We have a number of affiliate marketing websites. These are a hangover from when we first came into affiliate marketing when we felt that having more websites meant making more money. If we were starting out now we would only have a couple as it is so much more manageable. But having lots of websites means we have lots of product reviews and we realized early on that if we were going to keep track of where sales were coming from that we needed to start using Amazon tracking ids.

If you have begun to add product reviews to your own website and are using Amazon then you should really be doing the same thing. This will make it so much easier to check your sales on Amazon as you will be able to see exactly from which pages on your website the sales came from.

Choose Your Tracking IDs Carefully

Be very selective in how you want your tracking ID’s to look as you cannot delete or change them once they have been approved by Amazon. Bummer I know.

We found this out the hard way, we had started using a set of ID’s and then found it didn’t really help us when we came to determining which products were performing the best and we had to start over, but the original ID’s could not be deleted or changed, and keep in mind that you can only have 100 tracking ID’s per account. This may sound a lot but once you get started you will find it doesn’t take long to start using up your quota.  Having said that, we haven’t used ours up yet but that is because we track a mix of websites and products.  So we only bother about tracking products that meet our product review criteria.

We use one tracking ID per product review page so it will be used for both the images and the text links on that page. However, if you want to go even deeper and see which individual links are performing the best, you can use a tracking id for each individual link. So you might have a tracking id for the image link, a different tracking id for the first link in your product review, a different tracking id for the second link and so on. But as we said previously, you only ever get 100 tracking ids per Amazon account so doing it this way will mean that you have the potential for running out of tracking ids fairly quickly.

So how do you Create a Tracking ID in Amazon?

1. Sign into your Amazon Associates account.

2. Click on Account Settings in the top right hand corner of your screen.

3. In the Account Information Section find the bullet point “Manage your tracking IDs” and click on it.

4. Click the Add Tracking ID button and you will be presented with a page where you can add a tracking ID (see image below). Add the tracking ID that you have decided to use for a particular product or website in the blank box. We usually type in a word that relates to the product we are promoting. So for instance, say that we have written a product review for the iPod Touch. If we wanted to create a tracking ID for that page we might enter the words “ipod-touch” into that tracking ID field. So the tracking ID would look like this - ipod-touch-20 (Note that Amazon IDs end in ’20′ in North America).

5. Click the search button and Amazon will do a search to make sure the Tracking ID is unique. Amazon will let you know straight away whether the ID is available and if it is you can start using it on your product review page.

How to Add the Tracking ID to the Product Review

1. Open your product review post in WordPress. Also open your Amazon Product page in a new tab or window, whichever suits the way you work with multiple internet windows.

2. On the top line of the product page in Amazon you will find the words “Link to this page”. Click on that link. This will open the ‘Customize and Get HTML’ pop-up.

3.You will see two drop-down boxes – one says “Signed in as” and the other says “Tracking ID” Click the down arrow and select the Tracking ID for the product review you just created (see image below). Amazon will automatically change the code in the HTML code box so that it now includes your tracking ID.

4. Now, you can simply grab the code and add it to either your image or text links as you would normally do and the tracking id will be included. (For instructions on adding Amazon links to images click here.)

So there you have it a quick and easy way to keep track of where your clicks and conversions are coming from as your Tracking ID will show in your Amazon Tracking ID Summary report.

You will be able to see at a glance, how many clicks, items ordered, items shipped, shipped item revenue and commissions or Advertising Fees each product is producing.

FINALLY RELEASED - Our complete guide to making money online by promoting Amazon products. Head over to the AMAZONIAN PROFIT PLAN website for all the latest info.

Just recently we were left a comment from a reader wanting to know a little more about how to write product reviews when you don’t actually own the product.  We thought that this was a really good question and impossible to answer in just a few sentences.

We’ve written hundreds (and maybe even thousands) of product reviews over the years and since we aren’t multi-millionaires…yet, we couldn’t possibly buy each of those products to review. What we’ve done however is learned how to write them in a way where we don’t need to own the product.

We don’t have to lie and say we have actually personally reviewed the product or make things up but we can still end up with a top quality review that is helpful to the reader.

