eBay Affiliate Program
Did you know that eBay has an affiliate program? This is sometimes overshadowed by the sheer size of eBay, but you can make affiliate income from eBay.
Here is how it works. Go to the http://affiliates.ebay.com and sign up. This will direct you to Commission Junction (www.cj.com) which handles the commissions for eBay. You should spend time on Commission Junction after you join to see all the other affiliate programs that you can join as well as eBay. You will be amazed at all the affiliate programs that are available on Commission Junction.
You will notice that you can become an affiliate of eBay in several countries. If you speak the language of another country, you can become an affiliate of that country if you desire. I am an affiliate of eBay USA, Italy, France, UK, Canada, and India. I am not active except in the US and Italy. Italy you say! No, I do not speak Italian, but I found an Italian translator through elance.com who helps me with my Google Adwords ads that drive traffic to eBay Italy. When they join and buy, I receive my commissions in US dollars through Commission Junction.
If you refer a person to eBay who is not a member and they join and purchase an item, you get referral fees and a commission on the sale. eBay recently increased its fees. These fees changes will help the smaller affiliates make more money at lower transaction volumes.
Currently, the initial fee for causing someone to join eBay is $12.00. Under the old structure, this covered the first 499 people. Then the fee rose to $16.00 each over 499.
The new structure still pays $12.00 for the first tier, but the tier is for 1 – 49. At 50 – 499 the fee is $16.00. This structure is much more favorable for the little guy.
To understand how this all works, go to eBay and study it. The fee structure is located at http://affiliates.ebay.com/revshare.
Learn about the eBay affiliate program and other affiliate programs on the Net. Affiliate programs when used correctly can make you money without having to monitor them constantly.
Good luck as an affiliate of eBay.
Adsense Doesn’t Just Make “Cents”, It Makes Dollars Too!
If you are one of the many webmasters today who are trying to make money on the internet by any means possible, then you may have already considered joining the Google AdSense program.
If you haven’t yet made the jump to being an online publisher, let me be the first to tell you that you are definitely missing out of the chance of capitalizing on something that can be very profitable for you!
Google AdSense is the most popular pay-per-click program currently online, they have offered pay per click, in one form or another, longer than any other search engine on the net.
They’ve put a great deal of research and development into their keyword matching to ensure it is a profitable program. Not only have they been around the longest, but they also boast the biggest number of advertisers as well.
Google requires website owners to conform to a number of rules, including:
All pages must have at least one link that leads to it, without concealing pages.
All links must be active and work.
There is a limit of 100 links per page. Creating a hierarchy should keep your navigation clean and well under the link limit.
Tags, especially the ‘title’ and ‘alt’ tags should be explanatory and distinct.
When designing your site, create one that is helpful to a user; don’t design a page for search engines. Make sure you clearly define what your site is about.
Google forbids hidden text. Don’t colorize the text as the same color as your background, or even size the text so small it can’t be read. Google has been known to ban publishers who engage in these so called “black hat” techniques.
Google strongly recommends that you include a site map page.
They also strongly recommend you include a robots.txt file in your root directory. The robots.txt file tells website crawlers, like those that will match the ads with your website, which pages not to crawl. This is especially important if you want ads for some but not all of your content or if you have password protected pages.
Following the website design rules doesn’t make you bullet-proof, though. Even if you follow all of them, you may still be at risk of losing your AdSense account permanently or even temporarily.
If you are indeed banned by Google to display AdSense advertisements on your page, you can file a re-inclusion request. Although not very successful many times, it still gives a publisher a chance to get back into the program.
Here’s what you’ll need to include in your re-inclusion request:
Your account name
Your contact information
A list of changes you’ve made to fix any violations
A guarantee it won’t happen again
Reports and evidence of click bombing, if you have any (more on this below)
You should NOT include any threats to pull your business. Visit http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py to contact customer support. Keep your email straightforward. The subject of your email should be “Re-inclusion Request” to make sure it gets to the right desk.
Click Bombing
Click bombing is when someone clicks on one or more of the ads that appear on your webpage repeatedly.
