Affiliate marketing has taken off by leaps and bounds over the past several years, and one of the most profitable segments in this ocean of opportunity is web hosting affiliate programs.  By just placing some banner ads on your website(s) you can share in the multi-million dollar industry represented by these hosting providers.

Of course, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds.  In order to profit through an affiliate marketing business, you first need to have a robust website to which you can draw substantial traffic.  You have to have content that will appeal to people.  It must be optimized so that the major search engines recognize it and place your site at the top of their lists on the basis of a variety of applicable keywords.

This optimization means that when someone types in a certain word, which covers the subject matter dealt with on your site, your site will be one of the first to come up.  Surveys show that people won’t page down beyond one screen when generating a list of “hits” on a search query.  You need to have your site coming up at the very least on that first page, preferably as one of the top three, in order to ensure a steady stream of traffic to your site.

Once you’ve got the traffic, and the quality content to keep them coming back, now it’s time to compare affiliate programs.  The web hosting segment is one of the most popular since it appeals to a large percentage of the population.  The web hosting segment has a high profit potential for affiliates.

Generally, it costs nothing to join an affiliate program.  For example, with the web hosting affiliates, you can even select the manner in which you would like to be paid for the leads you generate.  You can get paid on a cost per acquisition basis (where you get a guaranteed payment for each lead you generate) or a revenue sharing basis.

But it’s not all easy money.  True, most of these web hosting affiliates do deliver what is promised, but to determine how profitable such an affiliate arrangement will be, you have to read between the lines.  You are not being paid simply because someone clicks on the web hosting banner displayed on your website.  In order to get paid, they generally have to do far more than just click on a banner. They usually have to sign up as a client in order for you to get paid.

To determine how quickly your affiliate arrangement will become profitable, you have to determine the quantity and quality of the traffic being driven to your site.  Does the subject matter of your website tend to attract those people who would be likely to want to sign up with a web hosting provider?  If not, are you willing to launch another site that would appeal to them?  This is not as farfetched an idea as it might seem on the surface.  Many web entrepreneurs have multiple sites, all catering to different interests and pursuits, many of them quite profitable, with much of that profitability relating to affiliate programs.

There are plenty of opportunities to make affiliate programs work for you, and one of them is to custom launch sites that mesh well with the segment of network marketing affiliation you’d like to join.  So, if you hope to be a viable affiliate for a web hosting provider, you may wish to think about launching a website devoted to web hosting.  If you have the technical ability to do this on your own, then you will know how to draw traffic to the site via search engine optimization techniques, as well as building strong, robust content.  Then you can carefully select the best affiliate marketing program to join, and then place that web hosting company’s banners on your site.  If you are drawing people to your site that would have an interest in web hosting, then you should do very well with your affiliate marketing program.

However, don’t expect to get rich overnight.  Ideally you would only participate in the affiliate programs that would mesh well with your existing site(s)’ content.  So, if you don’t have a site devoted to web hosting, you have to determine if it would be worth the financial risk to launch one simply because web hosting offers some of the most attractive affiliate programs around.  It may be worth the risk, and the initial cash outlay, but then again, for the money spent to develop and launch a new site, it might be wiser to just participate in lesser profitable affiliate programs in other segments that more smoothly mesh with your existing site(s)’ content.

The final word about affiliate programs, regardless of the segment they may be in, is that they are not get rich quick schemes.  Sure they can be profitable, or even very profitable, but it often takes a lot of time and a great deal of hard work to see them begin to bear fruit.

For the patient business person, affiliate programs can be the key to a profitable existence on the web, just so long as you are willing to put in the time and effort to see them blossom into truly profitable ventures that will pay a robust income for years into the future!

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Getting traffic to your blog is perhaps the most important aspect for any blogger so with this in mind I went searching for WordPress plugins that will help to do just that.

1. Tell a Friend – WP-Email

This plugin allows visitors to recommend your blog post or page to a friend via email.

2. Subscribe to Comments

Your visitors simply check a box under the comments field which allows them to receive an email notification whenever further comments have been added to the post.

3. Random Posts Plugin

Displays a list of random posts from your blog at the end of a blog post encouraging readers to stay on your site.

