldn't it be nice if other people started selling your product for you? You could just sit back while an army of affiliates run around the web promoting your product. If you can recruit the affiliates and possibly super affiliates, you could see a major win fall.
5. Membership sites - Create your own membership site in a niche you're passionate about. Build a private portal with secret information about your niche that people would be hungry to see. The key is to release new information each month that will retain your clients. There is an overwhelming amount of people who completely forget about some of their memberships and will pay the subscriptions for months before ever visiting again. It's definitely not something to be overlooked.

Building multiple streams of income is the biggest thing you can do for your financial future. Even if you stick to one of these 5 methods you can still diversify between income sources. Say you were only going to target affiliate marketing, you could sign up for three separate affiliate networks so you would have multiple sources of income. The most important thing is not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Make Money with Article Marketing

Article Marketing is now bigger than it ever was but there have been some significant changes with regards to the Google Panda Update. There are some changes to the methods we use now compared to just a few months ago, prior to these algorithm updates.

Article marketing is typically the beginning point for most marketers who want to gain targeted traffic, but what normally happens is they fail at article marketing because they do not understand the techniques behind it that drive traffic. I want to talk about some of these methods that will turn a ‘Fail’ into a ‘Win’.

There is NO EXCUSE to being able to make a descent passive income from article marketing and I will cover everything in detail that you will need to know to accomplish making an income. Making money online takes hard work like everything else, there is no push button magic secret.

I’m going to detail this out as a step by step action plan that is easy to follow. If you want to see success, follow these steps and I promise you results.

Step 1: Keyword Research

This is what I consider the biggest step in all of article marketing, keyword research. New marketers have a difficult time grasping this concept and can lead quickly to failure and ultimately quitting all together. For this method we will be using keywords known as long tail keywords or keyword phrases.

To give you a picture of how to do the research, let’s find an example. Let’s choose a random niche to target, heck let’s get one that’s even highly competitive, the Weight Loss niche.

I prefer using SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool when doing research. (These are free methods that will get the job done, once you start making money I highly recommend buying Market Samurai, it will change your life.)

You next step is to look for long tail keywords, more than one word, that have at least 10 searches per day and less than 10,000 competing sites. (The competition isn’t always a factor, it really depends on who is ranked #1 already, we’ll talk more on this in a bit.)

I entered in the search box, “Burn Fat”, and this brought up a long list of keywords related to burning fat or weight loss. Scroll down to the bottom of the list, here are some keywords that we should be able to compete for.

Found one! does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat? (This is what we call a long tail keyword) This keyword receives 11 daily search results for Google and 16 Results averaged between the top 3 search engines. If we put this keyword in quotation marks, “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat”, and search with Google, we can see the exact competition, a jaw dropping 6 sites.

There are a few other keywords on this list you should look at after we are done here. I can bet that after writing this post people will be jumping on this long tail keyword and some others in that list.

So with one article we can potentially send 11 people to our site per day, 330 per month. Let’s say your site is selling a product with a commission of $23 and you write 10 articles that have this kind of traffic, that’s 3300 visitors per month potentially. If only %1 percent converted on your product, that’s $759 per month! Not to mention passive income where you are going to set it and forget it.

Step 2: Article Research

This really applies to niches that you are not an expert in. You should have no problem writing articles about topics you’re passionate about. Since I’m not an expert on burning fat I’ll head over to Google and search for “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” and check out some of the sites for ideas on what to write about.

I’d also recommend visiting an authority site that is in the niche you are targeting. There might be some good information that will give you ideas for great content.

Step 3: Writing The Article

You don’t have to be great writing to get into marketing, if you can express an idea or plan to someone verbally, why can’t you do it by writing it down?

It’s best to make the article short, 400 to 650 words, it’s crucial after the Google update to maintain a minimum threshold of 400 words for your articles. You want to write a short article that keeps the reader interested, when they come to your article we want them to think, “Oh, this is short, I can read this.” You want to avoid a high bounce rate (where a user immediately leaves a page they just visited), due to the latest panda update this can affect our Google search rankings.

