Also known as referral programs, affiliate programs are normally commission based sales.

This is how they work… You’ll recommend a site to your visitors/subscribers and then pick up a percentage of any sale that those visitors/subscribers make. You’ll benefit from the commission and the merchant benefits from the sales, and also new buyers on their buyers list if they are clever enough collect the details of their buyers.

If you already have a website set up, you can run an affiliate program from it, or you can simply build a site to promote a particular product or service. As long as it brings in more cash than it takes to build or run it, then you’ll be fine.

With any marketing program, you’ll need to be careful when you select an affiliate program. The benefit of an affiliate program will give you another way to make money from your users. Instead of selling them a product, you simply send them to a partner then take a cut of the profits.

Even though it may seem tempting to go for programs with the highest commissions, those programs won’t pay you anything if your visitors don’t buy them.

Below, you’ll find some tips to help you select an affiliate program that is right for YOU:

1. Do not accept any less than 25% with commission. You can find many affiliate programs with great
payment structures and high percentages of pay in just about any field.

2. Look for statistic pages that list the number of click throughs, sales, and earnings, so that you’ll be able to compare and see how you are doing when you promote it.

3. Always look for programs that offer a wide variety of tools to put on your web site, including banners, text links, and of course graphics.

4. Find out how often you’ll be paid and be sure that the payment schedule meets with your own expectations. Some programs will pay monthly,
while others will pay quarterly.

5. Be sure that top level support is included. If they can’t answer your questions in a quick and timely manner, you don’t want to work
with them.

Once you learn what you are doing with affiliate programs, you can make a lot of money. If you are just starting out, you should always use common sense and not rush into anything. As you become more familiar with how things work, you’ll be well on your way to making a lot of money – and enjoying making it.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know your views and experiences with affiliate programs.

Until next time,

Paul

Hey people,

It has been a while since I last made a post, so I thought I better just let everyone know that I’m still alive.

I also need to give you an update about the report that I’m writing which I talked about at the end of my previous post – How I built my List from 50 to 2000 in around 15 weeks!…

Basically it is taking me longer than I thought to create, I’ve had a busy few weeks with things in real life and I had to put a few things on hold, mainly because we’ve been having work done in our house and had to keep turning the electricity off so the work could be carried out safely… Anyway I’m back on track now and I’ll try and get the report completed as soon as I can.

Okay, so moving on to the main topic of this post…

6 Super Tips To Get Your Articles Read

It is no secret that there are many people who dread having to write articles, reports and even blog posts. Many just feel like it seems to be too much work and it all just goes to waste when nobody reads them.

To some people reading articles can seem like work too, especially if the article is boring and bland. Well, articles are supposed to be read, that’s their purpose, to pass on your message and information. If it is not read then it is clearly a waste of time and effort.

But all the same articles have to be written to be read, it’s just a matter of making them good. Making a good article doesn’t have to be strenuous and straining, there are just some points needed to be reminded of, and some guides to follow. Once you get the hang of it writing articles can be fun, as well as profitable for you and your site.

Of course, when writing articles it must be on a subject that you know about, that’s why if you own a site you are probably knowledgeable about that certain topic and theme. When you write about it you won’t have a hard time because you already know what it is, and what it’s about. It’s just a matter of making your articles creative and interesting.

To make sure that your articles get read and enjoyed, here are six tips to get your articles read. These tips will make your articles readable and interesting to your readers.

1) Use short paragraphs. When the paragraphs are very long the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader, just looking at it It can get quite confusing and make it hard work to read. The reader will usually just quickly scan long paragraphs and move on, so it’s much better to make your paragraphs nice and short. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word!

2) Make use of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed, numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to remember and digest. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or number, readers will know that this is where the tips start and end. Format your bullets and numbers with indentations so that your article won’t look like a single block of square paragraphs. Add a little bit of flair and pizazz to your articles shape.

3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Doing this will break each point into sections but still would be incorporated into one whole article. It would also be easy for the reader to move on from one point to another; the transition would be smooth and easy. You will never lose your readers attention as well as the point and direction to where the article is pointing. (One person that I’ve noticed doing this well is Vance Sova, who is a regular reader of my blog, you can find a link to his blog in my Top Commentators list to the left)

4) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can entice a person’s curiosity, you’re already halfway in getting a person to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are looking for. Provide titles or headers that describe your articles content but should also be short and concise.