4. Similar Posts

Displays a list of related posts from your blog at the end of each post. This encourages readers to stay on your site.

5. Recent Posts

Displays the most recent posts from your blog.

6. Digg Plugin

Allows you to add a Digg style icon button to each blog post encouraging readers to Digg your post.

7. Share This Pugin

Allows your visitors to add your blog post to social bookmarking and networking sites. You can see how this works by clicking the Share This link at the bottom of this post…and while you’re there why not submit this post to one of your favorite sites…hint, hint!!

8. Sociable Plugin

Works in a similar way to the ‘Share This’ plugin  by allowing visitors to submit your posts to their favorite bookmarking sites.

9. All in One SEO Pack

Optimizes your blog for the search engines making your blog posts and pages easier to find and rank.

10. SMS Text Message Plugin

Your visitors can enter their mobile number in a sidebar widget and be sent updates via SMS when your blog has been updated.

11. Increase Sociability Plugin

This plugin recognizes when a visitor has arrived via Stumbleupon or Digg and provides them with a nice reminder to encourage them to vote for your post.

12. Subscribe Remind

Places some text at the end of each blog post reminding visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed.

13. What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin

Works in a similar way to the ‘Subscribe Remind’ plugin but has some added functionality in that it uses cookies to distinguish between first time visitors and regular visitors. You can create messages to add to the top or bottom of blog posts and first time visitors can see one message whereas regular visitors can see something entirely different.

14. Top Commenters Plugin

This is a great plugin for encouraging repeat visitors. Readers that leave the most comments get their link displayed in the sidebar of your blog. As the nofollow tag is removed the reader gets full credit for their link.

15. Comment Relish

This plugin sends out an automatic email to any new readers to your blog thanking them for leaving a comment. This is a great way to get return visitors. You can customize the email any way you like.

16. Dofollow Plugin

Creating a dofollow blog can often bring in traffic. This plugin strips the nofollow tag from blog comments.

17. Lucia’s Linky Love Dofollow Plugin

Another dofollow plugin but this one is slightly different in that it allows you to remove the nofollow tag after a certain number of comments have been left by a reader. You can set this to anywhere between 3 and 10 posts.

18. Google Sitemap Generator

This will generate a sitemap for your blog which will help Google find and index your blog.

19. Add to Any Subscribe Button Plugin

Allows your readers to subscribe to just about any type of RSS feed.

20. Ultimate Tag Warrior

Allows you to tag your posts which are picked up by blog search engines thereby helping to increase traffic.

And a couple more as suggested by Susan:

21. CommentLuv

This plugin finds the last post by the person who left the comment and displays a link to that post under their comment. Usually used in conjunction with a dofollow type plugin. UPDATE 27 October 2009 – We’ve just added the Comment Luv plugin to our blog.

22. KeywordLuv

When someone leaves a comment on your blog they can also get the benefit of a keyword link in the title. The site uses examples which explains it better than I ever could.

So now you can see why we think WordPress is the best platform for bloggers. There are just many great plugins that allow you get maximum use from your blog.

When one of our blogs started out as a Blogger blog, we had a page rank of 3.  Over time the blog evolved and we bought a domain name for it because we thought it more appropriately fitted the direction. 

Paula followed Googles instructions in putting in the redirect to the new domain. We thought misguidedly that the PR would transfer over to the new domain name.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen and we lost our page rank of 3.

So the question here is, did Google penalize our site for duplicate content since we had both the blogspot and the new domain name running concurrently? If so then Google really needs to do something about it since they have so kindly provided the option for blogspot owners to use their own domain name. At the very least Google should advise users on what they should do to reduce the duplicate content issue.

Since the duplicate content issue was a concern we transferred the blog to WordPress and trashed the old Blogspot blog.

Can you honestly say that your blog provides value?

In other words, are you regularly providing information to your readers that improves their life, their reading pleasure or business in some way or is it just full of ads with very little useful content? For anyone who has a blog it is sometimes useful to sit back, read it through and see if it is actually worth the paper it’s printed on or in this case the computer screen it’s displayed on. Even a personal blog needs care and attention if it is to hold the readers attention.