So for starters, let’s take a look at the actual question that was asked:

I just like to know how you would write a review of a product which you haven’t owned or used. I have been wondering about it for quite some time now. Rather than just saying… “Most customers who bought this product find it…” how would you structure it.

In another of your post, you mentioned adding your own story as the introduction to make your review more interesting. But that will be quite difficult if you haven’t used the product yourself. Any advice would be most helpful.

Essentially there are two questions being asked here but we will start with the first. The key to writing product reviews when you don’t own the product is to do your research.

Now I can just see some of your switching off already thinking that this is going to mean a bit of work. I won’t lie to you, this will require you to get in there and learn as much as you can about the product. But stay with me here because you need to remember that you only need a handful of pages to make a full time income. Spending a day researching a product and writing a good product review can result in years of recurring income. So for those that still work full time think about a days work in your current job. What do you get from that one day of work in terms of income? Yep that’s right, you get one day of pay…that’s it! You are never going to get any more than that. Which means you have to head back to work the next day to get that same amount of money. With a product review, you only need to spend one day working on it and then if all goes to plan you can potentially receive a recurring income for years to come.

Researching means reading everything you can about the product – read the Amazon product page and the reviews, find the manufacturers website and read about the product there, find any other website that refers to that product and keep reading. This shouldn’t take any more than a couple of hours. While you are researching you should be taking down as many notes as possible.

Once you have this information it becomes a lot easier to write about the product when you don’t own it….it’s almost as if you do own it when you have this level of detail. But that still doesn’t answer the question on how to actually structure the review. Well it’s actually a lot simpler than you might thing. It really comes down to how you word your sentences.

Let’s just go with an example to see how this works. I’ll use the iPad as an example. Now we both own one of these and just love them so we could easily write a review about it. However our review would sound a lot different to what it would sound like if we didn’t own one. Here’s how they might differ:

Version 1: I Own the Product

What I really love about my iPad is that I no longer need to lug a big heavy laptop with all its heavy cords and cables with me when I am traveling.  The iPad measures approximately 10in by 8in and it literally fits into my handbag so I have done away with my laptop bag. It’s small but not too small that I have to squint to see the screen and is light enough and compact enough that it makes traveling a breeze.

Version 2: I Don’t Own the Product

You will no longer need to lug a big heavy laptop with all its heavy cords and cables when traveling. The iPad measures approximately 10in by 8in and will literally fit into your handbag or briefcase. You can finally do away with having to carry around that extra laptop bag. It’s small but not too small that you have to squint to see the screen and is light enough and compact enough that it makes traveling a breeze.

Notice how I am saying pretty much the same thing but in a very different way. Let’s try another example:

Version 1: I Own the Product

I’ve downloaded a multitude of applications since purchasing my iPad. This is what makes the iPad so great – without the apps, the iPad would just be a glorified laptop. I’ve downloaded games, magazines, recipe apps, books, weather apps, to do lists, project planners, office apps, utilities and so much more.

Version 2: I Don’t Own the Product

You can download a multitude of applications for your iPad. This is what makes the iPad so great – without the apps, the iPad would just be a glorified laptop. You can download games, magazines, recipe apps, books, weather apps, to do lists, project planners, office apps, utilities and so much more.

You can see how you don’t need to say you own the product to write a good review. It’s simply how you word those sentences. It basically means using ‘You’ instead of ‘I’. But don’t overdo it. You don’t want to have a review full of sentences that start with ‘You’.  So also include the word ‘It’ or the product name itself or other similar words. For example:

• “It has a load of features including…”
• “One of the best features is…”
• “The iPad has a load of features including…”

Just keep wording your sentences using this sort of style and you should find it a lot easier to write reviews even if you don’t own the product.

So now to the second question…. Writing a story to go with your review is a great way to get readers to keep reading so it’s a tip you should all try to learn if you are going to write good product reviews.  Unfortunately however we’ve run out of time and this post is already getting way too long. But stay tuned as we will answer it in our next post.