Use titles like… “How To Quit Smoking and Live Longer”, or “How To Beat Tobacco and Quit For Good” .You could also use titles that can command people, for example, “Quit Smoking NOW In Six Easy Steps…”. These type of titles reach out to a persons’ emotions and makes them interested.

5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening paragraph, use real life situations that can be adopted by the reader. Use good descriptions and metaphors to drive in your point, just don’t over do it. Driving your examples with graphic metaphors and similes would make it easy for them to imagine what you are talking about. Making the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.

6) Utilize figures when necessary and not just ordinary and boring statements. Using specific facts and figures can heighten your article because it makes it authoritative. But do not make it too formal, it should be light and easy for people to follow. A bit like a friendly teacher having a little chat with an eager student.

Okay, so as you can see from the title of this post and screen shot below, I have managed to build my list from 50 to 2000 subscribers in around 15 weeks, which means that I managed to hit my target goal of 2000 by 1st APRIL. (See My Goals For 2010 for more information)

And as I said in my previous post, I’m going to share with you what I did to build my list to that figure in that space of time.

My very first subscribers came in September from me tweeting about my various free offers on Twitter, I had been building my Twitter following since April 2009, and had built up around 4000 followers, mostly targeted to the Internet marketing and make money online niches. So I was lucky that I’d done that.

Twitter proved to be a very slow way of getting subscribers though, and they would often unsubscribe after they got the download. Those that did stay were very unresponsive because I hardly emailed them. The ones that did open my emails, when I finally emailed them that is, they would unsubscribe because they probably didn’t remember how they got on my list.

At the beginning of October of finally got over my fear of entering JV Giveaway Events, yeah I know it sounds funny but i was actually worried about entering these things. It was the fact that it says that you MUST promote the giveaway event to your list, and I barely had one!.. For some strange reason I also had it in my head that I might get banned from entering other JV Giveaway Events if I was caught not promoting (which was not the case at all.)

I really wish I’d started doing the Giveaway Events right from the start like I was told to by, Alex Jeffreys my mentor, because once I found a decent gift and entered as many as I could, slowly but surely my list would grow each week, and this time as the new subscribers came in, I made sure to email them at least one a week with something free and of value with no opt-in required.

I simply used Twitter to promote the JV Giveaway Events as best I could, and this helped keep me from getting my gift removed from a lot of them. However it was nothing like I thought and was no big deal if I didn’t manage to get enough hits to my link, as I’d still get some subscribers from the first few days which is when all the traffic is being driven to them anyway.

I also started using some Safelists to help get more people on my list faster, the main one I used was ListJoe, it allowed me to mail out to about 3000 I think as soon as I joined, and it got me a few subscribers. You then have to earn more credits to be able to send again, by clicking links in emails, that got pretty tedious though and I soon stopped wasting time clicking links in emails, so I didn’t mail out with them again and just did the same thing with a few others instead.

Don’t get me wrong the Safelist sites are ok, but only if you take the discounted one time offers for upgrades when you join, otherwise it is a lot more expensive later, but I didn’t have the cash to do that. I will probably look at joining one of the better Safelists and upgrading soon, as I know people who have done this and it helps them level out the unsubscribes they get. I will blog about it when the time comes, and let my readers of this blog know my recommendation of the Safelist I end up upgrading to.

October and November I spent writing my Traffic ebook, a long process but well worth it. I also attended Lee McIntyre’s Live Workshop in Manchester at the end of October, and this gave me a lot of ideas for list building, and I found out that Jit Uppal who was a speaker at the event built his list and made thousands of dollars, using adswaps.

I finally released my ebook on 23rd November and started entering it in as many JV Giveaway Events as possible.

By December I had built my list to around 50 subscribers using the above methods, which could easily have been a much higher figure but I just hadn’t been giving list building enough focus, I was far too wrapped up in my blog and driving traffic to it, in the hope that they would signup to my list through the free offers I had in my blogs sidebar. However that didn’t really work out, and it only got me a handful.

I decided it was time to start taking this listbuilding more seriously, as I could see my peers boasting mailing lists of up to 2000, and there I was at 50, and I started at the same time as them too… Anyway I think it was about the  first week in December that I started to getting interested Adswaps, after I had spoken to some of my friends that I had made along my journey, namely Paul Wilson, and James Howard, who told me how well adswapping was going for them.

So knowing that I needed to get some more people on my list before starting adswaps, I decided to pay for an upgrade in one of the big JV Giveaway Events, and I managed to add 30 subscribers in just a few days.