So how do you know if you have a blog that provides value?

Do you regularly add new content?

How many times a week do you add new content? If you want to maintain regular readers then you need to post on a regular basis. When you post infrequently your readers soon realize that they are not going to find anything new and it won’t be long before they decide not to return, especially as there are so many other interesting and informative blogs available. Generally you need to post at least three or four times a week to add variety. Your readers need to see that you care enough about them to provide something of value and interest on a regular basis.

Do you spend time researching your content or do you just throw something together?

A good blog post is one that you have given some consideration and thought to the content and has taken a little bit of time to write up. Of course, that’s not always the case as sometimes things just flow off the top of your head and you can write a darn good post in a very short time, but in general a quality post is one that has taken some time and research to develop. We learnt long ago that it is pointless putting up content just for the sake of it. You are better off adding 4 really good quality posts a week than 7 posts of questionable quality content just because you want to get a post up every day.

Is your content unique?

Do your write up your own content or is it just pages of content picked up from article directories?
Google dislikes duplicate content so this is a big no-no if you want to win with Google. This isn’t to say that you can’t use someone elses article if you they have something good to say, just as long as you give them the credit for the article and you don’t do this too often. Your blog should really reflect your views and personality so you should be writing your own articles as often as possible.

This applies also if you are just copying and pasting from someone else’s blog. Apart from the fact that it is plagiarism and won’t make you many friends, your readers will pick up on this real quick. Remember that many readers will read multiple blogs and if they see the same article on your blog – even if it has been reworded slightly they will be turned off real quick. That’s not to say that you can’t write about the same subject that some other blogger has recently blogged about, just make it your own unique article.

Do you have more ads on your page than content?

A blog that is just one big ad farm is very unappealing and will turn away visitors real quick. I know that when I come across a blog full of ads I simply hit the back button. Yes it is true that some of the top bloggers have a multitude of ads on their blogs but they can get away with it as their quality content means readers are willing to put up with the ads. These top bloggers also have the readership numbers so they don’t really have to worry.

If you are in the process of trying to build up your readership then you don’t want to turn readers away so make your ads unobtrusive, or better yet don’t have any at all for at least the first few months and then introduce them slowly over time.

Do you have a professional looking blog?

You don’t need to buy expensive templates to make your blog look professional. If you are using WordPress or Blogger then there are a multitude of free templates that look as good as any paid template. Choose a basic template that you can easily change and add your own header, to make it distinctly your own. Stick with a template that has a white background for your blog posts. This makes it easier to add an image that will blend with the background and studies have shown that black text on white is just a lot easier to read.

Du u yuse a spelcheka?

This is such a simple thing but it is so often missed. A spelling error here and there happens to the best of us but there is no excuse for consistent errors when we can easily run any article through a spellchecker. It does reflect poorly on your blog when every second word is yet another spelling error. A lot of people can be turned off by this and you can lose the opportunity of a repeat visitor. After all it shows that you don’t really care about your content if you can’t take the time to make sure everything is spelt correctly so why should your visitors care to read poorly written content.

By James Martell

You Can Gain and Maintain “Top 10 Rankings” at Google with a Proven Systematic Approach to ‘Inbound Link’ Development

FREE “SEO for NON-TECHIES” MP3 Mini-Course Offers A Systematic Approach to Developing Inbound Links

If you’re like most webmasters, you find yourself hopelessly confused about what it takes to get “top 10 rankings” with Google and the other search engines.

That’s because the search engines of today, especially Google, have evolved and simply using old search engine optimization strategies is like banging your head against the wall.

Worry not. There is some good news here. In fact, it’s easier than ever today to achieve a top 10 ranking at the search engines. You simply have to know what to do and how to go about it.

You see, the key to search engine success is to utilize a systematic effort to develop inbound links to your website and then make it an ongoing part of your business.

The search engines determine where pages on your site reside by analyzing the backlinks, also known as inbound links, to that page. These backlinks are absolutely critical if you want your site to obtain top 10 rankings, where it will be seen by a targeted, qualified audience that is already searching for your information and your products.

