How to Make Affiliate Marketing Work for You

By Krista Tannahill www.Constant-Content.com

Affiliate marketing can be a financially rewarding opportunity for many website publishers.  However, prior to entering into an affiliate agreement it is important to review the details.  Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your affiliate marketing adventure.

Money talks!  The first thing you need to find out is the percentage that each merchant is willing to pay their affiliate.  Merchants usually pay a percentage of each sale to the publisher when the sale has been made through an ad placed on the publisher’s website.  The commission percentage varies widely from merchant to merchant and can range from as low as five percent to as much as twenty-five percent. 

It is also important to determine if there is a minimum balance required prior to being paid by the merchant.  Some merchants require the accrual of one hundred dollars before a payment will be made to the publisher.  Therefore, if a merchant is willing to pay you only five percent commission on every sale you will need to generate a total of two thousand dollars in sales before you receive a payment.  However, if you choose a merchant that pays twenty-five percent and requires an accrual of one hundred dollars you will only need to generate a total of four hundred dollars in sales in order to receive a payment. 

Another important consideration involves both the method and date of payments by the merchant.  Find out exactly how the merchant pays their affiliates. Some merchants pay through PayPal so if you enter into an agreement with these merchants you will be required to set up an account with PayPal.  If a merchant pays by check you will need to provide them with the correct mailing address to receive payment.

Check out the merchant’s online reputation.  If there is credible information available that outlines the merchant’s history as an affiliate you should review it.  It can be extremely beneficial to determine the success rates of other publishers that have entered into an agreement with the merchant.  You may not find out how much money each affiliate has made per month but you will be able to get a sense of how satisfied each affiliate is with their merchant. 

Some programs are open to only to residents of the country that the merchants service.  For example some affiliate programs are open to U.S residents only and if you are not a U.S. resident then you may not be eligible to join their affiliate program.

Before signing up for any affiliate program it is imperative to read through the terms of agreement as well as any F.A.Q. sections that are provided.  This will ultimately help you to determine if you want to join the affiliate program as well as what to expect from the merchant once you have joined their program.

Internet Marketing for Blogs

Practical Tips to Protect Yourself against Online Fraud

Internet marketers are in the business of selling products and services online. Perhaps, you are selling books, electronic gadgets, or appliances online, you might even be selling digital products such as e-books and music downloads, but whatever the case, one thing is clear, internet marketers run a serious risk of becoming victim to fraud.

The potential for fraud in the internet is quite high; this is because credit cards and other electronic transitions are being conducted on a daily basis. Accepting credit card payments, for example, is essential for any online business to function. However, there are quite a large number of people who reported losses due to chargeback cases.  There are a large number of internet marketers who find out everything about link building, search engine optimization, and other promotional strategies to make their online venture a successful one. While all these factors are important, they should also realize that all the efforts they put into building their business will be for nothing if frauds just happen to them all the time since they loose money instead of making it.

One of the most important aspects you need to look into when you are online is ensuring that the padlock on your browser is active

Ensure that the padlock icon is found in you browser and not on the page you are seeing itself.

You should also know about the different scams in the internet

There are many types of these; among them are pop-up fraud, phishing, and spoofing. All these are used to get your personal information.  Trojan horse is another thing you need to be worried about, it can live on your system for an extended period of time once it is in your computer.

It is also essential for you to clear your cache even after you have visited any secure website to prevent the risk of any dangerous file from getting hold of your personal information

You should also log off after you had banked online or conducted an important transaction.

You should also run anti-virus scan and anti-malware scan on your computer regularly

Malwares include dangerous files such as spyware and adware that you monitor your browsing habits while you are connected to the internet. Performing regular scanning will ensure that your computer does not contain unwanted files that can compromise your security.

Do not download programs from sources you do not trust

If you received an e-mail from an unknown sender that has attachments, it is important for you not to open these types of files. It likely contains harmful files that can compromise your system security and steal information that can be used for fraudulent activities later on.