So I was now up to 80 subscribers, I knew this still wasn’t anywhere near enough to start adswapping, but I went out looking to try and get my first one set up anyway, and I was lucky enough to find someone with a list much bigger than mine, who offered to send out for me even though he knew I only had 80 subscribers… Very nice of him huh, and you will generally find there are quite a few nice people out there who will help the little guys out if you look hard enough.

I really couldn’t believe my luck, and it really was a case of being in the right place at the right time, as it just happened this person had decided to break his list down, and had some adswaps with a few smaller lists this particular weekend to help the little guys like me out.

I ended up adding 50 people with that adswap in the space of 48hrs, and I had about 120 clicks to my squeeze page. This left me with a total of 130 subscribers, still not really enough (recommended is 250-500 to start adswaps) but I had been bitten by the bug and did everything I could to seek out people with small lists like mine, and offer to send twice for lists twice my size, all the time being honest about my list size, which is very important.

So apart from carrying on joining all the latest JV Giveaway Events, Adswapping is all I have been doing between now and December, and that is what has seen my list grow from 50 – 2000 in 15 weeks. counting all the unsubscribes that I’ve had, and people not clicking on the confirmation link in the emails, I think I must of had about 4000 submissions to my opt-in forms all together… but i make a habit of deleting unsubscribers each week, or you end up paying more for subscribers that are no longer receiving your emails.

I’ve also seen my first sales as a result of the adswaps that I’ve been doing, and I’ve been seeing some consistent small sales each week over the last month, so all the effort I’ve put in to this is really starting to pay off.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, well done. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my little story, I know it’s a long piece of writing that I could of explained in fewer words, but once I started typing the words just started to flow, and before I knew it I’d wrote over 1000 words! (Pitty I wasn’t doing it for an exam, eh!)

I’ve really enjoyed writing this, and it brought back the memories of how frustrated I felt when I had such a small list, that was growing at such a slow rate, and which was all fault of my own. I really hope anyone who may be just starting to build a list will learn from my mistakes by reading this post.

And just to make sure you start off on completely the right track, I’m going to write a short and to the point, step-by-step report for you all, on the exact steps you need to take, to get get your first subscribers and build your list to 2000 and beyond in as little time as possible.

I have only just started writing the report today, and I really want to make sure I include everything you need to get going. I’m going to try my best to include all the resource links and tools, and exact steps needed so that you can get your list off to a flying start.

You can expect that to be released sometime in the next 2-3 weeks…

In the meantime I would love to hear what you think of this post, did you like my little story and the way I told it?… Or did it send you to sleep it was that long?… Either way I want to know.

Until next time…

Sionara,

Paul

Hey there people,

As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been by here recently, it’s been quite a while since I last blogged, in fact it’s the first time since I started this blog, that I’ve let a month go by without blogging!

I’ve just been really concentrating on building my list this past 30 days, because I’m doing everything I can to try and make 2000 subscribers by April 1st… That was part of my first goal on my last post My Goals For 2010.

So far so good, I’ve gone from 345 to just over 900 subscribers since I last blogged, so I’m certainly getting there.

I’m treating it as a bit of a game where 2000 is the number of points I need to get to “the next level”, and I must say I’m quite enjoying the challenge, and watching the numbers grow each day.

Of course we all know it’s not a game, and what this is actually doing is building the foundations of my business, and as any Internet Marketer will tell you, their subscriber list is the main part of their business, which doubles up as a push button traffic solution… You can’t get much better than that, FREE traffic at will.

Not only that, I’ve also made my first 4 sales, as an affiliate. Two of these were signups for 14 day trial offers that didn’t stick, but there’s still another ongoing that may stay on for the first months training.

The other sale was a one time offer sale from someone who signed up through me on a JV Giveaway Event, and the best part was i got 100% commission on it.

Those sales were the proof I’ve been waiting for, the small amount the sales were worth is irrelevant to me, it’s enough for me to truly see the massive potential and power of Internet Marketing and Listbuilding combined, and things can only get bigger and better… And now I’ve seen for myself that this stuff really does work if you stick at it.

Also in the month of January I got my first product on Clickbank, I’ve not really done much to promote it yet, and it’s not getting as much traffic from the Clickbank Market Place as I would like, but it’s a start and another big chunk of progress for me to look at and feel proud of.