Here’s a great tip for article writing, Bring up a problem -> Write about the pain or difficulty caused by said problem -> Discuss the solution & lifestyle without the problem. This is a powerful article writing method that will draw readers to your site. Offer part of the solution or a great tip in the article leaving the reader hungry for more.

There is 6 basic parts to an article,

Title or Headline

You must put the keyword here. An exact match is best, so “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” or top lists are great for getting attention. For example, Top 10 Fat Burning Tips, where maybe, Fat Burning Tips is your keyword, will be an attention grabber. The keyword optimizes it for the search engines and the couple extra words spice up the headline to grab attention.

Summary

Your keyword doesn’t have to go here but if you are working with a shorter keyword I would recommend it. This is the part of the article that will show up on the search engine as the description of the article. You want to make this as appealing as possible so you get clicks.

First Paragraph

The Keyword must be in the first sentence of your paragraph! Then, once more throughout the paragraph, don’t spam it. Try to keep this interesting and engaging so the reader doesn’t leave immediately.

Body

Insert the keyword again once or twice in this part of the article. This is the beef of the article, so great content here!

Conclusion

This is where we want to skillfully lead the reader to our author’s resource box, where you will want to promote your website.

Resource Box

The majority of article directories will allow you to promote your website (one or two links) in this space. This is where you must put a call to action to get readers to visit your website. If possible you want to have the link to your site setup with anchor text as the keyword you are targeting. This will help optimize your website for SEO and backlinking.

Examples “If you want to burn fat now visit this website now (Link Goes Here)” or “For more tips on burning fat visit this website now (Link Goes Here)”

Most article directories will not allow a direct affiliate link so you need to have your own website that can be linked, then have a short review of your affiliate product on your site; then put your affiliate link in that review. (You can put affiliate links inside your articles at GoArticles.com!)

Step 4: Article Submission

Great job so far! You should now have a high quality article that we can submit to article directories. Ezinearticles.com is still the best article directory, even after the Google panda update, and right now approval times couldn’t be any quicker. Submit the article to Ezinearticles first, and then once it is approved you can submit it to other article directories. Google has put more of a penalty on duplicate content so it wouldn’t hurt to invest in article spinning software at some point for better results.

Other article directories I recommend are Goarticles.com and Associatedcontent.com

Web 2.0 Sites for submission, Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com

Document Sharing Sites are starting to pull some weight with Google, I recommend submitting your articles to Scribd.com as well.

Step 5: Ranking for Search Engine Position

Since we are dealing with low competition keywords it is VERY easy to rank #1 in the search results. You honestly need just a handful of backlinks to rank this high. Sometimes you will have an article that will rank number one naturally, no backlinks, because there is zero competition. I had an article last week do that!

To get these backlinks you will need to social bookmark your articles. There are various pieces of software and services out there that can help automate this process to many different sites at once. If you decide not to do it by hand in the future there are service here in the warriors for hire section or gigs on fiverr.com.

When creating these social bookmarks make sure that you are using the keyword that you are targeting in the article in the anchor text of the link.

If you have created a high quality, killer article, then your article is likely to get picked up and syndicated by other people providing even more backlinks.

Final Step: Profit?

This last step is where you will see results from your hard work. It all comes down to numbers and how hard you worked. Think realistically about how many articles you can write in a day then setup a plan to write that many every day. Let’s say you can write 3 to 4 articles per day for 30 days, that’s 100 to 120 articles in one month. If each article has 10 people click through to your site per day, that’s 10 X 100 = 1000 visitors per day to your website. These are targeted visitors that are coming to your website, viewing your offer. If just %1 of those people convert into sales, that’s 10 people buying your product every day. Occasionally you will write an article that is just a home run, this is a killer article that will bring in a huge traffic every day.

Talk about building a passive income! Once you have this type of traffic built you can set it and forget it. Move on to your next website or project that you want to promote and start writing articles. Rinse -> Repeat -> Profit.

