Most bloggers make their money from affiliate income.  Yes, some people make SOME money from Adsense, but that is almost always just a few cents per day rather than several hundred dollars.

The truly successful bloggers use all the tools at their disposal and one of the very best out there is called Ninja Affiliate.

It’s actually a Wordpress plugin developed by MaxBlogPress, and it’s designed to automatically convert keywords of your choice into affiliate links like this one —-> Ninja Affiliate.

Even better than that, you can cloak your affiliate links so that they don’t look anything like affiliate links, but rather a regular webpage URL.

You can easily manage all of your affiliate links by using a name that is easy to remember, and the software will allow you to use any type of affiliate format out there.  Because you can cloak the links your site will always look more professional, so you won’t be showing a long, ugly stream of numbers and letters that scream “AFFILIATE!!!” to your readers.

Also, you can prevent affiliate link-theft by using the cloaking feature; if a potential thief doesn’t know it’s a link, he can’t steal it!

Affiliate Ninja has advanced display options that allow you to display any text that you want in your browsers menu bar.  This will give you a little ’search-engine-love”, which is always a good thing.  You can set a limit to how many of your keywords are turned into links, as you don’t want your posts to look like you’re spamming.  You want Google to love you, not slap your wrist, right!?

If you have a limited budget for software this year (and who doesn’t?) this very good software is definitely something I’d recommend you invest in.

Here’s the link again: Affiliate Ninja.

Luke.

Squidoo is one of those excellent new sites out there that is making it easier for people to get the information in their heads out there and published in the real-world.  You see, you could (and DO) have mountains of information in your head about a subject, probably your hobby, that you COULD share with the world (or at least anybody with a computer and internet connection).

The other good thing is that once you have put some of your information out there (on Squidoo), you can then get interested people to come and have a look at YOUR website.  It’s then up to you and your site to convert them into customers, or at least, into regular readers.

In Squidoo, you can create what they call ‘lenses’.  These are nothing more than insights that YOU write about a subject…………ANY subject.  So, as an internet marketer, you can create your lens about marketing and making money online.  If you are familiar with email-marketing, you can have a lens about email marketing.

You don’t have to write much, somewhere between 500 and 1000 words.  Then, if someone finds your ‘lens’ by using Squidoo’s search-box, they can click to open and read your stuff and then, if they liked it and learned something of value, they might go and take a look at your website.

Squidoo is FREE but they still manage to contribute to CHARITIES.  Which charities?  YOU can choose where the money goes!  Huh? Yep,  what they do is this: when you sign-up for an account, YOU choose which charity gets 50% of any money that the ads on your lens-page generates.  So if you have a popular lens, they’re going to get more click on their Google (and other) ads.  They keep half and donate the other half to the charity of  your choice.

They currently ranke #485 in Alexa and have a Google page rank of 6, which is very good by any standards.  They make their money from ads and affiliate links, so they don’t need your money. They are simply using your CONTENT, so that they don’t have to create any content.  And, as you know, CONTENT is king! It’s what brings people TO a website.

I strongly urge you to get an account for yourself and put some content onto a lens.

Give it a whirl and see if you like using it.  If nothing else, it will drive some people to your money websites or your blogs.

Luke.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”

- Ayn Rand

Professionals are very often NOT very good at what they do.  They are professional not because they are good at something, but simply because it’s what they do for a living…….their profession.

Try not the make the mistake of confusing the word ‘professional’ with ‘competent’.  I’ve know MANY people in all walks of life who pretty much just get-by at their job/profession, but have never really learned to do it well.  Like them, most online “professionals” are like this.

Don’t get me wrong, there are SOME very good internet marketers, but these are few and far between.   Those that do a good job use Article Marketing and THEN email marketing to find and then market their products and services to their prospective customers.

Article Marketing is easily one of the best ways to get visitors to your website, and email marketing is equally as good at converting that web-traffic into buying customers. Here I want to discuss how to to properly submit the articles you’ve written to the article directories.  In the next post I’ll discuss the follow-up technique to convert visitors using email marketing.