It’s a very good traffic related product that I bought private rights to, I’ll probably blog about it soon once I’ve seeked some professional advice on what I should be doing next with it. I already have a pretty good idea of what I should be doing with it, I’ve just not had the time, so I may end up outsourcing to help get the word out.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that too.

I’m also pleased to announce that my Traffic Guide For Newbies eBook, has now had well over 1000 downloads, so I can safely say that writing your own eBook/Report is definitely worth the time and effort, especailly when you consider that each subscriber on your list, is worth $1 per month on average over time.

If you’d like to hear more about the steps I’ve taken to get my list to where it is now, please leave a comment below, and I’ll put something together on it for my next post.

If you have any other questions just let me know.

Paul

This post is a little overdue, but first I don’t want you to think I started the year off slacking… Far from it!

I have been very busy behind the scenes concentrating on setting things up to build my list, and I’ve also been working on a few things that will hopefully help bring some extra money in to fund things like Aweber, hostsing, etc…

I will most likely blog about my other projects when I’ve had time to see if they bring in the desired results, and what ever happens I will more than likely create a product for you to benefit from, be it about my success or otherwise… And of course I will make it free of charge to my subscribers!

I’ve also spent a good amount of that time planning for the weeks and months ahead, so I’ll move on now and state my goals for 2010 to the world, something which I’ve never done before might I add…

==============

My Goals For 2010

These are the things I am going to achieve by the end of 2010:

Business Goals

• Build my list to 10,000  (current total stands at 345 so I have a looong way to go, I think it’s achievable though)

For the first quarter of the year my goal is 2000 by April 1st (I will update this every quarter)

• To be Consistently making between $2,000 – 3,000 per week
• Get my Alexa traffic rank inside the top 100,000 (currently stands at 211,236)
• Create a successful Membership Site of some kind
• Create and release at least 2 products based on my results with things I’m doing to build my business
• Help as many newbies as possible get started with their online endeavours, and give them my full support
• Make a blog post every 1-2 weeks
• Do a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum in February
• Create videos for my blog and subscribers every month (currently in the process of learning more about creating screen capture presentations)
• Make easy to follow action plans for each part of my business
• Do more keyword research and Search Engine Optimise this blog and rank on the first page for all my chosen keywords and key-phrases
• Add some sales funnels into the mix
• Surround myself with like minded positive people and keep in contact on a daily/weekly basis (already in process)
• Test and track everything that I do, and work on ways to improve the results
• Give myself a set start and finish time for working on my business each day, and use the time wisely. (Any internet usage after that is my leisure time.)
• Work to a countdown timer on each task to get the best use of my time, and increase my productivity
• Treat this as proper business, if YOU don’t work hard enough YOU get fired! ( this is to give me some motivation when I read this back each week.)
• Make a new pledge to myself and read it each day before I start working on my business
• Look back at these goals every day to remind me why I’m doing this, and what I want to achieve by the end of the year ( This is written in my pledge)
• Stick to a strict plan of action at all times
• Have a set routine to motivate myself before I start working each day
• Keep a Journal documenting everything that I do each day, and make it a part of my daily tasks to write it.

Entrepreneurial Goals

• Create a system that brings me a consistant flow of leads into my business
• Refer back to the MWA coaching and listen to it all again, check my notes from the first time and see what I missed.
• Work harder at branding myself
• Learn more about making video screen presentations
• Study copy-writing
• Study sales funnels
• Study SEO
• Study product creation
• Get into the habit of focusing on the positives, and irradiate the negatives
• Study motivational material

Personal Goals

• Make enough money so my dad can take a well deserved early retirement. (This means so much to me, and is the main reason I’m doing this. My dad has barely taken a day off work in 10 years, probably longer.)
• Make enough money to put towards buying a detached house for my parents, and me while I still live with them (I still live with my parents in a small semi-detached house right now, so we all need somewhere bigger now)
• Make enough money to be able to afford my own place and all the bills that go with it
• Treat my mum and dad to an all expenses paid holiday
• Do more exercise and get out of the house more
• Keep things neat and tidy and have a clean up each month (right now I’ve got papers everywhere, my desk is dusty, and I keep losing things)
• Book myself a holiday
• Book myself and some friends on a driving experience weekend at Silverstone Race Track
• Treat myself to a 50″ widescreen TV (or maybe slightly smaller if I’m still in this small house..lol)
• Purchase a PS3 once I’ve acheived some of my big monetary goals (I could afford one of these now, but I don’t want to distract myself from my business, so this will be a treat)

I’m off to start breaking this down into monthly and weekly plans now, I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my business and what I have planned for the future.