The example I’ve used is a typical but well below average situation for article marketing. You are likely to see much greater results than what I’ve show above. This method will work for any niche; there are always keywords ripe for the taking. If you have trouble finding some keywords start thinking about sub niches and micro niches. Don’t do just plain dog training, try a specific breed for example. That’s all I have for you today!

Good Luck,

-Jay Vance

Quit Wasting Time on Your Blog

How much time does it fee like you waste on your blog? Either checking analytics or reading other blogs for ideas, traffic generation methods, or just being unable to focus on what to do next? You may have just realized that you fall into these categories. Don't worry, I've been there too.

One of the larger problems I have faced is not focusing on what to do next, no plan of action to keep me going. I have found myself in the past just sitting at the keyboard browsing forums or spending hours looking for inspiration. Two things were a result, I didn't get any production out for content and I didn't bring any new traffic in to my site. I began writing out action plans and to do lists to kick my butt in gear. I keep my list in front of me any time I am working on my sites.

You gain a couple things from making an action plan, it feels great to check something off your list and it keeps you focused on the task at hand. Sometimes I get writers block and just shut the door, turn off the radio, and force myself to write for 55 minute increments with 10 minute breaks in between writing. This is huge for when you are writing your own e-books.

Here's the other side of the coin, sometimes you spend way too much time on your blog. What's the point of writing tons of content that hardly anyone will see? You have to get out there and see the world...wide web. Forcefully close your blog page and start commenting on other blogs in your niche, start signing up for forums and building a reputation, and spread your content through social media.

You can add these traffic generating techniques to your to do list, to help you find some balance between your blog duties. Just try not to over do it with writing too much content and articles at once. You can find yourself burnt out. I've been there, especially on my first blog. I would write 2 to 3 weeks worth of content and just be disgusted with anything to do with my niche. Don't fall into that trap. Take breaks and spread your blog duties out. Mixing these up each day really helps you stay interested in running your blog.

If you haven't subscribed to my RSS Feed yet, now is a good time to jump on-board, plus it's free! Subscribe Here

8 Tips To Generate Massive Sticky Blog Traffic

Blog traffic can be hard to come by to someone who is new to the blogging world. Even if you are a long time blogger you may have not found the success of building large amounts of traffic to your site. Some blog for the satisfaction it brings where they build a community and others build blogs to make a full time income. Might as well be paid for your hard work right? Lets look at some methods that can bring in traffic to your site and allow you to reach your goals.

1. Provide Great Content - Making quality content is hands down the best way to bring big blog traffic to your site and keep it. If you provide crap content then you can expect poor results. Content is king! You must write valuable material to provide to your readers so they will want to return to your site, hungry for more info.
2. Blog Design - Having a clean and professional looking blog makes you, in turn, look professional and more authoritative. Creating a site that is easy to use and putting your content in logical, organized locations will help you maintain users on your site.
3. RSS Visibility is a big mistake most bloggers make - Your typical user isn't tech savvy or might not even know what RSS is. You will need to let them know what RSS is and that it is completely free to subscribe to. You can also, from time to time, remind your users at the end of your post to subscribe by providing a link to your feed.
4. Respond to Comments and E-mails from your visitors - Commenting to your visitors builds trust with them and gives them interactions that will make them want to return to your blog. Always e-mail back your visitors! This is one of the biggest trust makers out there, if you don't reply to someone they will think their question wasn't important and lose faith in you and your site.
5. Research other blogs in your niche and begin leaving comments everyday on these other blogs - This will build trust with the blog owners and send traffic your way. You want to make sure that your website is linked to your name in the comments. Plus by researching other blogs you can see what techniques they are using to build content and bring in traffic.
6. Guest Posting - Now it's time to target those blog owners your just made friends with. Ask them if you can make a guest post or possibly swap posts. This will bring in serious traffic to your blog.
7. Use Graphics in your posts - Using graphics can help keep your visitors interested in your site and spice it up a bit. No one wants to visit a bland blog that is just white with text. There is plenty of free image sites out there where you can supply plenty of images for your blog.
8. Engage your readers - Getting your readers to comment on your blog adds another level of interactivity that will keep your readers coming back. Ask a question at the end of your post. "What would you do" or "What methods do you use for X niche". This will help get readers to comment on your posts and stay interested in your blog.

