Ebay--what Has Customer Service Got to Do?

If you want to run a full-time business earning 6 figure income on ebay, you should start thinking about customer service in a big way.

As in any business, when a buyer receives quality customer service from you, they will potentially do one of two things - or both. They will give you great feedback, and they may look for more of your auctions in the future. After all, people buy from buyers whom they are familiar with.

If you hope to make a living from eBay, you have to stop thinking of it as just an auction and start running it like a business.

Let's say you have a brick and mortar business, how would you treat your customer when they are in your shop or they enquire about a certain product on the shelf for example? You would be helpful and respectful of course! You would do everything that you could to guarantee that customers return to your business in the future. You would bend over backwards to make sure that their buying experience with you was both satisfactory and enjoyable. So why would you do any less at the close of one of your eBay auctions?

First, act quickly at the close of your auctions. Contact the winner, and congratulate them. Describe the item they have won and how the item will be shipped. This would be a good time to tell them about the different shipping options, the estimated delivery time and cost. Remind them of their winning bid amount, and give them payment options and instructions.

In my experience, most buyers do not mind paying a bit more to have the items delivered fast.

Close your email by thanking them for participating in your auction. You can take this opportunity to tell them of other auctions you are running. Better yet, if you have a website or mailing list, invite them to visit your website. I have often used this method as a lead generation. The prospects you gathered this way are of the highest quality. Why? Because your prospects have already brought something from you. They have placed their trust in you by buying your item. They have given you a chance to sell them a higher price item. It is also easier to build a rapport with them.

Once the payment and shipping details have been taken care of, contact your buyer again. Let them know when the item was shipped - the exact date and time - and when it is expected to arrive on their end. During this contact, let them know that if they have any problems or questions, that they should contact you. If they do contact you in the future, make sure that you answer promptly, and that you do all that you can to make them happy with their purchase - even if it means issuing a refund.

I know it may be a little hard to issue a refund since you have worked so hard to put up the auction and get bidders to bid. However, I personally believe a happy customer is a better person to deal with than an unhappy customer.

Furthermore, you should issue refunds promptly. I had customers who request refunds which I promptly refunded and they ended up buying more items from me over the long run. Why? Well simply, they know my customer service standards and have no qualms about buying products from me since they know I will take care of their needs and questions.

Are Brochures for You?

I think anyone would be hard pressed to have avoided ever coming into contact with a brochure. These are such a commonly used advertisement they are simply everywhere. They might not be as visible as things like TV commercials and giant posters, but I am sure you have probably still seen plenty of them, and you might wonder if they would be right for your company.

What do brochures specifically do?

Brochure printing is best done when the message is longer and more details are needed. Brochures are certainly a much longer style of advertising. You have a lot more than a single page to get your message across, and so you have to have a message capable of filling up that space.

What goes into creating a brochure?

This is where brochure printing becomes a little more complex than many other advertisements. You are almost always going to have a delicate balance between image and words when designing a brochure. Some might go heavy into the image area while others will dive head first into the words, but you will still need to balance the two of them out.

What other design elements are there?

The way you fold a brochure greatly affects the end results of what you hand people, so be sure you are aware of that when designing. Brochures require a lot of good design work when compared to other types of advertising, so make sure you know what will be needed before you start creating them.

How much do brochures cost to make?

Brochures can carry with them a higher price tag than many other forms of advertising. All of the additional design work you have to do certainly adds to the overall cost of what you are getting. Now, brochures also fill a much needed place in marketing, so do not let the costs scare you away from trying them.

Are there any downsides to brochures?

The cost would be the first major downside, especially if your company has a small enough marketing budget. The other would be that brochures are not as visible as many other kinds of advertising, and because of that a person is going to have to care more about reading it before they will. You cannot grab their interest as well with brochures as you might be able to with postcards, and you do not send brochures directly to a person’s home unless you have a good sized marketing budget.

What are the benefits of brochures?

They are a slick and stylized kind of marketing that you just cannot get with any other format. They combine words and pictures very well to get your message across to people. Brochures can also provide people with a lot of information, and sometimes you just need to tell people a lot more than the other advertisements can handle.

Any complete marketing push should take brochures into consideration. If you are not bothering with them at all, you are not going to be able to reach all the people you will want to.


For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Brochure Printing

Legitimate Free Paid Survey Sites

We all have opinions about something whether its products we use or the movies we watch. Why not get paid for it. This is were LEGITIMATE free survey sites (also known as paid surveys or free paid surveys) come into place.

There are many legitimate survey sites on the Internet that will pay you for giving your opinions on different things such as products, food, movies, TV shows, cars, clothing, and many more range of topics. We do it everyday so this is a great opportunity to turn those opinions into cash.

In order to make a good income using this method of making money online, you will have to devote at least an hour a day on taking these surveys. An hour a day isn't bad when you are making $20 for free. You can even make more than that. Thats why I say "Time is money". You can actually make a good monthly income from taking these free paid surveys.

Here is the method I would recommend you to use when earning money online with free paid survey sites.