While this seems like a great way to increase your profits, it is against Google’s policy and they are always searching for click bombers. While you can’t prevent malicious click bomb attacks, you can take steps to defend yourself should you be accused of it.
Consider investing in a third party tracking software program that is approved by Google. Look for one that tracks IP addresses.
Run reports often, and keep them stored separately from your Google account. Should you be removed from the AdSense program, you won’t necessarily have access to run reports.
If or when you are removed or fined by Google for AdSense abuse, make sure you send copies of your IP address reports along with your re-inclusion request.
As mentioned before, even if you follow all the rules of appeal and properly request a re-inclusion, you are not guaranteed a reversal. It seems most requests to be reinstated are not acted upon by Google.
Google’s policy has been always one of “protecting the advertiser by any means necessary”. Unfortunately, this may mean kicking a legitimate publisher out of the program needlessly if they’ve been targeted by a malicious person.
Earnings Calculations
So how much money can be made in the AdSense program? Publishers can earn A LOT. From 10 cents a day, to over one hundred thousand dollars a day. Of course this is all dependant on how much traffic your website gets as well as how well you integrate the advertisements. But how does Google calculate per click how much that you, the publisher, gets paid? This is the fuzziest of all gray areas in the AdSense program. Google admittedly doesn’t disclose revenue share or whether the ads appearing on your site are cost-per-impression or cost-per-click. What they do tell you is how many page impressions (ads shown), number of clicks on the ads, page click through rate (CTR) and your earnings. Increase your impressions, number of clicks or CTR, and your earnings will follow.
Alternatives
If you’ve been removed from AdSense or are just looking for another option, there are a few to choose from:
Yahoo! Publisher Network is very similar to AdSense. Experienced webmasters who have used both Google and Yahoo! programs believe Yahoo! is second best, but still a very good, profitable program. As it becomes more popular, more advertisers will jump on board with Yahoo thus creating a PPC race with Google.
Chitika – A pay per click advertising stream. They don’t have as many or such a variety as AdSense or Yahoo!, but are usually less expensive to advertise on.
AdBrite is very similar to Chitika, though slightly smaller.
There you have it in a nutshell, utilizing Google’s AdSense program to increase your own profits truly does make “cents”..and dollars. How much you can earn is dependant on how much targeted traffic you can get to your site as well as how well you can integrate the advertisements in the site design as well. Get on board today and start making money!
Why many Adsense sites dont earn money
Google and Yahoo dominate about 90% of the online advertising market. Yahoo Search Marketing is far away from Adwords and Yahoo might be considering giving Google all it’s Advertising space and focus on other products instead. What consequences will this bring to Advertisers and Publishers?
Yahoo is testing Adsense in their search results. What will happen to online Advertising? Will Google dominate completely the advertising market? Will Yahoo Publisher Network stay out of business? How will Microsoft react when faced with a bigger Google all the time when they say they want to be the best online advertising solution in the world?
In my opinion I think Yahoo will outsource all it’s advertising space to Google. Yahoo Search Marketing might make a fusion with Adwords and their best features combined will result in a better advertising system to everyone!
After this new deal, Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo, but Yahoo rejects their offer. Will Google buy Yahoo!? If Google buys Yahoo they will dominate more than 90% of the Advertising market!
What advantages will this bring to the Adsense Publishers? The first biggest advantage is having all adwords ads and yahoo search marketing ads in your website. Since Yahoo ads are more expensive sometimes and some advertisers only use yahoo to their advertising solutions you can expect to make more money and to have better ads on your website.
This new advantage will also increase the number of websites in their Internet since it becomes more profitable! Get ready to be paid more but also to face tougher competition.
In the future I believe that Adsense will pay users only when they actually sell something. This will not always mean less earnings but also more fair earnings.. After all you should get only paid when you performa and not only when you half perform which is the case of a click. Now most of the times you won’t have to change anything because Adsense is meant to be automattic. Video advertising will not have that impact because it’s very hard to do a video campaing. Text all you need is to write something, but now with video you need to film and you need to make a high quality video, it’s not just any video, so you see how hard it gets. Unless google invents some great way to make great money with video too that is. Imagin if you could use video templates, half of the work would be just done.