Now go and create your own plan of action, feel free to use mine for ideas… But remember that your goals and plan will be different than mine, and it is important to include things in your personal plan that will motivate you and drive you to succeed, no matter what it takes.

Also you may wonder why I haven’t really added that many expensive treats for myself in my personal goals, well for me it is making other people happy and seeing their reactions that gives me a buzz… And doing things for the people I care about is more than enough motivation for me, so the most expensive of my personal goals are actually for other people as crazy as that sounds.

It’s also so I can tell my Dad ” I told you so”… He doesn’t believe that it’s possible to make money doing what I’m doing, which only pushes me harder to make it happen… So thanks Dad.

Paul

PS- Making your goals public like I have here is the best way to accomplish them, you see holding myself accountable to you all, and displaying my goals here for all to see, is going to make me work my butt off to achieve them. Because I will be writing another post at the end of the year, like I did with  2009, The Year It All Began…., and while it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t achieve everything I set out to do, it won’t make me feel to good having to say I didn’t manage to achieve this , this and this.

Also feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of my goals, and if you don’t have a blog of your own yet (highly recommended) then you can simply hold yourself accountable to me and the readers of my blog by replying to this post with your goals.

Don’t be shy, give it a try!

So here we are coming towards the end of 2009, and it has been a great year for me…

It was this time last year that I properly got interested in the whole make money online concept, but unlike in the past, this time I decided to take the plunge and get my very own website online.

Having my own website was something that I had been worried about doing in the past, it was the thought of all the technical stuff involved. But now that I’ve taken action and done it, using all the guides that are available these days, I found it was actually quite simple, and I now realise I should of done it sooner instead of putting it off.

My very first website was www.Online-Auction-Success.com , which I didn’t mention in my recent eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies because it wasn’t a very successful site, it was a project that I started with little knowledge or planning, and was somewhere that I was sending my eBay customers to at the time.

I worked on Online-Auction-Success.com right up to May/June, which was when I came across Mr Alex Jeffreys and his brand new coaching program, which after some thought I signed up for. It was at that point, following Alex’s advice, that I wound everything up that wasn’t making me any money in order to give all my concentration to the coaching. A few weeks later the coaching started and this blog, Paul-Lear.com was born.

Although Online-Auction-Success.com wasn’t a successful site, I believe that I wouldn’t have even considered signing up for a coaching program, had I not made that first step earlier in the year, and got a bit of experience with the technical side of things.

So if you are interested in making money on the internet, the best thing you can do, if you haven’t already, is dive in head first and get your own personal blog online, like I have here at Paul-Lear.com . Don’t waste time taking the route I took, with my unsuccessful niche blog. When you are starting out, personal blogs are the best way to go.

Referrring back to when I joined the Alex Jeffreys coaching program. Advised by Alex I started my own personal blog on a new domain name, and I can honestly say that my decision to have Alex as my mentor is the best decision I have made this year.

Here is what I have achieved since I joined Alex’s coaching program:

1. I started this blog, which as been reasonably successful.
2. I have met lots of great like minded people, and made many good friends through visiting peoples blogs regularly.
3. I have learned a great deal about how to drive traffic to a website, and I am still learning more about this each day.
4. I have learnt the importance of building a list of prospects and buyers.
5. I signed up to Aweber and I am now building an email list of willing subscribers. (which was another thing I had once put off doing)
6. I have built my email list to 215 subscribers, (bare in mind that I was neglecting my list building efforts until November)
7. I now have 4 websites online, and I’m about to purchase another new domain for a new project in January.
8. I made my first video and overcame my fear of speaking in front of the camera.
9. I made my first tutorial video using the screen capture software, Camtasia Studio.
10. I wrote my first eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies, and released it on 23rd November. It has now had 76 downloads on it’s own, and I also added it to a download package which has had 80 downloads.
11. I attended my first Live Workshop which was hosted by Lee McIntyre, and I met some great people including Alex Jeffreys, John Thornhill, and of course Lee McIntyre himself. I also met some of my fellow Marketing With Alex students there too which was cool.
12. I have started to develop a good marketing mindset, which makes it easier when it comes to creating squeeze pages and writing email copy for adswaps, and writing sales pages.
13. I have developed a love of blogging and writing, which at the start of this year I never thought I would even begin to enjoy those things!
14. I have driven many thousands of visitors  to my websites.
15. I’m now focused, dedicated and determined to succeed at Internet Marketing, and most importantly I’m enjoying it! 