1. Set up an email account just for your survey invitations. You will most likely receive emails for all survey invitations.

2. Sign up to as many legitimate survey sites as possible. It really doesn't take that many but if you want to make a good income with free paid surveys, you would sign up for a lot of them.

3. Start making free money online by filling out surveys. Use truthful information and watch the money start adding up.

Here is a small list of free legitimate survey sites you can register with and start making money immediately.

* Opinion Outpost
* NFO MySurveys
* Survey Spot
* Brand Institute
* Survey Savvy
* American Consumer Opinion
* Clear Voice Surveys
* Pinecone Research
* Your2Cents
* Global Test Market

There are many more legitimate survey sites out there so be cafeful of the many scam you might run across on the internet.

Earning Internet Cash: Blogging Your Way to Online Profits

To Blog or not to Blog? Ah... the big question! First...you don't have to pay anything to create your blog if you go to www.blogger.com. When you set up your blog try and use relevant keywords in the blog-title. If you're hoping to have your blog indexed and listed up by the search engines then you should create a number of different blogs, with similar but different keywords or long-tail phrases linked to the same niche subject, and then create links to connect all the blogs together. So you will be covering more of the keywords that people will be searching for around your niche subject and you'll be improving your search engine ranking by creating back-links between the blogs.

Good content is vital. Good content that changes regularly, and that people want to read. There is a lot of competition out there and that if you want your readers to come back and check your blog again and again you must provide them with something that entertains and informs.

So once you've set up your blog and you've got some entertaining and informative content... and you're getting a steady stream of regular visitors. How do you make money ? There is a very simple way and that is to add Google's ad sense code into your blog so that their adverts are displayed on your blog page and you get paid everytime one of your visitors clicks through. If there is anyone reading this who is making a substantial amount of money this way please let me know! In my experience the trickle of revenue generated by ad sense ads is not worth the bother but perhaps I'm doing something wrong!

A better way is to put affiliate links on your blog. Hopefully your visitors click through these links, buy the product you're promoting, and earn you a commission on the sale.

The best thing to do though, is to use your blog as a list-building tool. You must have a link to your squeeze page or opt-in page that captures your visitors' e-mail addresses and names. This involves a slightly more complicated process, and you will certainly have to spend a more time, effort and money setting up an auto responder and a series of follow-up messages. You'll also need some kind of incentive to get people to give you their details, like a free mini E-book or information course via email. But in the long run building a subscriber list will produce the most profit.

Many Techniques to Increase Your Google Adsense Revenues and Optimize

Despite what you may hear, the Google AdSense program is not for everyone. There are some types of web sites that do poorly no matter how hard the owners try, and there are others that should be doing well but the webmaster simply isn't putting in the effort to make things happen.

Here are some tips to make AdSense work better for you. If you do them all and you are still not having any luck, then you just might be running one of those sites that don't make money

1. Determine if your visitors are in the mood.

Like I mentioned at the top of this article, some web sites just don�t work with pay-per-click programs. The best performing sites fall into one of these categories:

Sites where users go and expect to buy something while they are there. E-commerce sites fit the bill here.

Sites where users go to find specific information on something that they want to buy now. Music and video review sites, vacation information sites, resume building sites, etc. You don't have to actually be selling these types of things; your site can just be a mecca for information pertaining to these things. Then, when the visitor comes to read your content, they are more likely to click on your ads.

Sites where people who have disposable income and a credit card like to visit.

This includes sites with money management, investing and lifestyle content.

Sites that draw a large amount of new users every day. Free coupon sites and How to sites are good examples.

Sites where people go who expect to read ads. Classified ads and shopping comparison sites fit into this category.

2. Make sure that your visitors don't feel that you just want to grab their money
Give them plenty of relevant and well-written content. If writing isn't your best skill then hire someone to do it for you. Good content brings steady traffic and steady traffic pays the bills.

3. Play by the rules

Google has some very specific Terms of Service for participating in their AdSense program. Learn those rules and follow them so you don't lose all of your investment by getting shut out.

4. Use the tools that Google gives you

Google gives you tools for determining the best keywords for your site, measuring ad performance, and setting up different ad channels for fine-tuning ad results. These guys and girls are the 800 lb. Gorillas in the Pay-Per-Click market. They didn't build these tools just to keep their programmers busy. Take advantage of their knowledge for they are very big and you are not!

5. Tweak, fine-tune and then tweak again

You should never be happy with your AdSense performance. If it's good, then you need to make it great. If it's great then you need to make it amazing. If it's amazing then you need to take it to the UPS club.

The UPS club? Google sends all checks over $10,000 per month to the webmaster via UPS overnight delivery. Now there is a club that I wouldn't mind belonging to.

6. Get more traffic

No matter how much traffic you have, you need more. More eyeballs translate to more clicks. Even if you are only pulling a 2% click-through. That's a lot of clicks when you have thousands of visitors each day.

7. Experiment with new keywords

New keywords can bring new ads and new eyeballs along with it. Set up some new pages on your site and experiment with different content.