Most ‘professionals’ who make their money online don’t even realize that article marketing is one of the best ways to get traffic to their sites, so you are in a good position knowing this.  You also need to know HOW to submit your articles properly for them to have maximum and long-term effect.

Getting one-way links back to your website (or sites) is the name of the game, but ALSO, you will become known as an authority in your field and THAT will get you visitors also, because people will hear of you and try to find you in the search engines.  If you don’t believe me, type Luke Hawthorne into Google.  I come up #1, and my articles are also on the first page.  Now see what happens if you type in YOUR name.  Okay, so you can see that I know what I’m talking about.

Now, back to getting links TO your sites by submitting articles properly.

People use search-engines like the mythical ‘Oracle’ (in fact I’m surprised that their isn’t a search-engine called ‘Oracle’ yet).  They want to ask the search-engines a question and get an answer, so it’s the answer that they want, but the search-engines can currently only find TEXT.  They’re working on speech-recognition, so that will be the next phase of search-engine growth.

First, you need to realize that you need to get LOTS of articles ‘out there’.  Try and submit one article every week, at least to the top 5 directories (these are easily found by using Google or the like).

Don’t EVER worry about giving away too much information.  The more secrets you reveal and the better the quality of your articles, the more visitors you will get to your websites.  Also remember, if you DO have several sites that you want to promote that are on similar topics (or identical subjects), you can submit the same article but with different links.  You can also submit the same articles or very slightly modified versions to the SAME article directories a few months later, after the earlier articles have already been taken and used on other peoples sites.  This way, you’re leveraging the one article into links for several sites.

Make sure that you preview each article before clicking the ’submit’ button, so that you’re sure that the article looks good; paragraphs of about even length and not too long, punctuation right etc.

Be sure the make your articles easy to read.  The sad fact is that the AVERAGE reading level in the U.S.A. (currently the leading power in the world) is age 12.  I’m SERIOUS!  NO difficult words, keep your wording simple.  Don’t say “exacerbate”, say “worsen” or “made worse”.

Check to make sure that the subject you are writing on IS in demand.  As I write this, the ‘hot-topic’ is Social Marketing.  It won’t last, so you CAN write about this, but it’s better to write on subjects of LASTING importance, rather than something that’s currently trendy.  Your PRODUCTS, however, should be aimed at the trendy/fashionable market.

I’ll go into a little more details tomorrow.

Luke.

An online business with a high search-engine ranking is considered to have more credibility; these are often called “authority sites”.  These are sites that have LOTS of links to them.  YOU want YOUR website to become an authority site!  Video marketing is great way to do this.

Video CAN go viral, which means OTHER people will take the “embed code” from the likes of YouTube (don’t forget all the other sites will you!?) and put them onto THEIR site, giving you more exposure.

How easy is it to get started marketing your site with videos?  DEAD easy!  Below is a link to some free software called CamStudio.  It records what’s on your screen AND your voice (if you choose to do so), so you don’t have to buy a video camera and worry about how dorky you might look with a friend filming you. You can do demonstrations on your computer and simply send the resulting video to YouTube etc.

Of course, you may really enjoy being in front of a camera, and if this is the case, then by all means have somebody film you.  Video cameras are VERY inexpensive now and far superior to the ones made just a few years ago. However, if you can’t afford one, you can use a webcam that cost about $15, but nowadays most laptops have them built-in anyway.  A colleague of mine actually films himself walking around town, and then turn his laptop around to face things he wants people to see in his demonstrations.

Of course, don’t forget to add a text link to your website so that people know how to find you.  AND make sure the title and tags you use for each video include keywords that the video is about.  Make it educational and or fun and people WILL come to your site to check it out.

The benefits of video marketing far outweigh any negatives, not that that are many anyway.  Here’s the great FREE piece of software (you know just how much I LOVE FREE STUFF!) from Cam Studio.

Of course, you shouldn’t JUST market with videos.  This should still be considered a supplement to your article-writing and posts on forums and other people’s RELATED blogs.  Keep using the best traffic-building techniques found in Traffic Tactics and other great products, and you’ll have a well-rounded advertising and marketing campaign system working for you, even while you sleep.

Luke.