Affiliate Marketing & RSS Feeds

Traffic is the life blood of any website, for Affiliate Marketing or any other business If don’t get any or have very little traffic, it seriously limits your chances of success. I have done several posts (Promoting Your Affiliate Marketing Business, Generating Traffic, Indexing Your Affiliate Marketing Website)  now on how to increase traffic. The subject of this post is on RSS Feeds, another valuable tool to help increase traffic.


RSS (real simple syndication) feeds provide online business owners, bloggers, and Affiliate Marketers the opportunity to connect with members of their target market in an ‘ongoing fashion’. While it is still essential for a website to feature valuable content which interests others to be successful, RSS feeds have the ability for a site owner or blogger to send out notification of new content or promotions to interested subscribers. Thus, allowing them to stay in contact with previous visitors like never before.

Visitors who find a site or blog useful and entertaining could easily subscribe to the RSS feed and receive notification and have and easy access to any future site updates. This adds to an advantage of being able to keep in touch with past visitors, and in this way, would increase repeat business for a site. There are a couple other reasons why businesses are now embracing the use of RSS feeds:

1. RSS feeds increase your chances of others linking to your content, mentioning your site, and spreading your business around by word of mouth.

2. Having an RSS feed to your site aids in your ranking with search engines.

3. With RSS feeds, you could be able to get your content indexed with search engines much faster.

4. You can attract traffic to your site that does not originate from search engines results pages, if you have RSS feeds installed on your site

5. Since your content is distributed to all subscribers, the is always the chance of your content catching on and “going viral” as it spreads from one person to another.

When you have RSS feeds operating with multiple sites, you could essentially get free marketing and traffic for your Affiliate Marketing site which is beneficial for your business! Some websites which operate RSS feed directories receive thousands upon thousands of visits every single day. So, if you are listed with them, you get to benefit from the constant flow of traffic which you do not have to pay for!

Most people do not realize how powerful RSS feeds can be. Unfortunately, they are not using this tool to its greatest ability. They use it to some minor extent, but they do not understand or know how to get the back links that they should be receiving from the usage of RSS feeds. Additionally some do not understand that RSS feeds can improve their page ranking with the search engines. All in all, if you could grasp the concept and understand the application of RSS feeds, you could take a huge leap ahead of all your competition!

Adding a RSS feed is fairly simple. You should be able to use your web creation software to easily create it. I recommend you stick with the universally known orange rss button.
If you want to see substantial increases of traffic to your site and watch your Affiliate Marketing business grow by leaps and bounds, then you really can’t afford to pass up on RSS feeds.

So, maybe you are struggling with the decision of whether to implement RSS feeds or not, consider the following benefits for those who use RSS feeds as part of their content and communication plan.
The benefits for anyone who decides to implement RSS feeds on their Affiliate Marketing blog/website can be and are numerous:

1. RSS Feeds Save You Time

RSS subscribers can quickly scan RSS feeds, without having to visit each and every website. Subscribers can then click on any items they are interested in, to get additional information.

2. RSS Feeds Are Timely

RSS feeds will automatically update themselves any time new information is posted. So the information your subscribers receive via their RSS reader or news aggregator is timely.

3. RSS Feeds are Spam Free

Subscribers don’t have to worry about wading through huge amounts of spam in an attempt to get to the information they are actually interested in.

4. Opt-In Option

The RSS subscriber chooses what they want to see. Subscribers also choose what information they wish to receive. Subscribers are more likely to opt in since they know that they have full control, and that they do not have to provide any personal information to subscribe.

5. Unsubscribing Is Easy

At first thought, this may not seem to be a benefit. However, in the end it is since unsubscribe (or cancelling) an RSS feed is very simple. So, if for some reason, your reader does not like information contained in an RSS feed, they can simply remove the RSS feed from their RSS reader or news aggregator.

6. Alternate Communication Channel

RSS feeds provide you with alternate communication channels for your Affiliate Marketing business. The more channels you provide, the more opportunities you have to connect with your customers and potential customers.