Upgrade your operating system regularly

This will ensure that you have maximum protection for your computer because the newest operating systems do not have the vulnerability that was present in the previous software.

Always keep your password a secret

Do not give your password to unknown sources, in fact; don’t disclose it to anyone at all. It is also recommended for you to change your passwords constantly to prevent malicious files from knowing what it is and then sending the information to its server.

Disregard questionable e-mails

These are the type of e-mails that asks for your username and password to access a website. Ignore these types of e-mails. In addition, it is important for you not to open any files that end with .xe or .pif because these are known to be executable that will install itself on your computer without your permission. However, you should also be aware of the source of these files, sometimes these files can come from reputable sources but this does not happen very often.

Being an internet marketer or being engaged in any online business for that matter is quite difficult at the start. As you can see, running an internet marketing business is not as simple as it seems. Protecting your website alone takes a considerable effort; this is in addition to promoting and maintaining your website to ensure that potential clients continually visit your site to buy products or services from you.

Ways to Make Money Online by Freelance Writing

Internet has helped revolutionize businesses in every way. Freelance writers have more opportunities today to earn great amounts of money writing online. Freelancers can get in touch with clients from anywhere in the globe for their writing projects. Here we will see how freelance writers can exploit the Internet revolution.

Part I: Freelance Writing Online

A number of freelance writing sites help writers build an online portfolio, and grow their writing business slowly. Here are some ways writers can earn good income online.

1. Constant-Content.com

Constant Content (CC) is perhaps the leader in marketing freelance content to thousands of websites out there. The  writers can submit content on various topics here and set their price of choice. When an article is sold, the author gets 65 per cent of the sale price.

Customers can request for particular content to the whole writer community or to specific writers as private requests. Already, some of the top members in Constant Content earn thousands of dollars writing. Getting private requests is important for all authors, since it will help them earn more.

Constant Content gives you an online portfolio, which shows all your content and sales history. This portfolio will help get rise in payment for your articles or even land a permanent writing job. Also, the writing standard of CC is very high, as it filters out content with incorrect grammar or punctuation.

2. Associated Content

Associated Content is a very popular content provider out there. Two types of payments are available here: upfront payment and performance payments. Upfront payment is available only in the US, and is usually less than 10 dollars. This is made on publication of the article. Performance payment is according to the number of pageviews an article gets. It is about 1.5 dollars per thousand pageviews.

Though the payment is low, AC offers greater reach to its authors. Associated Content gets almost 7 million visitors, who view almost 40 million pages every month. Hence, you are sure to get a great reach through AC.

3. Helium

Helium is another high quality freelancing site. Helium is a popular content provider in various topics. Even news media look for content within Helium writing marketplace. Helium also provides partnership programs, freelancing opportunities, and writing contests. If you are lucky enough, writing contests may fetch you a lot of money and exposure.

Helium’s freelance writing marketplace has lots of freelancing jobs for writers out there. Since Helium is popular, the competition can be tough, but the pay rate is higher than other freelance sites.

4. Contribute to Professional Publications

Quite a few professional publications can take your articles for publication. They include newspapers and online and print magazines. Although you can make quite a lot of money by publishing with them, the exposure matters the most. A print media publication can provide you enormous exposure.

However, most of these publications require that you query them with your article idea. Don’t send your article without solicitation; otherwise, it may end up in slush pile. Query the editors first, and follow up professionally if you don’t get a reply in a reasonable amount of time.