Lately we’ve been working on new ways to generate traffic to our blogs and are starting to try online services that can generate backlinks through placing articles on other sites. You’ve probably seen some of these sites or even tried them – sites like 1WayLinks, Unique Article Wizard, Free Traffic System and so on. We will do a blog post on the various backlinking services available at a later date..

As part of these services you can submit what is called a donor blog to the system. What this means is that you create a blog (or use one you already have), submit it to the backlinking site and once it has been approved, content is automatically submitted to your blog on a regular basis. In some cases you can receive up to 10 articles a day on your blog. The articles are just drip fed to your blog and you often don’t need to do anything but watch the content go up.

This was the case with us and we now, after a couple of months, already have a blog with close to 400 articles on all sorts of subjects ranging from dog training right through to insurance, ps3 gaming, crafts, hobbies and more…with more coming in on a regular basis. So what do you do with a blog like this with such a diverse range of topics? We could just as easily leave it as is since it’s not like we need to do anything to maintain it.

But then we had a thought that maybe we could turn it into an article directory. Nice idea in theory but in practice it really looked like a lot of hard work. I could just imagine the time it would take to find an article directory script and set it all up and then somehow transfer 400 articles over. It just seemed like too much to do on top of our already full schedule.

But then a thought came to me…I wonder if there is a WordPress plugin that can turn a WordPress blog into an article directory. It only took me a few minutes of searching and I came up with a couple of possibilities…and both of them free! And in fact, I never got around to trying the second one because the first one did the job beautifully….and by the time I was done, I had turned that blog into a professional looking article directory in well under 30 minutes.

So if you have a blog with lots of diverse topics then this might work for you too.

Steps to Creating Your Own Article Directory

Step 1: Download the following files – these are all free by the way:

1. Article Directory Plugin – More info for this plugin can be found here
2. Article Directory Theme – More info for this theme can be found here
3. Role Manager Plugin – More info for this plugin can be found here
4. Post Corrector WordPress Plugin – this one is optional – it allows you to add categories quickly and easily and this is the sample file of categories which you can use with this plugin. More info for this plugin can be found here

Step 2: Upload the Article Directory Plugin and Activate It

The plugin is easy to upload and activate and it includes various options which you can change in the WordPress dashboard such as excluding certain categories from displaying and whether or not to show empty categories.

Step 3: Upload the Article Directory Theme and Activate It

Note that you don’t have to use this theme. You can use your own but I can’t provide instructions on what to do if you use your own. I just know that when using their theme it all works perfectly and the theme is quite clean and ready to use. If you need more info on using the Article Directory plugin with your own theme then check out the creators website  – Articlesss.com

Step 4: Add Categories

If you already have an existing blog then you won’t need to add any categories as you will have most likely added categories in the past. But if your blog is new then you can either manually add categories or use the Post Corrector WordPress plugin from Step 1 above. This will allow you to quickly add categories and subcategories especially if you use it in conjunction with the sample file of categories. This will create categories similar to EzineArticles.com.

Step 5: Upload the Role Manager Plugin and Activate It

To be quite honest we never got around to uploading this one. The articles we receive come straight from 1WayLinks and are automatically added to the one user account in WordPress. I think however that if you are wanting to get serious with your Article Directory then you really need to use this type of plugin so that you can better manage users wanting to submit articles to your directory.

Step 6: Your Done!

Your Article Directory should be up and running at this point. Your only job now is to adjust the sidebar widgets, header and footer to make it suit your blog.

Have you ever noticed how some people have a thumbnail image of themselves next to their blog comments? It looks good doesn’t it?…but that’s not it’s only advantage. It’s also a great way of branding yourself. If you leave enough comments on different blogs, then what happens is that you begin to start being recognized by other bloggers. Suddenly your face starts appearing everywhere and other bloggers begin wondering who you are and what you do.

That image is called an avatar – and yes, if you have seen the movie Avatar (which I highly recommend) you should already have an idea of what an avatar is. Unfortunately, in the world of blogging an avatar is not as exciting. Wikipedia defines an avatar as “a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego…”

Leaving blog comments is a great way of getting traffic to your site so make the most of it and take the time to add a photo – it doesn’t take long and is worth the effort. You only have to add your image once and then everytime you leave a comment on a gravatar enabled blog your image will appear next to it.