You can see results in near real time when you use Google's AdWords. Don't be afraid to be different. If something that everyone else is doing doesn't work for you, then invent something that does work and get it on your site.

Monetizing Your Web Log and Internet

Adsense is categorized as one of the most powerful tool in a website publisher's arsenal. It enables a person to monetize their sites or web blogs easily. If used appropriately, it can generate a very large and healthy income for them. But if you are not using them rightly and just maximizing the income you squeeze from it, you are actually leaving a huge amount of money on the table.

So, how you can start earning money with Adsense? It can be done easily and quickly. You will be amazed at the results you will be getting in such a short span of time.

Start by writing some quality content articles which are also rich of competitve keyword . There are a lot of individuals given the gift of being good with words Why not make it work in such a way that you will be generating some extra cash in the process.

There are actually three steps to put into mind before you begin putting your ads and having an effective Adsense.

You must not forget to do keyword research. Find some popular subjects, keywords or phrase and after that, determine its competitiveness. Select the ones which you think has more people clicking through-- you can analyze keywords using free keywords selection tools but more effective keywords are bought.

Now, its time to write articles. Start writing original content with keywords from the topics that you have acquired in your search. Take note that search engines are taking pride in the quality of their articles and what you will be writing should keep up with their demands and standards.

The proper positioning of your ads should be done with enough care. Try to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them or on area that can easily be seen even wihtout navigating thoughout the page. Based on research, the one place that surfers look first when they visit a certain site is the top left Maybe it's because some of the most useful search engine results are at the top of all other rankings. So visitors tend to look in that same place when browsing through other sites or web logs.

Finally, Adsense has some powerful tracking statistics that allows webmasters and publishers to track their results across a number of websites on a site by site, page by page, or any other basis you wanted. You should be aware of this capability and make the most of it because it is one powerful tool that will help you find out which ads are doing best. In this method, you can fine tune your Adsense ads and focus more on the ones being visited the most rather than those who are being ignored.

To really start generating money with Adsense, you should have a definite focus on what you wanted to achieve and how you will go about attaining these things. As with any other kind of business ventures, time is needed coupled with enough patience.

If Adsense is Dead Then What

I've been following this latest fantastic little adventure in internet marketing with a great deal of interest.

The Death of AdSense isn't something new. Savvy, big time players (these are NOT most Internet Marketing Gurus) have always said that AdSense isn't a business - it's something that can, CAN, generate an income, but which requires an exit strategy into a real business.

Now, you can take this several ways. It is possible to construct a more or less viable business model around AdSense. But, you need to have a lot more resources than most people who try AdSense as an income source have.
I'm sorry, but this is reality. For most (by which I mean somewhere between 95 and 98% of the people putting up AdSense sites), it's penny scraping and it's hard and it's getting harder.

Sure thing, you can build "authority sites." Uh huh. With PLR content? You think? I doubt it but try it and see.
Let's see who else I can get angry at me.
AdSense content ads still pay decent money in competitive markets - the problem is that competitive markets are difficult to get ranking in and therefore traffic for. Oh, it's possible, but it's an awful lot of work.

The major problem most MFA publishers face is that they don't do the work. Slap up a site and on to the next. Grab a template with a bunch of crummy content and HOPE you'll make a buck or 50 cents a day. Now that's nuts.

CPA (click per action), particularly for decent leads has generally always paid substantially more than something like AdSense. It is something you can establish a stable long-term business on. As long as you can get the traffic.

You can, certainly, get traffic through PPC. You can also lose your shirt. It's not a newbie game. If you're going to do PPC, you have got to do some serious studying and track everything very closely or you can go broke in short order.
Think about this. Say I do a monster hot viral deal and bag 27,000 marketers. And I turn them onto CPA at places that pay me a commission on sign up and a small percentage of the business those new affiliates bring in. Now, we're talking a little serious continuity. Month after month I'm getting a little bit from the efforts of what - 1000, 8000, 12000 people? Bring me another one of those funky drinks with the umbrella, the sun is strong and the beach is beautiful.

Is that worth 50 cents per? I suspect so. And eventually, there's going to be one or more dyn-o-mite products with major price tags, too.

Boy, I'm seriously jealous. We're talking genuine genius stuff here. You see, it doesn't matter a damn whether AdSense is dead or not. A new path can be worth a fortune to those who didn't have a clue - and who are willing to do the learning and the work to make it happen. Most won't, of course. It's a lot of work. But some will and they should do very well.

In one sense, Ad Sense has always been dead. You're throwing away your traffic for pennies. And it's a lot of work to get ANY traffic.

But for most, CPA is going to be a dangerous and potentially ruinous game. It sounds terrific, but nobody's telling you how to get those PPC costs for your landing pages down from maybe 5 or 10 bucks per click. Hey, wake up, remember the Google slap, landing page quality measures, etc.