7. Expands Audience Through Syndication

The very nature of RSS feeds is that it is designed specifically for syndication (i.e. publication by others). Any sort of syndication can expand a company’s reach and strengthen the company brand.

8. Can Increase Backlinks

When an RSS feed is syndicated, it can increase the number of links back to the original website. Additional incoming links will help a Affiliate Marketing website rank better in organic search engine rankings.

9. Increases Productivity

RSS increases productivity by allowing your readers to quickly scan new posts and headlines. That way your readers spend time on the items of interest.

10. Competitive

Your competitors probably use Rss Feeds. So one way to remain competitive is to implement RSS feeds. That way you can keep your competition from getting ahead of you.

While there are plenty of positive for Rss Feeds, unfortunately there are a few negatives

1. Some Readers Do Not Know How to Subscribe

While Rss Feeds are becoming more and more popular,  some people do not know how to subscribe. This mostly applies to the new internet user, in which you would not think is possible, however it is.

2. Your Content Can Easily Be Copied

RSS feed content can easily be copied and replicated. This can happen whether you want it to be or not.

3. Tracking Subscribers Can Be Difficult

It can difficult to accurately track the number of subscribers who read an RSS feed or the items contained in an RSS feed. This is due in part to the fact that at its heart, RSS is all about achieving the widest syndication possible.

4. Source Origination Difficult

With RSS feeds it canb sometimes difficult to discern the origin of an item, especially when its syndicated. Unfortunately, the metrics available are not always reflective of the traffic received.  

There you pretty much have it. Enjoy!!!                                                        

Struggling to Find Your Niche?

In my previous post, Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Niche, I wrote about  finding your niche for your Affiliate Marketing blog and/or website. In that post I said you could build your Affiliate Marketing business by choosing a niche on something that you are passionate about.  While this is true, this assumes that you can find something you are passionate about.


So, a few questions come to mind...

What if you can’t find a niche market that you are passionate about?
also

What if there is no money in the niche markets you enjoy the most?


These are good questions. I have searched other Affiliate Marketing websites and have even searched Affiliate Marketing forums. So far, I have not been able to find a clear cut answer to these questions. So, I believe that it is assumed that everyone can find their niche, or at least something that they are interested in. However, what happens if you are unable to find your niche and/or there is no money in what you enjoy most??

I'll take a shot at providing some steps to help answer those questions...


First, let’s take a quick look back at my previous post,  Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Niche, in which I provided the following steps:

1. Make A List Of Your Passions
2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well
3. Merge The Two Lists Together
4. Choose Your Favorite Niches
5. Determine The Traffic Potential
6. Determine The Blogs Money Making Potential
7. Time For Your Affiliate Marketing Niche

So, if you go through all of the steps above and none of the niches that you are passionate about look profitable, then try skipping over step 1 (Make A List Of Your Passions). If you start at step 2 (Make A List Of The Things You Do Well), you will have a list of niches that you are good at and should be able to make money. If none of the niches that you are good at, or have knowledge about, are niches that you think you can make money at (which is possible, but unlikely), then try skipping steps1 through 4. So, only doing steps 5 though 7, means that you just need to find profitable niches. At this point you should be able to find a profitable niche in which you want to target for your Affiliate Marketing blog.

If the above steps don't help, then maybe you can just consider the top categories. For that I refer you to my previous post, Popular Affiliate Marketing Categories.

What about the Passion?
In my previous post, I indicated that passion is one of the biggest keys and it is. You should be passionate about about the niche that you choose for your Affiliate Marketing business. Just keep in mind that loving what you do is a choice. You can choose to love any niche and is an important principle to learn. This is so important I am going to repeat it in big bold letters:

“Loving what you do is a choice. You can choose to love any niche.”