These tips will help you grow your blog into an authority site in your niche. Posting great content that keeps your readers engaged and coming back hungry for more is the secret to building a successful blog. Whether you blog to make passive income online or just for the passion, these tips will work no matter what your goals are. You will be well on your way to generating massive blog traffic.

Starting an Online Business with Zero Investment

What I love about the internet is that anyone can make money online with zero investment. You can create a blog and start making money online immediately. Now, to make money immediately you do have to have some experience and know how to drive traffic but we will save that for a later post. I wanted to talk about some of the free options out there that can help you build a passive income site in 30 days.

Creating a free blog site at blogger.com or wordpress.com is the easiest way to get your start online. I recommend blogger over wordpress but that's just me. Blogger is very easy to use and has more customization/hacks available compared to wordpress. They both have their limitations compared to owning your own site but there are many workarounds and will typically fit the needs for running a full featured blog. Plus, if you want to go get your own domain, you can buy one through Google apps and have it pointed to your blog so you can have a cleaner .com or .net URL.

You can always start with a basic theme that comes stock with blogger but I highly recommend finding a premium theme that looks professional. Now I know what you're thinking, "Jay! I thought we were going the free route?" Well we are, head over to Premium Blogger Templates, this is hands down the best free templates for blogger. You can find just about any niche template on this site and even if you can't find one, there is many standard templates you can customize.

Looking for a graphics editor? I use an open source piece of software called Gimp. It's a high quality graphics editor that is comparable to Photoshop and it's fairly easy to use. I use it to create my banners, logos, and photos for my website.

Need to make videos? I recommend either Jing or Camstudio. Either one will allow you to record your screen so you can show tutorials or record a slide show that you want to talk over. Some of the easiest videos are using powerpoint slides as talking points and talking over these slides.

If you don't have Microsoft Office, no worries, you can get OpenOffice for free! It looks just like Microsoft Office, prior to '07, and has nearly all the same features. I use OpenOffice to create my slide shows for my videos and for writing my e-books and newsletters. It can easily convert documents to PDF, so I highly recommend it.

Monetizing your site is easy, especially if you went with blogger for your site. Inside blogger you can apply for an ad-sense account and the Amazon affiliate program. It's very easy with blogger to implement these programs into your blog. The next easiest method is signing up for clickbank.com and looking for some products you can promote on your site.

Signup for accounts for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. These can help you track where visitors are coming from, what they are looking for, and where they are roaming your site. Very useful information which can help you build your site.

Look forward to another upcoming post on free traffic generation methods that will help you get your blog really moving.

Finding a Niche to Start Your First Website

The first thing any internet marketer has to decide on is which niche to target? There is so many primary niches, sub niches, micro niches to pick from it can be difficult to land on one. If you are going to create a blog then I highly recommend selecting a topic that you are passionate about. It will make it much easier to start building content and you will actually enjoy what you are writing about.

I was passionate about a video game that I played frequently so I created a blog about it. That was my very first website and I was able to easily write tons of content for the site. So think about things that you are passionate about that you could consider yourself an expert at. Maybe you can train dogs, modify cars, catch monster fish, an expert hunter, or creative artist/crafter. I could name these all days but I think you get the idea.

The next thing to think about is, should I run a blog in a sub or micro niche? This is a prime example of less competition, compared to making a general site about dog training you could make a blog that talks about a specific breed, like Labrador Retriever Training. You could apply this to any niche. There are many great adsense sites that run in micro niches where there is good traffic but are very easy to rank high in Google. Some of the biggest mistakes people make when they try to make money online is jumping into a highly competitive niche or focusing on keywords that are just to competitive.