There are some brilliant, knowledgeable, capable people running around loose who do give out valuable information. They aren't stupid. That means they do it for a reason. You can use their information to improve your business, but you absolutely have to get a grip on their goals too. You have to understand not only what you're doing and why but what they're doing and why.

You are going to have to stop believing blindly everything that sounds terrific and matches, more or less, your own experience. Ugly, but you have to use your head and actually think.
A zillion lemmings running blindly after the latest greatest

revelation - it's the same stupid game of looking, over and over, for the one miraculous tool, idea, concept, piece of software that's going to make you a fortune. It isn't going to happen. The magic bullet doesn't exist. Stop wasting your time and money.
Create a workable plan - one you can actually carry out. MFA, affiliate sales, creating your own product, CPA (if you can do the PPC or are willing to learn). Any one of these can make you money. If you stop screwing around looking for the answer and the easy money. There is NO easy money. It's all either work (for most of us) or sheer bloody genius combined with an insane amount of luck (for the few).

Well, I hope I managed to offend everybody who's pulling your chain to suck a couple more nickels out of you. If not, maybe in my next article. But you - you have got to do some very serious work on your BS detector. You need to understand how you are being done to and why. It isn't necessarily a bad thing. You are getting really valuable information, but you still need to evaluate and understand it, not accept it as if Moses were dumping one of those stone tablets on you. Even I'm trying to sell you stuff.

The People Behind Internet Scams

Have you ever wondered what kind of person would purposely scam innocent people out of their money on the Internet? These people thrive on the invisibility of the Internet. They have the ability to hide their tracks easily, disappear quickly and easily, and are rarely caught by authorities. There are two types:

The first is ambitious and proud about what they are doing. These are the ones who are intelligent and expert swindlers. They are excited by their "genius" and feel that the work of creating a scam is reason enough for the money they make from it. They look at all possible angles to avoid being obviously illegal. Right there is a clue that they know what they are doing is wrong and yet pursue it with justifications. They believe if someone buys into the scam, or as they prefer, "money system", they have no reason to complain. They convince themselves the opportunity is there, even when they know only one percent or less of the people putting in money will actually make any money. These people thrive on the faceless, impersonal Internet. They do not know the people they are scamming and don't care to know them. It makes it much easier to take someone's money if you don't see the real person suffering a loss.

The above type naturally creates a sub-type scam artist. This is a person who has bought into a money system and in order to make at least enough to cover their "investment" into the business must advertise the business and get more people involved. These people often end up paying out much more money in advertising than they first gave to the business and very few recoup their money at all. It has been said that only about 1% of people who put money into a money system get any money from it.

The second type of scam artist is much more viscious and more personal. They do try to get personal information from their victims. They may contact them to earn trust. These scammers rely on establishing some contact in order to get their victim to complete a bank transaction. They usual have a money order or cheques (fake) in which they want the person to deposit and then request a portion back. The cheque then bounces and the person has lost their own money, in some cases quite a lot. Whether desperate or just purely anti social, these kind of people are totally aware of what they are doing and have no conscience about about what they are doing.

In order to avoid Internet scams, always follow these rules:

Never answer emails that declare you have won a prize, lottery or inheritance.

Never click a link in an email that claims you must update your information or provide personal account numbers. Your bank, Paypal, Hotmail and other sites never ask you to give this information through a link in an email. If you click the link, they may have a very good fake site that you think is the real thing. They take your information and take your money.

Check out any Internet business before putting your money into it, especially if the business claims you will make an huge income in a very short period of time. It is easy to find information by just doing a simple search on scams and the business name.

Do not take jobs via email invitation that require you to work as "Bookkeeper" or in "Accounts Recievable" and request you deposit cheques for them and send them back the funds. This is a scam, no legitimate business invites strangers to make deposits for them.

Do not answer emails from desperate millionaires that will give you a percentage of the money if you will complete a money transfer for them. They do not have money and they want to take your money.

There are ways to honestly make money online and for those methods, work and patience are required. Writing, blogging, mystery shopping from legitmate companies, and taking surveys are better options for making money when you have the right resources. Don't give in to the get rich quick systems that are in abundance on the Internet.

The Only Thing You Need to Know to Make Money Online

Earning Online Income is great, but you need a system that will last...

There's no shortage of Make Money Online opportunities to choose from. The trick is choosing the opportunity that will generate cash flow for life. Let's look at exactly how to identify the winners...

Choose Forever In Demand Products or Services: Find a company promoting a product or service that will stay in demand forever. If it could be a fad, or become easily obsolete, move on.

For example, anything that teaches people how to generate internet traffic will always be in demand, as long as regular updates are part of the package. 8 Track tapes, however, become obsolete thanks to advancing technologies.

Look For a Compensation Plan That's Not Doomed to Fail: MLM's are great at first but can fall victim to their own success. Everyone wants easy, so when the system matures recruiting gets tough.

Once recruiting becomes tough new recruits are hard to come by. They don't join, or newbies quit, creating a cascade of imploding levels.

You want leverage, but look for the newer opportunities at the very least, and preferably a system with staying power.