5. Freelancing Websites

There are quite a few freelance writing sites in which clients post writing projects. Writers can bid on these projects. Writers with greater proficiency and experience can win their bids easily. Since this is a worldwide marketplace, the competition can be great. Here are some freelancing websites:

Elance.com
Academia-research.com
Bizreef.com
Scriptlance.com
Guru.com

6. Sponsored Review Blogging

If you have a popular, professional blog, you can write reviews of various products in it to get paid. These reviews require you to link out to the reviewed product website. Each review can fetch you about 10 or 20 dollars. Here are the sites that offer review jobs:

PayPerPost.com
SponsoredReviews.com
Smorty.com
ReviewMe.com
BuyBlogReviews.com
Blogsvertise.com
Matched.co.uk

7. Begin a Blog and Promote It

You can have a higher chance of landing a professional writing job by starting a blog and promoting it well. You can advertise your writing portfolio in this blog and offer to write for money. Clients checking out your blog can see and estimate your writing standards before hiring you. And your competition in this case will be very low. Do good search engine optimization on your blogs to get more exposure and thus more jobs.

8. Search for Jobs

You can find freelance writing jobs without associating with a freelancing website or starting a blog. You can search for jobs. The largest classifieds ad network in the world, Craiglist.org can help you find a lot of freelancing jobs. Search within Craiglist and you will land many writing jobs that pay well.

However, writing random jobs like this will not help build a good writing portfolio. Most of these jobs are short term for one article or article packages. Long-term jobs are the best for professional freelancers.

9. Blogging on Blog Networks

A number of blog networks offer blogging jobs for writers out there. Most of these networks don’t offer jobs to newbies. You should have good experience in your field to land such a job. Also, the money you can earn from these networks is enormous.

Another advantage of blog networks is that they hire SEO professionals to promote their blogs. So, you only need to write content, and promotion will be taken care of by the company. Also, every blog in the network are interlinked, which makes sure that even the new blogs on the network will get high traffic and money.

However, as mentioned earlier, the expertise in the topic chosen is very important to land a job here. An inexperienced person is obviously not in demand here. Here are some blog networks:

About.com: About.com, owned by News Corporation, is one of the largest content networks out there. According to Alexa, its traffic rank is 81. Writers on About.com are called guides. A guide not only gets about 800 dollars a month, but also gets huge promotion. With your popularity, your earnings will also increase. Top guides in About.com earn in tune of thousands of dollars a month.

Suite101: This is a blog network, which has blogs related to various topics. You can apply to be a blogger there on any of the topics. Chosen writers are paid handsomely for their articles.

451Press: This is another blog network like Suite101. The popularity and pay rate are a little less.

B5Media: This is a blog network started by professional blogger, Darren Rowse. With over 300 blogs now, B5Media is growing.

Today.com: Only US residents can apply to be part of this blog network.

10. Ad Revenue Sharing Networks

There are several companies, which share advertisement revenues with its writers. All you need do in these sites is submit your content and your advertisement IDs (affiliate IDs). Well-written content will drive huge amounts of traffic to your articles. This traffic will earn a lot of money, which will be shared with you. Hubpages and Squidoo are examples of ad share networks.

Well-written articles, called Hubs or Squidoo Lenses, earn lots of pageviews and money for the writers.

11. Publishing and Selling E-books

If you are an experienced person in your field, you can publish an e-book and sell it to make profit. There are a number of publication sites, which help you publish your content online. ClickBank is an online retailer, which helps you promote and sell your digital products including your e-books at a minor fee besides the affiliate commissions. If your e-book is valuable, you will get several sales, earning you great amount of money.

Besides Clickbank, you can publish with on-demand self-publishing companies like Lulu.com.

Part II: Building an Online Freelancing Portfolio

A successful online freelancing career requires an online portfolio. Though everything you do online is tracked and archived, you should do the tracking yourself with the help of a blog, website, or social networking profile.

All freelancing sites have your profile with your article samples, number of sales, client feedback, etc. This helps greatly in building your career. Here are some tips:

1. Start a chronological blog

In order to track various steps of your progress, start a blog or journal, and post your career developments.

2. Social networking

For all Internet enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, social networking is unavoidable. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc., are so popular that you are sure to make a lot of professional connections through them.