And, contrary to popular belief among webmasters, keyword density is not the way to climb the search engine ladder. In fact, using too many keywords can get you into hot water with the search engines and cause your site to be pushed down the search engine ladder and not up!

This point is worth repeating: It’s a false assumption that keyword density is the catalyst for higher search engine rankings.

The truth is that search engines now look very little at the keywords on your page when determining where a page ranks, but instead place much more weight on the other pages where links to your site reside.

This means that the inbound links to your website are constantly being analyzed by Google and the other search engines and if they are on pages of little or no value, the search engines simply don’t give your site “credit” for these links; hence, they are practically useless.

Of course, if you’re like most webmasters, this comes as a complete surprise. Or, if this is something you understand, you may be unsure about how to get quality inbound links and find yourself scratching your head in utter dismay.

In a nutshell, it’s like this: every other site that links to you is like a favourable vote or nod of approval to the search engines, attesting to your site’s credibility and overall trustworthiness. This explains why, for a page to be considered valuable (and be ranked high) by Google or the other search engines, it must first prove itself by having other high-ranking sites link to it.

These links are just “votes” in your sites favor.

Putting this to Work For You: 5 Things You Must Know

To get more traffic to your website and achieve the top 10 rankings every Webmaster is looking for, your site’s pages must:

1. Showcase
   content that is well-researched, well-written and provides valuable
   information to the visitor;

2. Lead off with a
   strong headline that piques your site visitor’s interest (and includes
   keywords you want that page to rank for);

3. Boast
   keyword-rich title tags (once in your browser, look in the top left corner
   of your screen to see the title tag, which should include the keyword you
   want the page to rank for each page);

4. Include
   accurate, detailed 25-30-word META descriptions that explain exactly what
   the page is about; and

5. Have quality inbound links pointing back
   to it from high-ranking sites that the search engines already know and
   trust.

You can easily achieve all five of these, and develop your own successful inbound link building campaign one of two ways by simply following the directions outlined a my new “SEO for Non-Techies” mp3 mini-course which is available free of charge.

Delivered directly to your inbox every day for six days, allowing you to listen to it on-the-go, while on your commute to and from the office, while you workout at the gym or even as you relax at your home desktop, this informative free course was created for webmasters with little time and little technical skills.

As other Webmasters have found, you can expect SEO for Non-Techies audio course to really cut through the clutter and the hype associated with search engine optimization and provide you with a proven step-by-step strategy that, when implemented, can be counted on to help your website achieve top 10 rankings from the search engines.

The mp3 mini-course really simplifies the steps of ON-page and OFF-page optimization, and shows exactly how you can gather trusted backlinks to your website, saving you immeasurable amounts of time, money, and frustration.

The

“Do It Yourself SEO” for NON-TECHIES mp3 mini-course is the perfect solution for the webmaster who is comfortable learning from audio instruction and, while most webmasters find this teaching solution to be enough, those webmasters who prefer a more interactive, classroom-style approach turn to the online Backlinks Workshop for a more interactive, more hands-on approach.

The Backlinks Workshop allows webmasters to work with me directly live and in-person via my engaging, full-color, media-rich online conference room to better understand my proven PAD technique, search engine optimization and more.

For more information, and to download your copy of the “SEO for NON-TECHIES” mp3 mini-course for FREE, visit:

http://www.seo-for-non-techies.com/mp3.html

About the Author

James Martell is a successful publisher, natural search expert and the author of the best-selling Affiliate Marketers Handbook. James lives with his wife Arlene and four children in a beautiful little seaside community called White Rock, a suburb of Vancouver, BC, Canada. James has been earning his living online ever since he was introduced to the world of online publishing by a good friend back in the summer of 1999. James enjoys the freedom of working from his home and setting his own schedule and can usually be found most days at his local coffee house down on the beach in White Rock working on his laptop or out cruising in his 1965 Shelby Cobra S/C replica.

One of the biggest obstacles with my internet business is that I easily get sidetracked. Actually this applies to both of us as Wanda is an even bigger offender than I am.

I would be working on a blog post one minute and then the next minute I would be downloading yet another ebook which of course was going to make me millions.