Look for very easy to understand compensation plans: Some compensation plans are so exotic, and so complex you have to be a rocket scientist to understand them. That's a turn off, not only for you but for your sales force. Stay away from them.

Look for a clean, easy to understand compensation plan. This will be a strong selling point, and not a detriment, when trying to recruit others to your team.

Remember, keep it simple stupid is very powerful. Never ignore this and your results will greatly magnify.

Look for very simple marketing systems: Your sales force won't do a thing if it's not easy. The easier the better...

Look for company supplied marketing systems that virtually anyone can do, at little or no cost, in their spare time, and you'll have winner systems.

Look for a Free Trial: You should not have to put your own money at risk, either to join, or to test the company's marketing. If the system you're taking part in is a winner there will be plenty of free marketing systems that should bear fruit.

And if the system is that good, the company should allow you to join for free to prove it to yourself before ever asking you for a nickel. If the system is not that good you'll be asked for money to join, as that is the only way they will make any money, and you'll be left holding the bag.

Get A Great Support System: Look for support form the company and your direct sponsor. You should be able to easily contact them, and they should be able to easily support you.

You don't always need help from the company. As a matter of fact the person who recruited you should be easily accessible, and in fact should be willing to help build your business for you.

After all, if you don't succeed they don't succeed. Look for a sponsor and a company that are responsive.

The Secret to Your Success: If you simply become expert at vetting the great opportunities from the duds you'll find tremendous success.

Remember; look for opportunities with the following characteristics:

• Choose Forever in demand products or services.
• Look for a compensation plan that's not doomed to fail.
• Very easy to understand compensation
• Look for very simple marketing systems.
• Look for a Free Trial.
• Get tons of support.

If you are comfortable that the opportunity that you are looking at meets most if not all of the above characteristics then there is a much better chance that you can succeed with the opportunity!

Good hunting!

Keith Franksen

Founder, RAVA Ventures LLC

The Golden Rule

History has shown that the most powerful safeguard during times of crisis and financial uncertainty is to buy physical gold. The rapid increase in inflation along with slow moving interest rates makes this the best time to buy gold. Owning gold is one of the best ways to hedge against inflation costs that can cut profits and spending power. More importantly how safe is your money in the bank and how do you protect your wealth?

With our major financial institutions under threat, buying physical gold provides the reassurance that you not only have an investment that is safe but that is going to increase in value. High bullion prices are here to stay as the demand for gold won’t wane any time soon.

If you look back over the year the gold price was $667 an ounce but rose to $1000 on 17th March when Bear Stearns collapsed, it then fell back to its current level of around $800.

The question is whether it is a good time to buy gold bullion now. The answer is yes, because the price is largely determined by supply and demand and there is a limited supply and gold is an asset which is not a liability against someone else’s balance sheet.

The current uncertainties within the world economy have brought people to the gold market who would never have considered it before. These people are not so worried about making a profit but want to have peace of mind and security for the wealth that they have already accrued.

Bailout Dramas Generate More Stock Market Black Mondays

Another dramatic weekend saw four banks receive government bail outs, not to mention the further file sales and mergers. Mondays have been chaos for the last few weeks, as governments on both sides of the pond prefer to work through major announcements, mergers, and bailouts, over the relative calm of the weekend. Although Bradford and Bingley grabbed the headlines in the UK, governments in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg had to throw billions at Fortis, while Germany guaranteed loans to Hypo Real Estate. In the US, investors waved goodbye to Wachovio as a takeover by Wells Fargo pleased traders, in part as it indicated further mergers and acquisitions might be on the cards.

The week's biggest event was of course ‘black Monday' as the senate rejected the proposed US $700bn bailout package. Confidence waxed and waned throughout the rest of the week, but ironically it was the passing of the amended bailout bill that sparked a major reversal on Friday. US markets closed down below Monday's lows with the Dow closing at its lowest level for nearly three years.

Dire housing figures were released on both sides of the Atlantic, with the UK and US house price collapse showing no signs of a turn around. There were record declines in the Case-Schiller house price index, which put house prices down 17.5% year on year. UK house prices also registered record declines as the average cost of a home fell 12.4% from a year earlier. The lockdown in the credit markets is having a significant effect on the housing market. Without access to mortgages at reasonable rates, mortgage approval rates have tumbled by over 90% in the UK over the last year.

Virtually all aspects of the credit markets are locked down, from money markets to the Treasury market. Three month Libor for Euros, the London Interbank Lending rate hit 5.33% last week, an all time high. With no confidence in each other's financial positions, banks have simply stopped lending to each other.

As a sign of the level of the crisis, the ECB last week shifted its focus from fighting inflation, to the problems in the economy. Until now, ECB chairman Trichet has kept the focus almost entirely on fighting inflation, even as Ireland formally slid into recession. A Eurozone rate cut is looking likely in the next two months, this news and benign oil price action pushed the European single currency to its lowest level against the Dollar for over a year. In the US, Fed Fund futures moved to price in a 50bps cut in interest rates before the end of the month. Although the futures market can get it very wrong, the price available is currently inferring a 100% probability of a cut.