I’m sure you can see from all that I have listed, that compared to where I as at the start of the year, which was pretty much a newbie, that I’ve achieved quite a lot in the last six months, and it all stems back to that one simple action I took at the beginning of the year, to get a website online. That was what started me on this whole journey, and I am looking forward to next year, where in 2010 I am certain I will achieve much more!

So if there is something you have been thinking about doing, that you’ve been putting off, just take action NOW, stop thinking about doing it and just get it done!.. You never know what it might lead to, and if you aren’t prepared to take a little risk now and then, you will never achieve very much, and you will remain at the same stage you are at now.

If I hadn’t of made the decision to finally start a website this time last year, I would most likely still be doing the same thing I had been doing for the past couple of years, which was very little other than playing computer games and wasting time watching far too much television. Now don’t get me wrong, I still make sure I take time out to relax and do those things today, I just plan my time better to fit everything in that I want to do.

I hope you have got something out of this post, and I will be following on from this in my next post, with my plans for 2010.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and everyone who has supported me throughout 2009, a very Happy & Profitable New Year!

Best Wishes For 2010

Paul

Images courtesy of Francesco Marino and Dan

Over the next few posts I’m going to be briefly covering some of the many different traffic generation techniques that exist.

So I will start off with the first 5:

Traffic Generation Ideas (Part 1)

1. Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is a website that allows people to post questions, and all you have to do is answer peoples questions with good advice to help and answer their question. After you’ve answered the question you will be able to link back to resource pages on your website.

As you will be linking back to pages on your site/blog, the questions you answer will need to be related to pages that you have wrote about.

2. Free Blogs

You can create free blogs on sites such as Blogger.com , WordPress.com , LiveJournal.com and create posts with your targeted keywords in them, and also use your main keywords in the blog and post titles, which will then usually become part of the url.

You would then link back to which ever of your main sites the keywords related to in each post, using the keywords as anchor text (making them into a link), which would generate lots of backlinks at the same time helping your site in the search engines.

Rinse and repeat this for all your sites and squeeze pages.

3. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a great way to build 1 way backlinks to your sites, and also to get a lot of traffic too, as long as your posts are deemed as valuable by the regulars of these sites.

The best way to go about this is to add some friends once you join and start bookmarking other people sites first. Then every time you bookmark your latest blog post (this works best with blog posts) it won’t look like you are just bookmarking for traffic to your site, as it will be mixed in with a lot of other stuff you’ve bookmarked in between.

If you end up getting bookmarked by someone who has a big a following on one of these sites, you can end up receiving thousands of visitors within hours.

Here is a directory of the top social bookmarking sites – Top 20 most popular social bookmarking websites

4. RSS Feed Directories

RSS Feeds will ping certain services every time you make a new blog post, but first you have to submit your feed to the directories. So submit your RSS feed (if you have one) to as many feed directories as possible.

Here is a good list of directories to get you started – TopRank Best List of RSS Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog and Feed

5. Forum and Email Signatures

Signatures are set fields that are automatically filled in at the end of each forum post or email you write. So it makes sense to make use of them and add a link back to your blog or squeeze pages.

Just remember not to add any affiliate links to your signature if you are using forums.

Okay… That’s it for today, I should have some more ready
for you in a few days or so.

In the mean time if you would like to download  my FREE eBook that I recently released on the subject of traffic generation, click the download link below:

Traffic Guide For Newbies >> FREE Download >>

If you have any questions or if you just want to say introduce yourself, please leave a comment, and I’ll get right back to you… I love meeting new people.

Paul

Last week on 1st December the FTC  (Federal Trade Commission) released its new guidelines for which Internet Marketers, Bloggers and Affiliate Marketers and all product owners and vendors must adhere to.

I’ve been researching this for the last few days so I can make sure that I’m in compliance, and also to gather info to make this blog post, so that my readers are aware of the changes too.

On my travels I came across a very good webinar recording, which was an interview between a top Internet Marketer, Jim Edwards and Assistant Deputy at The Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Rich Cleland.

You can listen and watch the entire recording here, there’s also a full transcript and MP3 version too, but you will have to sign-up to Jim’s list to get the transcript.

For those who haven’t got time to watch the whole recording (which is quite long) I’ve taken some notes on the parts that will concern us the most, and some of the notes are from other various sources.