You will often see people using pictures of animals, flowers, movie stars, a company logo or anything but their own photo. If you really want to make a name for yourself amongst your blogging peers then you should really stick to your own photo wherever possible.

So how do you add your image?

 Step 1: Head over to www.gravatar.com and create an account. It’s free to do so.

Step 2: Follow the instructions to add your image. Ensure you use the same email address that you will be using when you leave comments. It is the email address that will trigger your photo.

Just remember that the blog you leave a comment on needs to be gravatar enabled otherwise your photo won’t appear.

That’s it. It’s pretty simple really. Now leave a comment below and watch your image appear.

Yesterday I was having a think back to when we were really struggling to make a living online….and actually it wasn’t that long ago. And as I was thinking about it, I wondered why it took us so long to start making a decent income.

We had been working really hard on our websites on a daily basis for over two years but were nowhere near to making a living from it. In fact the only thing that kept us going was knowing in our minds and hearts that this would eventually work if we put in the hard yards.

As I thought about it, I realized that it wasn’t just one thing that finally did it for us – instead it was a series of actions that got us to where we are today. They are what I call ‘massive action’ tasks (you’ll know that phrase if you read or listen to Tony Robbins).

In other words, as we reached a stage where we could see that the amount of input wasn’t reaping the rewards, we changed our tactics and instead of continuing to do the same tasks everyday, we took massive action to take us to the next level. Now we are by no means experts at it, and really at the time we didn’t even equate what we did to taking massive action….we just arrived at the conclusion that we needed to do something extraordinary if we were going to make this work.

I love the saying – “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got.” This happens a lot with people trying to make money online. They continue to do the same things day after day and wonder why they aren’t getting the traffic levels they want or the income they are trying to achieve. If you really want to leap ahead of the rest, then you need to take massive action.

Here are just some of the things we have done in the past that have taken us to the next level in our internet business:

1. Added massive amounts of content – At the time, we had read about two guys online who were adding something like 20 posts a day. We knew 20 posts were just a little beyond our capacity so we decided on 8 posts a day for one of our product blogs. That meant we had to each write 4 blog posts each a day. I did all of mine over the weekend. I think Wanda staggered hers over the week. It gave us a lot of articles to write but we did it.

The effort paid off and the result was that it made a big difference in the amount of traffic to the blog and a huge difference in the amount of  our affiliate sales.

We didn’t end up doing it forever – from memory I think it was a couple of months and then we started to reduce the number of articles steadily over a period of time. The funny thing was that the traffic didn’t decrease – it stayed at a steady level and continues to increase as we add content at a more manageable pace.

2. Changed the Quality of Our Content – We have a lot of blogs and a lot of content, but I can say with all honesty that a good proportion of our blogs have a lot of rather inferior quality content. This is because at the time we weren’t really thinking about our readers but more about making a dollar. When we changed our focus to providing more value to our readers, we noticed a huge difference in our income levels….and I mean huge. This was a major turning point for us. You can read a little about how we write our product reviews here.

3. Concentrated on Less – What do I mean by this?  Well we focused on only one or two websites instead of 20. This made a big big big difference….I know that’s a lot of ‘bigs’ but I need to emphasise the importance of this one. When we were working on all our blogs, we were really spreading ourselves too thin. It just wasn’t effective for us. The trick is to focus on one thing until it starts making you money, then and only then do you move onto the next thing.

4. A Change in Thinking – I think this one was a key ingredient for us. We needed to change our attitude to things particularly in relation to making money online. I remember us having a discussion about why we weren’t making the income we wanted and we came to the conclusion that the only people who make money online are those that tell other people how to make money online.

Well we know that’s not the case now but that was our thinking back then. After all we were working ourselves to a frazzle and getting nowhere, so that must be the reason. We all know this is a fallacy and product sites work extremely well, thank you very much.