Google luck! and for you too.
Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques – Part 6
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques work best in combination with each other. Using one technique without considering the others is like baking a cake without flour. Be sure to use all 6 techniques as part of the whole strategy for climbing the search engine ranks.
MOST EFFECTIVE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) TECHNIQUES
1.) Finding your NICHE keywords.
It’s critical to research and evaluate the competition level of relevant keywords for your site. You want to focus on finding the niche keywords for your site, meaning the keywords are both relevant and have a great KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index). The KEI refers to the number of times a keyword appears in internet searches compared with the number of competing web pages. This index will show you exactly which niche keywords are best for your site. A great resource for researching keywords is WordTracker. You can use the trial version at www.wordtracker.com.
EXAMPLE:
An internet battery business’s website is #1 on Google search rankings for the keyword term “rechargeable batteries”. Even though the site doesn’t get as high of a search engine ranking for the widely searched term “batteries”, the site does very well with this niche market for “rechargeable batteries”. The keyword “batteries” is difficult to compete with because there are SO many competing websites for that keyword. You can get a high search engine ranking for “batteries”, but it will take a LOT of time and a lot of hard work to continually compete at that level. This is where the above niche keywords can really make a difference for you and get traffic to your site quicker.
2.) Optimizing your site with niche keywords.
Keyword optimization involves working directly with your website’s code. If you have someone that works with the code itself, then you will want to use the following words to describe the work that needs to be done. For those of you that write your own code, you will follow pretty easily.
KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES
– Use the keyword(s) in the domain name of the site (if you haven’t already created one)
– Be sure your TITLE META tags include the keyword(s).
– Incorporate the keyword(s) into META tags, including “keyword” and “description”
– Use Heading tags that incorporate keywords (i.e. h1, h2, h3)
– Make sure you include the keyword in your actual content (in the body text itself)
– Bold the keyword(s) in your content
Contextual Advertising – Google Adsense Vs YPN
Ever since Google AdSense opened up possibility to earn money as a web publisher, contextual advertising has assumed significance. Until a few years ago, banner ads were more favored. Google Adsense wasn’t around, and often odds were against small businesses to place ads and get noticed. Over time, banner ads became less preferable mainly because web viewers increasingly considered them as major distractions. Overture and Google took in the scent quite early and started experimenting with text ads based on contextual advertising. Initially the emphasis was on showing text ads in search results when a search term coincided with the keyword chosen by the ads. AdWords took shape early 2002, and though Overture was already an old hand when AdWords started, the latter galloped ahead in no time.
Google AdSense is a late entrant, followed only recently by Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN). After YPN debuted, there is no stopping the comparison between the two. For an average web publisher today and in coming days, it will be like ‘the more, the better’. In this article, we will closely look at contextual advertising and how the competition between YPN and Google AdSense affects web publishers.
Contextual advertising – what it means?
Contextual advertising refers to those ads that are relevant to the content of a webpage in which they appear. For example, if a viewer visits a site about paintings, and the site shows contextual advertising like Google AdSense, the viewer will see ads related to paintings, such as watercolor works, art gallery and so on. Contextual advertising is dynamic, so if a viewer refreshes a webpage, a completely new set of ads appears.
Google AdSense on the cue
After overwhelming success of AdWords in relatively short time, Google AdSense came to be launched in early 2003, a program that is all about contextual advertising. To be true, eZula must retain credit of having first launched contextual advertising program way back in 2001. But it is Google AdSense which popularized the concept rapidly.
What is good about Google AdSense is that it allows web publishers of any size to display its contextual advertising and earn money.
In comes Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN)
Although belated, Yahoo launched YPN to take on Google AdSense in August last year in the field of contextual advertising. Though yet to be out of beta and still meant for US sites, YPN does appear as a whiff of fresh air in the sense that users will now have another option other than the ubiquitous Google AdSense. As of now, there is less variety in YPN compared to Google AdSense. However, YPN is said to be paying far more than Google AdSense for each click generated, which is one reason why YPN publishers are happy with its contextual advertising.