You don’t have to be passionate about a niche to make money online. However, you need to become passionate about everything you do in that niche (marketing, writing about it, etc.). You need to be passionate about what you are doing, to make it easier to stick with it long term and most of all to be successful Your passion is your choice. You can choose to love what you are doing, or you can choose to hate it. The decision is yours. When you choose to love what you are doing, then you will be much more likely to create a successful Affiliate Marketing business for yourself.
Hope this helps in choosing a niche for your Affiliate Marketing blog.

Successful Affiliate Marketing Tips

Here are some additional tips to improve traffic, which will help your Affiliate Marketing website and business be successful.

Back-links help to improve your SEO

One of the most important elements of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is link building. This is definitely the way to go to experience tons of no-cost traffic flooding to your Affiliate Marketing site. The internet is getting bigger and at a much faster rate, which means it’s important to keep your site ahead of your competition by creating more quality back-links. If done correctly, proper link building can bring higher search engine rankings as well as a higher Google Page Rankings. This is a terrific way to increase traffic since every single link that leads to your site is an entry point for visitors to come through. In previous times, people would exchange links. Exchanging links is still a good idea, however, search engines now prefer one sided linkings.

Create a Logo and Make sure your logo gets noticed

If you are starting your own business, think about making yourself a logo, or something standardized like that for your business. Think about all the successful business out there, they all concentrate on a logo or branding. So, make yourself a logo and work on getting it visible across multiple social media channels by using the same logo as your profile photo. Facebook, and Twitter are great channels when used properly, especially when it comes to creating awareness of your Affiliate Marketing website, which should have your brand or logo shown someplace.

Automate only 50% of the time

To facilitate social media management, advanced affiliates use automation publishing tools. The good news is that many of them are free! When you sign up to sites like Ping.FM and Twitterfeed and set it up so that you can post messages through multiple social media accounts. If your Affiliate Marketing blog is on WordPress, you can also use the plugins to automatically publish your blog your content across almost all social media accounts. Before using any automation tool, keep in mind that you should not automate your content more than 50% of the time. Studies have shown that personalized social media messages get better responses, so remember that while these tools are meant for convenience, they should not completely replace you.

Affiliate Marketing, Tips For Attention Grabbing Headlines

Effective headlines can make all the difference in the world, for your blog on Affiliate Marketing. Headlines can determine whether your site visitors reads your post(s) or moves on to another website or blog. Keep in mind that there are a lot of other blogs on Affiliate Marketing that your readers can choose from. So if your audience is not interested in reading your posts, your blog followers wont grow and there is less chance of success. One way to keep visitors reading is to create attention-grabbing headlines. Remember, that the headline is one of the first thing that is seen.

Here are some tips that may help:

1. Turn each headline into a benefit-oriented statement. Reading headlines that tell how great your Affiliate Marketing business is or focusing only on the features of your product or service simply don't work. Instead, speak to what appeals to your readers and or try offering something.

2. Make headlines short, sweet and to the point. Sometimes your reader's attention span can be measured in milliseconds. So as demonstrated in the picture to the right, get to the point, and do it quickly. Use as few words as possible to entice your reader to continue reading.

3. Don't sensationalize your headline. Ever read a headline that sounded too good to be true? That's exactly what your reader will think if you promise too much in your headline. Keep headlines factual and exciting.

4. Immediately explain your headline in the posts that follows. Once you've got your readers attention with exciting headlines, make sure your post tells the story or gives the information your headline indicates. Try do it as soon as possible, or your reader may quit reading after less than a paragraph.

5. Use attention-grabbing verbiage. Don't be shy with your headlines. Use words and phrases that give your reader an enticement to keep reading. Keep in mind that if you are the reader and you see headlines starting with Free, Secrets of..., Tips to..., or a question, you'll probably keep reading so you don't miss anything. Your readers feels the same way.

6. Keep your target audience in mind. Explain the benefits of your product or service in a way that always appeals to your target market. Never forget who they are, what they like/dislike, what problems they face, and what solutions they need.

7. Test your materials on a knowledgeable audience. Put your piece to the test by asking people you trust to evaluate it and give you honest feedback. Use the feedback (good or bad) to refine your headlines to make them even better.