Next week's major economic announcements start on Tuesday with ECB chairman Trichet and FOMC chairman Bernanke due to speak. Tuesday evening also sees the release of the minutes from the last FOMC meeting. With traders speculating on an imminent rate cut and events moving quickly since the last meeting, the minutes may now be a little out of date. However, they will still be examined in detail for clues on future policy decisions. In the UK manufacturing production figures are released in the morning with Halifax hours price figures planned for release some time throughout the day. Thursday sees the Bank of England's MPC set interest rates. Traders are currently pricing in a quarter point cut.

According to Jason Goepfert at SentimenTrader.com "the only other times in its history that the S&P 500 lost more than it did this week were the weeks of 10/19/87, 04/10/00 and 09/17/01 - all three times it bounced back the following week (by an average of +5%) and following quarter (by an average of +8.9%)." Although a failure to hold above last week's lows in the first few days of next week could spark further selling, there is at least the potential for a significant snap rally in the next few weeks, said traders at BetOnMarkets.com. Placing a One Touch trade predicting the S&P 500 to touch 1180 at any time during the next 16 days could return 100%.

How to Get Paid to Answer Surveys

So you would like to venture into the world of paid surveys online and you would like to know how to get paid to answer surveys right? Well, you've come to the right place. There are many factors you must meet before you start like finding a legit paid survey site and seeing if it pays well. We cover these and many more below.

Finding a legit site?

It is hard out there, as 98% of paid survey sites are SCAMS and all they want is cash and lots of it. This is what they do: They make you take the surveys, then the company pays the scam owner, who rakes it all in! But don't be discouraged though! There are some great, paying and legit survey sites out there!

Seeing if it pays well?

You will need to find if the site pays you well and how too. Usually paid survey sites pay via Paypal or in most cases check. Some privledged sites pay via direct deposit too!

How to answer paid surveys?

You will be provided with surveys either via email or via the members area on the site. Usually good paid survey companies have around 400 companies, so the surveys never dry out!

How long does it take to answer surveys?

It depends on how long, maybe between 5-10 minutes. Usually the more you get paid, the longer the surveys will be.

If you would like to find a site that is legit, pays well and a good supply of surveys, then click here and visit Makemoneytakingsurveys now.

How to Make Money With Affiliate Programs

If you are looking for a way to make money online through an e-business, affiliate programs might be a great option for you. What exactly is an affiliate program? An affiliate program is simply a way for a business to sell a product or service. Affiliates sign up to market items through websites and e-stores. Affiliate programs are a great way for business to expand their consumer base and sales revenue and a great way for individuals to earn money online.

Types of Affiliate Programs

There are many different types of online affiliate programs, ranging from those run by small business to large corporations. Some affiliate programs allow you to work directly with a business, while others offer a wide range of products and services from a number of different companies. Some of the best-known affiliate programs include eBay, Amazon.com, LinkShare, and Commission Junction. Investigate the various types of affiliate programs before deciding which is best for your needs.

How to Join and Affiliate Program

1. Start by signing up at the affiliates you have selected. This can usually be done by visiting the affiliate program website and clicking the "Sign Up" link. In most cases, you will need to provide contact information and the URL of your website.

2. Once you are enrolled in the program, you will receive a unique affiliate ID that will allow you to earn commissions on your sales. This affiliate ID will usually be included in the URL of each product you sell, allowing the affiliate program to track your sales statistics.

3. Start marketing products on your website. Choose items that are relevant to your website topic. If your website is focused on pet products, choose a variety of pet-related items that you feel will appeal most to your viewers.

The Advantages of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs offer a number of unique advantages to both businesses and online marketers. By providing an affiliate programs, business gain substantial online exposure and sales by allowing others to sell their goods and services. Affiliate programs provide a significant source of income for website owners and allow websites to featured customer targeted products.

If you are looking for an online business opportunity that requires minimal hassle and few start-up expenses, affiliate programs are an excellent choice. Some of the major benefits of starting an affiliate e-business are:

* Low Start-up Costs: Most affiliate programs offer free sign-up, and some even provide a personalized website where you can sell items. In many cases, the only expense you will incur are website hosting fees, which vary depending on the size of your website. Fortunately, affiliate programs offer an excellent return on you investment.
* Low Hassle: Because you are simply selling products and services provided by another business, you don't have to deal with stock, inventory, customer service, and distribution. Your only responsibility is to market your site and sell products. The affiliate network deals with all of the tedious details.
* Fast Results: One of the greatest benefits of affiliate programs is that they allow marketers to start earning money quickly. A simple website can be set up in a matter of hours, allowing you to start selling quickly and efficiently. By marketing your website online through search engine optimization, e-marketing campaigns, and weekly newsletters, you can quickly start to make money with affiliate programs.

You Know That Your Product or Services are the Best in Its Domain!