YPN versus Google AdSense
It is early days to compare between the two, especially since YPN is yet to debut internationally. Going through user experience, the most important point that crops up is YPN’s generous EPC as said above. Google AdSense is more superior in ad targeting which means more click-through-rate (CTR). Ad links are shown in Google AdSense, not so in YPN. On the other hand, while YPN displays link title to show the full ad text, Google AdSense does not.
In addition to text ads, Google AdSense also allows image ads in the same format as text displays. There is however no way to know from ad statistics as to how image ads perform vis-Ã -vis text ads. Though necessarily contextual advertising, image ads still are a throwback to old days of banner ads. YPN does not show image ads.
Summing up, there is no doubt that contextual advertising is here to stay. As YPN evolves further, the choice between it and Google AdSense can be expected to narrow down. For the moment, if you are not located in US, yet interested to make an earning through contextual advertising, the answer is Google AdSense.
Best Affiliate Program – Pick in a Glance
Affiliate programs are temporary work assignments that are provided by the merchants to web masters who own a web site or blog. The tasks are those pertaining to online business promotion and online media buying. The programs are formulated by affiliate networks and merchants, and allow the participation of web site publishers. The purpose of affiliate programs is reciprocal benefits that can be had by mutual assistance.
There are different kinds of best affiliates programs that are provided by the merchants and networks. However, there are many similar features highlighted by most of the online affiliate programs. These features include model of advertising, payment structure, minimum or threshold credits, etc.
The popularity of affiliate program has been accredited to the success of web service provider, Amazon.com. The service provider promoted its business by allowing thousands of web site owners to place ads on their web site. The program was met with remarkable success, so great that the service provider patented its program.
The so called best affiliate programs have been copying many of the features presented by the affiliate program of Amazon.com. There are many fraudsters that deceive web site publishers on the pretext of providing golden opportunities and five digit payouts. Best affiliate program does give you an opportunity but it does not mean that you will make a fortune in a fortnight. The commissions are formidable.
Best affiliate programs will further give you an all time support and communication channel. If things go wrong, the affiliate can just dial up the number and talk to the service provider. The provision of proper communication channels is also a good sign as it gives some degree of credibility. As everything that happens on the web is virtual and involves Internet only, affiliate prefer to have phone number and any other similar means to be linked with the advertiser.
Best affiliate programs also have such features as optimal profit sharing and revenue generation. You can pick out a good affiliate program in the first glance. The unique feature is that they do not make great promises, instead they provide an opportunity to make adequate money.
Affiliate Marketing Commissions – 5 Hot Tips To Put Yours Into Overdrive
If you wish to earn a residual income fro your Affiliate marketing commissions, it is critical that your business is set up o sound business practices.
You may find it frustrating with all the promises of fast money making ventures out there, but you will find your income will flow a lot faster if you take the time to first set your business up with a solid base.
1.Choose a Category You Are Interested In;
Affiliate marketing is all about selling someone else’s product. So the only thing you have to worry about is the promotion and or marketing of that product.
You will find it a whole lot easier to achieve great results if you already know something about the type of product you are going to promote. If you are passionate about it then that is even better.
2.Choose quality products to promote;
Once you have chosen your category, you will find an abundance of products that you can promote. Do your research and only choose great quality products. Just because you have chosen to promote other peoples products, does not mean you should put your name to poor quality products. Websites like Click-bank and Commission Junction are great places to find products to promote. You can also do a google search to find more products to promote. Just type in “your area of interest affiliates”. Make sure you put it all inverted commas to narrow the search.
3. Set A Budget – and Stick To It.
Now that you have identified your topic and hopefully chosen some products you would like to promote, you need to start promoting them. But just before you rush off and do that, there are a couple of things you need to do. Firstly, decide how much money you are willing to invest into your business each month and stick to that budget.
If you have been led to believe you can start an internet based business with no capital, then technically this is correct. Back in the real world, you would be most likely to loose interest along the way as meaningful results would take years.