3. Stick to one freelancing site

There are some advantages to sticking with one freelancing site than spreading your career in a number of them. If you have your full profile in one place, it will be easy to show it off to your clients. Also, when you don’t have any work on the primary site, it is good to work on projects from the other sites.

4. Contribute to the community

There are a number of communities just for freelance writers. They include social network groups, forums, etc. Contribute well to all these communities in order to be known far and wide as a trusted freelance content provider.

5. Watch out for scammers

Through some forums like the DigitalPoint forums, some people request articles and don’t pay money after the writer has uploaded the content. You should be aware of such scammers, and request an escrow service before sending your content.

Conclusion

Professional freelancing depends on your writing prowess. If you have good writing skills, you can effectively kill your competition. Also, early in your career, build an online profile to show off your work and ability. This way, you can get many clients.

Freelance Writing Online: Helium.com

For the anyone new to the world of online freelancing or content writing, there are a bewildering array of websites offering to host your writing and give you financial rewards for doing so.  It seems that every social networking site bulges with adverts offering money for your writing.  To make an informed choice of where to place your writing, you first need to know about the sites available.  The focus of this article is the website Helium.com.

An Overview
Helium.com is a well established online copy site advertising itself as a “knowledge co-operative”, its motto being, “Learn what you need, share what you know”.  What this basically means in real terms is that it is a free to join site, where almost anyone who measures up to the rather relaxed quality standards may post their articles on an almost endless variety of topics.  Many articles by different writers on the same topic are accepted, the philosophy being that the more points of view available the better.

What this lofty ideal equates to in reality is a wealth of poorly written articles, heavy on opinion (however outspoken) and low on research and quality.  How much an article earns depends on how well it is rated by other members, often arbitrarily.  Articles once posted cannot be removed or sold exclusively elsewhere, and each earns less than a cent per viewing. 

For writers seeking adequate remuneration for individual articles, instead of a very slowly growing pile of pennies, there are far better sites available.  For first time writers seeking somewhere to practice their skills, Helium is a friendly and uncritical place to see your writing published.

Detailed Analysis
Rating
Rating is the biggest single differentiator between Helium and other pay per page view content websites.  When an article is accepted, and is in a competitive title (containing two or more other articles), it is then rated against a series of other articles by the members.  This takes the form of two rival articles displayed next to each other, with a scale at the bottom to indicate which the viewer prefers.  Depending on how well an article is rated, it will either climb to the top of the list, becoming the most viewed and potentially increasing its earnings, or disappear into obscurity.

Rating would seem to be a fair way to assess the quality of an article, but because Helium requires members to have a ‘Rating Star’ (gained by having rated a certain amount of articles in the last ninety days) in order to receive payment for their articles, it is actually an exercise in futility.  It is evident that while some members do genuinely take the time to read both articles, compare them, and rate them fairly, most simply read a line or two and pick an arbitrary rating, or rate them on which expresses an opinion similar to their own.  This is clearly visible when a well written article is rated below one full of grammatical and spelling errors, something that happens lamentably often.

Content
Content on Helium is divided into three main categories.  These are Marketplace, Writing Contests, and Zones. 

Marketplace content is generated by external Helium “Partners”, who offer a topic they wish content written for, and pay for the best articles submitted.  Like the rest of Helium, it is the users who vote for the best articles, making the most popular articles the most visible at the top of the list of submissions.  However, unlike the rest of Helium, it is not the users who have the final say in the content ultimately selected.  While the more popular content is the most visible and has the best chance of being chosen, it is the Partners who decide which article to purchase.

Writing Contests are an entertaining and challenging feature of Helium, offering prizes of around $60 for first, $40 for second, and $30 for third place.  A topic and a series of article titles are given by Helium on a bi-weekly basis.  Members then write to these, being given (or deducted) a certain amount of points per article, depending on how well rated they are.  The winners are those with the most cumulative points.  Several contests may be running at any given time.