8. Lastly, and most important, picture yourself as the reader and ask yourself if you would read the article with a headline like that. Chances are, if you wouldn't read it, your readers aren't going to either.

Hope these help to make draw attention to your Affiliate Marketing blog.

Breaking Your Blog Traffic Addiction

When I decided one of my niche's would be Affiliate Marketing and I first started blogging, I kind of got sucked into this analytical quicksand (so to speak) and thankfully I survived. In the beginning, for someone who has never done this before, I found it to be very exciting to watch my blog about Affiliate Marketing grow and grow. After waking up in the morning and couldn't wait to check and see how many hits I had over night on my blog. When I was away from my house, I would check the hits from my cell phone too.

The thing with checking your traffic, e-mails and comments, it can and often does lead to procrastination. You think to yourself, "someone may have sent me an e-mail or left me a comment, I have to check or respond." Then you go to your blog, log into your admin area, and proceed to check for comments and then you go check your e-mail(s). This cycle could go on and on. Without even knowing it, that cycle lasted all day (I know because it’s been done!). This means that you're actually less productive because you didn't concentrate on the important things, like getting more traffic. Unfortunately this analytical quicksand could be a bad thing since it could actually reduce your traffic which is exactly the opposite of what you watch traffic for.

So, here are a few techniques that will help you (just like they helped me) to be productive and help your blog about Affiliate Marketing.

1. Make a Plan

Now I know the nature of most people not to plan, especially in the beginning. That is how I got stuck in the rut in the first place. I would say to myself, “I’ll just check this while I am thinking of what to do.”
So the way to get around this is to plan out your day the best that you can. If you can plan your day, the day before, that's ideal. If not, then plan your day first thing in the morning, before you get on the computer or even look at it. Put your plan on paper if you have to. Give yourself tasks and time limits for the things you are going to work on for your affiliate marketing blog. If you are part-time, then plan when you are going to work and plan on what you are going to work on during that time. Do not use the excuse, “I only have a couple of minutes.” A couple of minutes is enough time to get a bit of exposure for your blog.

Try going to another blog and writing a comment. Or you could even find a good forum to see if anything interesting has been talked about that day and if there is anything you can help with. If  appropriate, leave a comment that maybe includes a link to your blog. This only takes a short amount of time and your efforts could pay off with more site traffic and maybe even a back-link or two.

2. Restrict Your Time

This method is very simple. Just do not allow yourself to go look at your emails. comments or your analytics outside a certain time of the day. Write down all of the things that are included in your “procrastination list” and then give yourself a small window of time during the day that you are allowed to check them.

This is the method that I used for myself. I would restrict myself  to where I allowed myself to look at them first thing in the morning and then again after I had finished my work for that day. Each time I tried to limit myself to 15 minutes or less. This may sound a little extreme to some, however when I look back over how much time I spent looking at stats, looking for e-mails and/or comments, I know the restriction was worth it.

3. Stay Productive

This may seem obvious to most, but its easy to get stuck in the quicksand without even knowing or realizing it. So this very simple, as soon as you think of going to check up on your stats, comments or e-mails, redirect your activity by changing the thought into something constructive. For example, every time you have a thought of doing one of those things, immediately do something else like write an article or socialize on your networks (yes, this can also be a form of procrastination, but that’s another article entirely!). After doing this for a little while, you will soon get into the habit of doing constructive things.

Try the methods above. Once you try them, you should see the results relatively quickly in your traffic rankings. Keep in mind that everything you are doing will help you in the end. While checking your stats, comments and/or e-mails are important, they shouldn't be the main focus and it should be done at the appropriate time(s) of your day.

Advertising Your Affiliate Marketing Website

With the easy access that the internet provides, it provides a challenge since it there is as much competition as you can imagine. It is extremely crowded and congested. Even affiliate marketing is a field where you can find a millions of webmasters, running their affiliate sites.