I have no idea how I could go from writing a blog post, which of course was now half finished, to downloading and reading an ebook but I think it went something like this:

Hey, I’m typing my next blog post – this one is going to be great and get me on the front page of Digg for sure. This is going to be so good, just wait till everyone hears about Google developing their own manned spacecraft and sending Matt Cutts to the moon…

Hang on, is that the phone ringing?…no it’s the dog barking…now why would I think the phone ringing sounds like the dog barking?…wait, what was I doing? That’s right, I was writing a blog post about Matt Cutts going to the moon…Gee, I’m so lucky knowing Matt Cutts well enough that he would give me exclusive rights to this story.

Now I had better get that date right because we don’t want people turning up at Cape Canaverel on the wrong day…I had better head over to Google to do a bit of research…

I love Google, their search engine is great….so what was I researching again?…oh yeah, something to do with Google and the moon…

So I had better type in ‘when is matt cutts going to the moon alice’ and I’ll use quotes just to get a better result. Hang on, that’s not right, let’s take out ‘alice’ and try again…

Hmmm, not really what I was after…maybe I should try that without quotes….nope still nothing…but then I guess if I’m the first one to release the story then it won’t be on the internet yet…doh!…

But hang on what’s that? That Google ad looks interesing…”You too can make millions online with just one minute of work per day”…I might just click on that and see what it’s all about…

So know you can see why I would be reading an eBook instead of writing up the next biggest news story since Paris Hilton choked on her coffee.

Now this is obviously just a bit of fun but it’s not too far from the truth. It’s easy to get sidetracked when you work online. But it is not always the internet that can distract people from their online business. Outside distractions can also be a problem with family and friends taking advantage of your free time…or what they perceive to be free time…since according to them, since you are at home, you are not really working.

If you are serious about your online business then your family and friends need to realise this. If you think about it, if you were working full-time for someone else, then you wouldn’t be able to have a two hour lunch everyday, or take your kids out for the day or head off to the shops at a moments notice. You would most likely be focused on what you were told to do.

If you are home full-time and running a business then you should treat it the same way you would as if you were working for someone else. This means setting aside hours of the day to work and sticking to it regardless of what family and friends are wanting of you.

This isn’t to say that you should be a slave to your work. The whole point of working from home is that it allows you the freedom to come and go as you want without someone telling you what you should and shouldn’t do but if it becomes more about doing what you want and less about the business then there is something seriously wrong and you need to refocus.

I have been forced to stay focused for the mere fact that I literally have a short amount of time to get everything I need done. That’s not to say I am perfect by any means. I still get sidetracked but I have become more aware of it and can get back on track a lot quicker than I used to.

Here are some techniques you can use to stay focused:

1. Set up a daily task list.
This should really be done the night before or in the morning. Don’t prepare too far in advance as it becomes too easy to forget.

2. Allocate time periods to your work.
As you sit down to work allocate a period of time that you will have to perform the first task on your list. For instance, if I am going to write a blog post, I might allow myself two hours to complete it – that includes research and writing. Keep an eye on the time to ensure you are staying on track. Better yet download free alarm software to alert you when the first hour is up. This will get you back on track if you have veered off course.

3. Keep yourself away from family, friends and the phone.
Better yet get your family and friends together in the one spot and explain to them that from now on you will be running your business like a business which means while you are working, you can’t be disturbed unless it is an emergency. If you’ve got a spare room in your home then make this your personal office. If family are a constant distraction then assuming they are all old enough to look after themselves then keep your office door shut….locked if you have to.

4. Learn how to say ‘no’.
If you were working for someone else and a friend rang and asked you to go for coffee would you be able to jump up at a moments notice to go along? Most likely not, so why should it be any different for your business? Now this is okay every once in a while but if it becomes a daily occurrence or it interferes with your business then you are not staying focused. Learn to say no to family and friends.

5. Limit your time on Stumbleupon or Facebook or any of these social bookmarking/networking sites
Yes I know, I love them too but if you are going to use them, then allocate some specific time to them. This is best done at the end of the day when you are tired and just want to relax, not when you are wide awake and should be using that quality time for working on your business.

Don’t get too serious about all of this. Working from home is meant to be enjoyable, not a chore, but if you want to succeed you really need to work at it and stay focused.