Zones form the largest section of Helium, and consist of broad areas of interest, with sub-categories in each.  Members can submit articles to start new titles in the categories, or add an article to an existing title.  For writing to an empty title Helium is advertising, members may receive a small upfront reward of $1.

Payment
One of the defining aspects of Helium is that, for the Zone category articles, it is a pay per page view website, where each time an article is viewed the corresponding advertising generates a financial reward.  This reward is calculated by a complex equation involving the type of article, its ranking, the member’s writing stars, the advertising on the article page and other factors.  However, what this equates to in real terms is that each viewing of an article generates somewhere in the region of less than a cent.  It is worth noting that members only earn on their articles if they have a current ‘Rating Star’, as mentioned above.

Payment is restricted to a minimum of $25, which can be requested as often as it is earned.  Payment is made through Paypal, and thus writers wishing payment must sign up for this service and be willing to pay a small percentage of their earnings in a service charge per transaction.

For the casual hobby writer or budding freelance writer, this small financial incentive may be an added bonus to the chance to hone their writing skills.  For anyone looking to make an income, or second income, or even receive a payment each month, the only way to make any real money from the site is to either write for the Marketplace, or to a lesser extent the Contests, or have several hundred well rated articles on the site.  In order to keep individual articles well rated and near the top of their title it is necessary to update them every few weeks.  This means that while perpetually earning a few cents on each article may sound like an easy and carefree choice, in reality a lot of hard work is required firstly to get several hundred articles on the site, and secondly to keep them updated and well ranked.

Rights
Helium.com has one very important issue when it comes to article rights.  Namely that, while articles may be posted elsewhere under a non-exclusive agreement, there is no option to remove an article from Helium.  This means that once an article has been posted, Helium has the right to keep it online indefinitely and the users cannot remove it.  The only exception is the Marketplace, where full rights are transferred to the buyer on purchase.

While this inability to remove content is not a problem for casual writers, or those just starting on their writing career, it can become a problem later on. 

Posting an article on Helium excludes ever selling it exclusively elsewhere, which means that an article which could have fetched a decent price on a different site, once posted on Helium, will only ever earn pennies.  For anyone who can write with any degree of professionalism this is a distinctly non-advantageous situation to be in.

Adnan is a young entrepreneur from the UK and used to own the popular entrepreneurial blog Blogtrepreneur (link: http://www.blogtrepreneur.com). He is now the founder of a growing performance car (link: http://www.carthrottle.com) website called Car Throttle.

In this recession-hit economy, it is very easy to think that advertising spend from individuals, businesses and corporations has dried up completely and that there is no hope for a small-time blog looking to earn some bucks from the internet. Indeed, there was a time where any old Joe Bloggs (excuse the pun) could throw up a low-value and low-key website and draw in a handful of advertisers, enough to pay for internet bills and a meal or two out every month.

Those incidences may be harder to find today, but don’t be fooled into believing that you can’t have a slice of the virtual money-making pie too. Whilst it is true that a downturned economy does mean less advertising dollars in circulation due to companies cutting back on expenses, wise individuals will continue to spend money on ads due to lower prices, still great targeting and thus a potentially higher profit margin on their spend.

As a result, it should be your aim to target these individuals and lure them in to advertising on your own blog. It must be said beforehand that you should obviously have sufficient traffic to make it worth the advertiser’s time and money, and that your traffic should be as targeted as possible to the niche you are involved in – this will make it a win/win situation for all involved. Once you have accomplished the above, then it’s time to use the following tips and techniques to make sure you grab the attention of any advertisers and to make sure you don’t lose out on your share of the pie.

1. Become an authority in your niche

In some cases, particularly when you are a rookie blogger, you will want to actively seek out advertisers and will spend hours cold-emailing prospects hoping for that influx of income.  However, this will reverse as you become more of an authority and expert within your specialised field. Yaro Starak (link: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com) strongly advocates that you take steps to become this type of guru in his membership courses, and the best way to do this is to constantly bring out fresh, linkable and likeable content that spreads by itself over the net. This will ensure that advertisers find you and not the other way round.