Before I go any further I should probably state that I’m not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. So before you apply anything you should seek legal advice from a lawyer or attorney. These are just notes that I took from the above webinar recording that you can watch yourself, and other various sources.

The Main Points That Will Concern You

What It Means For Product Owners

• Your sales page must show the customer that any results and testimonials displayed are “not typical”.

• Just including the wording “results are not typical” is not deemed as clear enough to the customer.

——-- You must disclose what the “average results” are.

——-- Finding out the average results figure is hard to do, so the best way to protect yourself is to just remove/not include any examples of  monetary results based testimonials and claims from your sales page.

——-- You need to take certain steps to make sure any affiliates that promote your product, are doing so by following the new disclosure guidelines

What It Means For Affiliates and Bloggers

• You need to disclose any connections you have with the vendor of the product you are promoting, recommending or reviewing.

——- For example:

———————— – If you have received a free review copy from the product owner, you need to disclose that in your blog post/email etc…

————————-- You need to disclose any commission you get from referring the sale.

————————-- Any affiliate links in blog posts and emails needs to have a disclosure notice near it.

————————-- If you have affiliate links or ads in your sidebar, then you need to add a little message to appear in your sidebar stating that you are an affiliate for any products advertised.

Does This Apply To You If You Are Outside The USA?

• Yes!… If you sell or promote a product on the internet, then it is possible that your customers might be from the US.

—— - This is especially the case if the product you are promoting is priced in US dollars, but will also most likely still apply even if it is another currency.

• Clickbank, CPA networks, eBay, Amazon and several other large affiliate networks are US based, and they adhere to these rules and regulations. So it is in those companies best interests that you follow the guidelines, or they will not shield you from any liability.

That is just a brief summary of the changes, and I really recommend you listen to the entire interview which I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

I’ll leave you with an interesting write up regarding the FTC guideline changes, it’s a blog post by one of my favourite Internet Marketers, Jonny Andrews:

FTC Crackdown: The REAL Death Of Affiliate Marketing

I hope my post and the links I’ve provided help you understand the new FTC changes a little better, and also helps to reassure you that it’s not all bad news.

The changes are there for us as consumers and I actually think they are a good thing, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with full disclosure marketing anyway… In fact I think it is the best way, and my preferred way of doing things.

Until next time…

Paul

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You can grab your copy of the ebook right away, you will receive a zip file as soon as you confirm your email address. And I will send you the link to the download page as soon as it is ready. EDIT: >>> Download page is now live and ready !!

Yes you read that correctly… Unfortunately The download page isn’t quite ready yet, you see I had some trouble with making the squeeze page today. After hours of trying to get the opt-in box where I wanted it, I found a really good tool that completely solved the problem for me!

I’ll be sharing that tool very soon on the download page of Traffic Guide For Newbies, I’m currently in the middle of adding more bonuses to the download page too.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my ebook,  as it is my very first creation.

So if you’d be so kind as to leave your comments, testimonials and reviews below, and the best ones will earn a place on the squeeze page.

I’m going to be driving a lot of traffic to that page over the coming months, so not only will this help me, but it will also help you gain some free exposure for you and your business.

Enjoy the book!

Paul.

Hello there!!

After many weeks slaving away at my keyboard I have finally finished writing my first ebook… Yay!!

Well I say finished, there is still some grammar and spelling mistakes to correct, but I feel confident enough now to announce the release date, which is….

*drum roll*

Traffic Guide For Newbies goes live on Monday 23rd November 2009

If you would like to receive a FREE copy, then please fill out the form below. I will then send you a copy before I officially release it here on my blog.

I decided to purchase the domain name for it as well, and luckily for me the .com version was available. It was very lucky really as I’d already had the cover graphics made.

http://TrafficGuideForNewbies.com

You’ll also notice that Aweber have done something different to their system lately, the old opt-in webforms have gone! That was the only sort of webform I could get. Maybe there’s an option that allows you to change it to the old standard format, but I couldn’t see any option for it?… Maybe it was because I’m tired though?

Anyway… That’s it from me for now, I’ve got a lot of work to do over the next few days. There’s the corrections to make as I said, but I also have the squeeze page and thank you page to make yet. I also have other things I need to get done in-between that too.

So look out for the release of this in my next post on Monday, or sign-up above and have your copy sent directly to your inbox before I release it.

Take care everyone!

Paul.