The most difficult aspect of any business is perhaps sales. You know that your product or services are the best in its domain. You also know that you are offering it in good prices and it can solve the problems of its users. Unfortunately, it is not making an impact in the market and it is unable to find its customers. Naturally, you are loosing sales in such cases which can affect your business badly. It is necessary that you avoid such situations and for that you can use some sales lead generation techniques.

These days B2B lead generation techniques are quite popular to help a business in making sales. These techniques strive hard so that if you have an online venture then you can talk to your prospects and attract your customers. These days many such techniques are popular and following are few of them. Free Reports Many websites offer the free services which are powerful marketing tools for bringing customers. Business reports, for more detail www.viral-toolbar-builder.com horoscopes, profiles etc. are offered to encourage users to come to a website and in this way leads are generated.

Registration Offerings Some sign up forms are available that can be a registration in order to receive some services. Some useful services or products can be offered as part of registration and this is also a B2B lead generation technique. Opt In Mailing Lists Many websites use an Email campaign for the purpose of B2B lead generation. A link is presented where users can register for a newsletter or other company information. Then you can make efforts to these prospects that have shown interest in you.

Business to Business Referrals Many businesses exchange links in exchange for the same kind of reference from your website back to theirs. These links can create a relationship so that both can exchange goods and services and this is how B2B lead generation occurs. Auto responders These are software applications responding to input from any prospect. It responds automatically. It acknowledges information receipt from a user and provides future contact information and this is how it helps in keeping track of leads automatically.

Therefore, if you are interested in making huge sales and you want to make your online venture a good success, for more detail www.pure-profit-software.com then B2B lead generation techniques are worth a try. There is software that enables one to connect to thousands of different Satellite TV channels using clear navigation buttons for selecting specific country Satellite TV channels. The best is that the software sales at a low price can you believe it; lower than your normal one months television subscription fee.

Learn to Make Money Online

One of the biggest problems entrepreneurs face when they begin learning how to do business online is 'information overload' - in fact I'd go so far to say that's it's an epidemic. After years of telephone and email support with people all over the world anxious to get started with their internet business and making money online, it's obvious, we're stymied by too many options, too much information (much of it mis-information) and too many ideas.

Filtering through the noise and focusing your energy is your best line of defense. There's a simple path to online profits (without the confusion that ensues when you've signed up to 10 different newsletters on the topic).

1. Determine your target market.

2. Find or create a product they will want to buy.

3. Get your offer in their path with a deal they can't resist...

I've got lots to share with you about each of the points so don't sweat the details just yet. The three steps are also only the most basic way to generate an income online

Don't buy or build a website without reading the warnings, tips and success secrets in this article first! Great for those longing for a website of their own but don't know the steps involved.

You'll need tips on buying existing in-profit websites, as well as the 'how to' on building your own custom website. Find websites already in profit, learn what type of website sales to stay away from, discover how to turn domain 'duds' into diamonds or the variety of ways to create a site from scratch.

If you're already making money online it's time to 'take it up a notch' with targeted traffic tips, marketing techniques, proven income earners, and more. Discover how to earn more from an existing online business.

Don't want to own or manage a website but still want to make money online? There's simply a pile of ways to earn an income on the web without the hassles of website ownership. From cleaning out your closets or buying digital resale rights to sell on eBay, to advertising and promoting products on pay per click networks for affiliate commissions...

How to start blogging business?

Blogging is one of the fast growing cultures at Internet and at the same time it is easy to start, however you need to know some of the tips so that you can generate money online. The following common tips will help you in starting your blogging business.

Pick and start writing on your favorite niche and optimize it:

You should pick up a topic of your blog and before you start writing, you should find the targeted keywords for the blogs. Make these keywords the different categories of your blogs. Now a day the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) is important to achieve higher search engine ranking of your blog. Start writing SEO articles or blogs so that you achieve higher and quicker ranking for your blog. Optimization of your blog is important for traffic, which will ultimately translate into online earning.

Content must be valuable:

It is important for you to regularly update your blog with valuable contents. If you can’t provide good content to your blog, no one will visit your blog. You should use the language in such a way so that it appeals to the large audience and you should also stick to your area only.

Choose a suitable URL and opt for reliable hosting:

Selection of suitable URL that matches with the blog content is must. Blog URL can be optimized for a niche in similar fashion as website. There are many cheap and reliable web-hosting companies and you can select a suitable company for your blogging business.

Generate traffic for your blog:

This is the most important task for you to succeed in you blogging business and you need to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Some of these tasks include putting comments on other similar blogs, submit your blog to the best blog directories, link your blog URL to your email, write articles about your blog and submit these articles to article directories and link back the article to your blog and do other SEO techniques to improve the ranking of your blog.

Start earning money from multiple streams:

Once you get regular visitors to your blog, you start conversation with advertisers for putting the ads on your blogs. Start earning affiliate commissions from your blog and sell advertising spaces on your blog so that you get regular income from your blog.