2. Your reputation is everything

Sure, we’ve all heard of people who lie and cheat their way to the top, but if you want to maintain your business integrity and class, then nothing pleases prospective advertisers more than honesty and a clean reputation. Make sure that you are transparent in quoting your visitor count, and make sure that ad prices are not overly inflated just to make a quick buck. Pleased as punch advertisers will generally renew adverts if they are happy with results, and maintaining your online reputation is vital in helping you create these beneficial relationships.

3. Under-quote prices and aim for retention

One of the key statistics that internet marketers who own membership websites look for in a successful business is the attrition rate. Well-run sites will have high participation rates and small percentages of members dropping out every week or month. In a similar way, a blog owner should be looking to maintain ongoing business deals and should encourage the renewal of adverts. A good way to do this is to under-quote ad prices initially so you can start building these key relationships, and then to slowly raise prices over time. Often advertisers will stick with you as you raise prices due to the close bonds you have built.

4. Create a clear advertising page on your blog

This tip if probably one of the most vital, active things you can do to raise revenue. In fact, whilst I was in charge of Blogtrepreneur, having a defined advertising page helped me to make $506 blogging in July 2007 (link: http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2007/08/09/how-i-made-506-blogging-in-july-2007/). There are a few things that a well-structured and enticing advertising page should have in order to make the most of your screen real-estate:

• A general description of your website and the audience that you attract
• Unique visitors, pageviews and other traffic related statistics
• Twitter followers, RSS subscribers and any other relevant metrics
• Number of posts in your Archives and comment to post ratio (this shows the level of audience participation and reader loyalty)
• Methods of advertising and their descriptions, followed by pricing and timeframes
• Methods of payment
• And finally, any other terms and conditions to protect yourself should you decide to alter prices or to warn off any untoward advertisers promoting dodgy activity!

5. Give advertisers more than one method of advertising with different price points

Advertisers will inevitably vary in stature and levels of budget that they have available to spend on your blog. As a result, having only one advertising method with only one entry-level price-point, may deter some purchasers and means that you are putting your eggs all in one basket. You could start by offering 2 types of banner advert (perhaps one in the sidebar and a larger banner at the end of each post) and by offering RSS feed links. You should however be wary of selling text links as Google does not look favourable upon these and the money you get from this may not outweigh the penalties you will get from the search engines and traffic lost as a result.

6. Communication is King

OK, so I’ve twisted the above statement a little from the original “Content is King” mantra. However as mentioned above with the transparency point, constant communication will mean peace-of-mind for the advertiser and will lead to deeper relationships developing. Make sure that you are prompt in responding to emails and that you act courteously and professionally at all times. Provide a contact form on your blog or a place where potential advertisers can get in touch with you and it should show that you are a full-on businessman, which will help money-spenders to help take you more seriously.

7. Be proactive

There is nothing worse than a beach-bum-blogger who thinks that no effort is required in running a successful blog. Whilst a very small minority can safely say that advertisers have contacted them and that they have a smooth automated system for handling everything, chances are you won’t have that luxury and instead will have to kick your blogging butt into gear.

Spend time cold-emailing prospects if you have spare inventory, offer advertising deals for bulk-purchases, offer discounts for multi-month buys, maintain a network of interested individuals who you can contact about new deals and be on your toes. Passive income is not something generally related to blogging and you may find yourself doing behind the scenes work more than you are actually typing!

The key to cracking open the money tree is to keep looking for improvement, as there is always improvement to be had. Never settle for the current level of income you are receiving, and if you are currently making a loss blogging (by paying authors and shelling out on expenses) then create a leaner blogging business and use the above tips to help you to find your break-even point and to shove your blog back into the black.