On the other hand you do not have to have a huge budget either, there are plenty of free tools available on the internet. Depending on which form of marketing you intend to do, you will need to spend some money each month for tools or products that are either not available for free, or are just simply of a poor quality in the free market.
Secondly you need to move on to step 4…
4. Educate Yourself;
Once again do your research. You will need to understand how it is you are going to market your chosen topic and associated products. You can use Pay Per Click with search engines, Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Blogs, etc, etc…
This is your danger area. You can get stuck in a never ending cycle of education, if you don’t at some stage stop learning and start doing. The other danger is trying to learn too many marketing techniques at once. I would suggest you obtain a brief understanding of the various methods AND the associated costs. Naturally some methods will not suit your budget. So just eliminate them straight away. Your cheapest methods are article marketing, blogs and using social websites like my space So if you have a limited budget research those first.
Then pick one and one method only. Focus on it until you have become adept at it. Once you have earnt some commissions, you now have some additional capital to invest into the next learning phase.
This step is critical to your success. Do your home work, choose a marketing method, take action until you master that method and start all over again.
5. Follow up your prospects and customers.
You will only be able to do this effectively if you have registered a domain name and set up your web hosting. You can certainly get your affiliate marketing underway without a website, however if your wish to really send your affiliate marketing commissions into overdrive you will need to set up a web site at some stage.
If the topic of web sites and hosting is a bit daunting at this stage, leave it for now. Don’t let that be a learning curve that gets in the way of taking action. Once you have some commissions coming in, you can even pay someone else to take care of the web site stuff while you concentrate on marketing.
If you do have web hosting, then setting up a list building process and an auto-responder to follow up not only your customers but also those potential customers who have had a look at your product, but did not buy. This process will literally send your commissions through the roof.
Naturally there will also be a learning curve to implement this strategy. Take your time the internet is not going anywhere. It is much better to set up a great system that will reap long term rewards than to rush into something that you are constantly having to fix on the fly.
Making money with an online business using affiliate marketing is not a difficult process. The problem that most people encounter is getting distracted along the way. If you are careful to set up a good business plan, and follow it, you will be well on the way to supercharging your affiliate marketing commissions.
I wish you luck and hope you have a great day.
A look at the best online search engine optimization forums
A Look at the Best Online Search Engine Optimization Forums
There are many different search engines on the internet. I think Google is definitely the best one out there on the internet today. You can find anything in the world that you want. Any information at all is available all in one click. So what do you want to know about?
On Google, you can look up anything. Do you want to buy airline tickets for your vacation? Did you miss your favorite football team play a great game? Do you want to know what the weather will be like this coming weekend? Are you doing research for a school project? Do you need directions before going on a trip? Do you want to do in your destination town for fun? Anything and everything you could possibly want to know about, just go to Google. You will find what ever it is that you are looking for.
Google is great for students. It makes homework assignments really easy. If you have a book report to do, that is no problem, just go to Google! If you are having trouble with your algebra, it is easy to find the help you need on Google. It is like your very own online tutor. You no longer have to spend time at the library doing research. You no longer have to spend extra time after school with the teacher or with a tutor. All you need is the internet.
Other great places to go on the internet if you want to find any information is www.msn.com and www.yahoo.com. The only other search engine that I would recommend is www.ask.com. Yes it is true that you can find what you need by searching from these sites. It seems to me like Google is faster than these sites to find what I am looking for, and it provides better results. I do not know how they do it! You can try searching the different sites yourself, but I can guarantee that you will have the best results when you search Google.
I have never had any trouble EVER trying to find information from Google. I have found some very valuable information, and even some extra that I did not intend on finding! Anything from A to Z, no matter how wierd or different the topic is, it can be found on Google.
You can even make Google your homepage, as if it was not easy enough! You can search for the image of what it is that you are looking for. How easy is that?!
So you can waste your time searching and surfing the internet if you want to. I know where I am going to find out any information, images, maps, or anything else that I need to look up.
friends of link the dot com