Unfortunately just having a website is not enough to make your affiliate marketing business successful and stay above or at least in line with your competition. You must take other alternatives that allow the online community to easily find and access your affiliate marketing website. You have to expose your affiliate marketing website, or make it be known. It has to be visible, it has to be frequently targeted by consumers and internet surfers.

In order to do this, at some point you will need to invest in marketing for your affiliate marketing website. Two (2) options that are available to you are SEO and PPC. These are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your affiliate marketing business as a good strategy for search engine marketing.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Recent studies show that 60% – 70% of internet surfers and users rely on using a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing)  to find and locate web sites and pages. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from your competition.

In SEO, the results from a search engine are natural and is based on the content of your site. So there is no need for you to pay for the clicks. However SEO requires you to spend some time doing research to get good, authentic content on your site, along with plenty of back links and a good combination of ads and of course target audience.

The SEO process is a long term and may require several months before the proper outcome is fully achieved. However, once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of traffic which results in additional profit. Just work on your internet site daily, and you'll the to where you need to be.

PPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click.

PPC is basically, paid advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings the internet user sees whenever they make a search. So, if a internet user does a search, sees your add and clicks on it, a small charge is incurred for that click.

The first thought is that PPC advertising can be very expensive, especially for the someone who is just starting out in affiliate marketing. Well the search engines have a few safeguards in place to protect you and your wallet (or credit card).

One safeguard with PPC advertising is that you can control your affiliate marketing campaign as you get to create your ad(s). You can manage the target audience and stay within a daily budget since the ad campaign has a daily spending limit. When your daily spending limit has been reached by the target number of clicks, your affiliate marketing ads will no longer be displayed until the next time period.

So could it possibly happen that someone out there will go clicking on your ad, time and time again? This of course is possible and will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. One safeguard that the search engines have is that they are able to recognize fraudulent click(s).
With PPC advertising you can also specify the target market, either by topic, industry and/or geographical location. Additionally, you can verify that your ads are showing and check to see if they are competitive.

Now when you set up your PPC add with the search engine, there is a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first one listed in the search engine results. Just because you are not the highest bidder doesn't mean that your add won't be shown. There are a lot of ways to properly utilize PPC advertising where you can be one of the first ones shown, even though you are the lowest bidder. That is where proper training comes in, see my previous posts (Choosing a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program, More on Leaning From a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program)

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach these two options is to evaluate them according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO for your long term goals.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

Tips for Your Affiliate Marketing Blog

In my previous post, Simple Easy Ways to Earn Money Online for Everyone, I advised to set up an online blog.



Well here are some tips for you to consider when creating your blog-

1. Consider your Audience – start with your reader when considering what to promote. Relevancy is always key, especially for Affiliate Marketing.
2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best – recommendations of things you personally and/or genuinely like are always best.
3. Link to Quality Products – the better the products that you recommend the more your readers will thank you for suggesting them.
4. Contextual Deep Links work Best – in general you’ll have more luck promoting a product from within a post than on a sidebar
5. Consider positioning of links – links/banners that are in parts of your post/blog that where readers look work best (top of posts for example)
6. Traffic levels are Important – the more eyeballs your promotion gets the better
7. Diversify without Clutter – some products work better for some audiences than others – so promoting a variety of products can be good – promoting too many is of course not good.
8. Be Transparent – don’t try to trick people into clicking your links. Be as forthcoming as you can
9. Combine with other Revenue Streams – every blog is different, some will work better than others with affiliate marketing while others will work better with advertising. However I find on many blogs advertising and affiliate marketing can work well in tandem.
10. Track results – if you don’t have some way of working out how your promotions are converting you could be wasting your time.
11. Build Your Network- the bigger and stringer your network is, the better your Affiliate Marketing business works.
12. Try Different Mediums- promotions work differently on different mediums. Just as with any business, Affiliate Marketing is competitive and is always evolving, so always try different approaches. Find out what works best and go for it.

I hope this helps.