5. More Time for Ourselves – It was at this point that we also started to work on ourselves a bit more rather than just the business. This meant that we started to take time out to exercise and to spend part of our day listening to self improvement cds like that provided by Tony Robbins. Funnily enough, the more time we took for ourselves, the more productive we were in our internet business.

Don’t let anyone tell you that making money online is quick and easy. For the majority of us it’s a hard slog. But there is plenty of opportunity for everyone and that is why we want to share our story with you in the hope it will encourage you when it seems that things won’t ever improve, just hang in there it will get better.

Just remember to:

• provide quality information for your readers
• look after yourself, physically and mentally

…and really believe that you can do – because you know what – You Can!

An eBook is a great way of making money on the internet and you don’t need to have a website to do it. Nor do you need to actually sell the eBook to make money from it.  So how do you do it…well in a nutshell, it involves you writing a short ebook preferably about a topic you know about and distributing it for free around the internet.  It doesn’t have to be long – 10-15 pages is enough. In order to make money from it, you add multiple affiliate links to different products within the ebook.

Here’s how it works…

Step 1: Choose a topic that you have an interest in

The best eBooks are written by those who know what they are talking about. It will also make it easier to write if you have an interest in the topic. Having said that however, there is no rule that says that you need to know the subject to write about it but it will take longer because you will need to do the research for it first.

Step 2: Find products to promote in your ebook

There is no point spending hours writing an eBook only to find that there are no products to add to it. So before you start writing, you need to find products that you can ‘sell’ in your eBook that relate to your topic. You can choose products from Clickbank, CJ.com, Linkshare.com, ShareaSale.com, Amazon.com or any of the other affiliate networks. These companies are all free to join and offer thousands of different products and services that you can promote. Clickbank is a good one to start with as they don’t care whether you have a website or not.

Once you know that there are plenty of products you can start writing.

Step 3: Start Writing

This is not as scary as it sounds. If you have a flair for writing then you will probably have no problem getting started but if the last thing you wrote was a report in high school then you might find it hard to get going.

The easiest way to write an ebook is to break it up into sections first. For instance, say we decide to write an eBook on dog training. We might break it up into the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. How to train your dog to sit
3. How to train your dog to come when called
4. How to train your dog to shake hands
5. etc, etc

Once you have the main sections you can then provide the content. Always leave the introduction till last as it will be a lot easier to write.

Here is a really good tip. Start out with dot points. Don’t worry about making it read right at this point. Just jot down as many things as you can think of for each of the sections of your ebook.

Once you have the dot points then just expand on each dot point with sub-dot points. Before you know it you will have lots of content.

Now you just need to structure those dot points into coherent sentences.

If you really don’t want to write it yourself then pay a professional. Elance is a great place for this – it is full of writers willing to work on your projects and you would be surprised at how little it costs.

Step 4: Add Affiliate Links

Once you have completed your ebook you will need to add affiliate links. You can add them within the content itself where appropriate or add them at the end as a list of recommended products – or both if you like.

Step 5: Convert to PDF

Before you distribute your eBook you will need to convert it to PDF. There are a number of free versions available on the internet that are simple and easy to use. Ensure that once the document has been converted that you check to ensure that it has formatted the content correctly and that any links within the document work correctly. Some converters work better than others but we recommend one of the following:

• http://www.freepdfconvert.com/default.asp
• http://www.doc2pdf.net/

Step 6: Proofread Your eBook

There is nothing worse than reading a document with multiple spelling errors or bad grammar. Make sure you run a spell checker over it and read it through thoroughly yourself. Better yet, get someone else to do it for you. The more people that look at it the better so get your family or friends to help out.

Step 7: Distribute Your eBook

The next step is to distribute your ebook. Here are some ideas:

- email websites that relate to your ebook topic and tell them they can send out your ebook to their email list if they have one or they can use it as a free giveaway to encourage people to sign up to their newsletter.
– submit your ebook to ebook directories – there are plenty of them…just do a search in Google
– create a Squidoo lens, Hubpage (hubpage.com) and attach your ebook to the page so people can download it.
– submit to forums

And if you found that your ebook turns out better than you expected and you  might just be able to sell it rather than distribute it free them sign up with Clickbank.