You might be thinking about how you can monetize your niche, well good news, there is products in EVERY niche. Even if you can't find products you don't like, you can always use Google Ad-sense or sell your own ads once you have sustained traffic. The easiest affiliate program to become a member of is clickbank but I'd also recommend commission junction. Either one will most likely have many products in the niche you are promoting.

Lastly, check other blogs in your niche. See what kind of success they are having, how many RSS subscribers, twitter followers, or facebook fans they have. That is a great indicator of what kind of success you may be able to pull in the same niche.

Building Passive Income is a Dirty Job

There is NO Magic Bullet to making fast money online. It all takes hard work! So don't get caught up in magic bullet system or push button solutions. You are just getting scammed out of your hard earned money! If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is!

The methods I share on this blog are methods you can implement in your free time in the evenings. Eventually your hard work will pay off as long as you stick with it. Whether it's article marketing, providing an online service, building your own blog, or affiliate websites you will see growth over time. For anyone wanting to quit your job and become your own boss, internet marketing is a great business to get into.

The best bet in staying interested in internet marketing is jumping into a niche or niches that you are passionate about. Dog training, fitness, relationships, gadgets, technology, software, books, etc, there are big niches, sub niches, micro niches, and so on. There are endless possibilities on where you want to focus your strengths.

I got my start in the video game niche, I created a blog about a certain aspect of a highly popular online video game. I gradually built a lot of content and used some methods to generate a large amount of traffic. After I started ranking well in Google and my content was being republished on other sites, I started making some nice income online. It wasn't enough to quit my job but an extra $1000 a month was nice money to help pay bills and have some extra play money. I plan on going into more detail on my first site in the near future on how exactly I pulled this off.

I have since ventured into other online ventures but they all have taken hard work. Now once you start making money you can begin reinvesting that money but I'll talk more about this in an upcoming post. Don't get frustrated and hang in there, IM is a long journey but if you stick with it you will reap the rewards. Running your own blog or selling your own product could be your ticket to financial freedom and a low stress life. Goodluck, I only wish for you to succeed just as I have.

Google Engage for SEO Professionals

Google is now offering a program called Google Engage, for SEO professionals. It is a free service that has free marketing materials for your clients, adwords vouchers, tutorials, and material for Google partner certification.

This looks like a great resource if you are an offline SEO professional or wanting to help clients with PPC campaigns. Stay up to date with Google and use some free tools to help your business.

Check it out here, Google Engage. Watch the video below for more information.

Faster Way to Index Links

Since my first post, Force Google to See Your Backlinks, I have found an even easier method to get your backlinks indexed quickly by Google. I came across a website called BulkPing, it's a site where you can create mass RSS feeds of all your links, submit to RSS directories, Ping to several web services, and new site submission.

1. Go To BulkPing.com

Click at the top menu, Rss Feed Generator Creator

2. Enter your feed info, upload text file with all your backlinks, up to 50,000.


3. Copy URL for new RSS Feed, Click menu item Free RSS Submit


4. Submit new RSS Feed url to this form, this will mass submit to directories


5. Click on menu item, Mass Ping


6. Copy RSS Feed url to form and submit for mass pinging


7. Profit?

Congrats! You have just successfully boosted your chances of your backlinks at becoming indexed by the Google monster. This method submits your feed to 27 RSS directories and pings 25 search engines.

If you have new website you can also use the Fast Index Free backlinks tool. You can enter your new site and have it submitted to a couple thousand web directories which can create up to 2300 backlinks. I've had new sites indexed in under 20 minutes with this method. Doesn't get any quicker than that!

Thanks for checking in!

Do Profile Links Boost Your Google Rankings?

There has been a lot of debate in the blogging and IM worlds about whether or not the latest Google update has diminished the ability of forum profile backlinking as a viable solution for ranking of sites. I set out to test whether or not this is true since I've seen some IM gurus claim that forum backlinks are worthless.

For one of my niche sites I found a keyword that receives 13,000 exact searches every month and has 2.5 million competing sites. Not exactly an easy keyword to go after. I outsourced the backlinking and the job provided over 7000 forum profile backlinks at a very low cost.

Now prior to targeting this keyword I didn't even show up on the first 50 pages of google for this search term. After one week I was on page 2! Although the 7000 backlinks all didn't index or were deleted so the number of backlinks was actually much lower. I have since spent a little more money on backlinking and have now reached page 1 for this keyword. I'm not in the top 5 yet but it will be only a matter of time.

Whether you are outsourcing or manually building links on forums it is still very viable solution to ranking in Google. I got my start on my first website by manually building profile link packages I paid for that were high PR links. It really helped me rank in Google and get traffic coming into my site.

I hope this post will help you make your decision on future backlinking projects and not deter you from using forum profile links. Thanks for checking in!

Track Your Google Rankings with this Free Tool

How much time do you spend looking up all of your website or urls in google to check what ranking you currently have in the SERPs? Free Monitor for Google is a crucial tool for internet marketing. It allows you to check multiple domains or urls for their Google rankings for specific keywords. It's very easy to use, add a url, then add keywords for that url, and click search!

After the search it gives you a detailed list of sites in the top 50 plus where your site ranks. This free tool can assist you on where you need to focus your SEO efforts.

Download Free Monitor for Google

Thanks for checking in! I hope this tool is as beneficial to you as it has been for me!

Force Google to See Your Backlinks

This can be the most frustrating part of IM, getting Google to index your backlinks. In the back of your mind you you think, "Maybe I can send a case of beer to the Google engineers to get my links indexed!" And you would probably go that far if there was any chance that it might actually work.

Apparently we need to dig up an archaic spell book and recite an old cult verse then finally Google will index our backlinks and give us the big fat ranking in the SERPs(Search Engine Result Page) that we have always wanted.

Ok, lets step back into reality and take a look at some methods that can help hold Google crawler's hand to all of our links.

1) Ping Your Links
Using a tool like Ping-o-Matic can assist us in pinging our backlinks and gives us a higher chance of Google crawling our links. What is Ping-o-Matic? It is a tool that allows us to have multiple search engines and directories crawl a website.

The easiest method is to create a bookmark for Ping-o-Matic that will allow you to ping sites on the fly as you are creating backlinks.

1. Create a new bookmark in your browser
2. Name it Ping-o-Matic
3. Add this code to the URL Field -> javascript:location.href='http://pingomatic.com/ping/?title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'&blog url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&chk_webl ogscom=on&chk_blogs=on&chk_technorati=on&chk_feedb urner=on&chk_syndic8=on&chk_newsgator=on&chk_myyah oo=on&chk_pubsubcom=on&chk_blogdigger=on&chk_blogr olling=on&chk_blogstreet=on&chk_moreover=on&chk_we blogalot=on&chk_icerocket=on&chk_newsisfree=on&chk _topicexchange=on&chk_google=on&chk_tailrank=on&ch k_bloglines=on&chk_aiderss=on&chk_skygrid=on&chk_a udioweblogs=on&chk_rubhub=on&chk_geourl=on&chk_a2b =on&chk_blogshares=on'

Now whenever you are on a site you want to ping just click the bookmark!

2) Build an RSS Feed for your Links
Go to Ice Rocket Free RSS Builder and create a free account. Here we can create an RSS feed and add our links.

If you have a big list and don't want to enter them one by one we can use another site called Links 2 RSS, here you can copy and past a list of backlinks from a text file and have it converted to an RSS feed.

3) Submit the RSS Feed to Directories
Submit your feed to popular RSS feeds, such as feedage.com, this will help Google notice your backlinks even quicker.

We can also submit our RSS url to Ping-o-Matic for a little extra push.

If you are creating a few manual links for a low competition situations you can also submit your backlinks to popular social bookmarking sites since these sites are crawled daily by Google it will quickly index your links.

Good luck with your backlinking ventures; with these tips you should easily be able to slay the Google Bot beast!

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