By Abhinav Sidana

Photo Mosaic Meme's - Adding Character to Your Blog

If you surf the Internet quite a bit, and in particular enjoy frequenting different blogs, then you have probably come across at least one photo mosaic meme. You may not have known what you were looking at or what it was called, but you probably found it interesting. Just in case you have no clue what a photo mosaic meme is, it is a mosaic composed of twelve different pictures (more or less based on your preferences)that you may have seen on any number of blogs.

Photo mosaic meme’s are relatively easy to create and add a bit of character to otherwise plain blogs or websites. Basically, online photo mosaic meme creators ask you a series of twelve questions for which you input the answers and your mosaic is created based upon the answers you give. An excellent automated online photo mosaic creator is at http://www.photofunlab.com/photo-mosaic-meme. You simply put in your answers to the questions and you have a unique photo mosaic meme in seconds. Want something a little different? Simply change your answers to create a new mosaic.

There are also online photo mosaic meme makers that allow you to choose your own photos; and then your mosaic is created based on the photos you have selected. Though 12 photos seems to be the most popular number for creating a photo mosaic meme, there are mosaic creators that allow you to build your meme based on the number of rows and columns you select, which means you can add more or less photos depending on what you hope to achieve.

If you have a blog that is lacking in character, you should definitely think about adding your own photo mosaic meme. Adding a photo mosaic meme to your blog helps it stand apart from others, especially if you have chosen a standard template for your blog’s theme.

The photos that you choose for your mosaic tell your visitors a bit about yourself and showcase your artistic talent, even if you previously believed you had none. Often, the end result of your mosaic is surprisingly beautiful. When visitors to your blog see your photo mosaic meme, they learn a bit about your likes and dislikes as well as your character.

For example, suppose you have chosen mostly photos with a hint of blues and violets - it may indicate that you are a serene, peace loving individual. Or perhaps you just chose those particular photos because you liked them. It is all in the interpretation of the viewer - art tends to mean different things to different people. If you ask five different people what they think about a piece of artwork, you are liable to get five different answers. The important thing, though, is that your photo mosaic meme ultimately caught and held their interest.

There is no easier or quicker way to spice up your dull blog than by adding a simple photo mosaic meme. Whereas creating graphics can take days or weeks, adding a mosaic to your blog takes only a few minutes. Be sure to experiment with the many different mosaic creators online until you achieve the look you are hoping for. Once you have completed your photo mosaic meme, you will probably wonder what took you so long to add this simple artistic touch to your blog.

By Promila Saini

10 Top Internet Marketing Web 2.0 Forums And Blog Resources

By Guy Siverson

When I started this article I was looking for a bulletin board type forum where people dialog about posted comments. And while that certainly is my understanding of what a forum is why couldn’t web 2.0 forums include social networks? Sure, the two do have minor differences but as it relates to posting and responding to posts they remain the same.

With that said, here are the top 10 web 2.0 forums.

* USFreeAds - Free classifieds. Place your classified ads here - Huge traffic, active buyers and tens of thousands of fresh daily visitors ensure your items sell fast.

* TechCrunch - Startup and Technology News.

* DIGG - Is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.

* StumbleUpon - Discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.

* Del.icio.us - Social bookmarking for the masses.

* Reddit - Is a source for what's new and popular online. Reddit learns what you like as you vote on existing links or submit your own!

* BlinkList - Real people with shared interests list the websites they care about. Rate sites you like or save them for later.

* BuddyMarks - The Online Bookmark Manager. The Web's best online personal, group and social bookmarks manager.

* Netvouz - is a social bookmark manager where you can store your favorite links online and access them from any computer. You organize your bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords and can then browse them by folder or tag, or search for them.

* TagTooga - Discover the Best of the Web, Add your Site, and Organize your Bookmarks with TagTooga - a Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking / Wiki.

The SEOGuy wishes you great success with your Internet marketing efforts. Each of these web 2.0 forums and blog resources have the potential of making a dramatic difference in your Internet Marketing.

When I started this article I was looking for a bulletin board type forum where people dialog about posted comments. And while that certainly is my understanding of what a forum is why couldn’t web 2.0 forums include social networks? Sure, the two do have minor differences but as it relates to posting and responding to posts they remain the same.

With that said, here are the top 10 web 2.0 forums.

* USFreeAds - Free classifieds. Place your classified ads here - Huge traffic, active buyers and tens of thousands of fresh daily visitors ensure your items sell fast.

* TechCrunch - Startup and Technology News.

* DIGG - Is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.

* StumbleUpon - Discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.

* Del.icio.us - Social bookmarking for the masses.

* Reddit - Is a source for what's new and popular online. Reddit learns what you like as you vote on existing links or submit your own!

* BlinkList - Real people with shared interests list the websites they care about. Rate sites you like or save them for later.

* BuddyMarks - The Online Bookmark Manager. The Web's best online personal, group and social bookmarks manager.

* Netvouz - is a social bookmark manager where you can store your favorite links online and access them from any computer. You organize your bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords and can then browse them by folder or tag, or search for them.

* TagTooga - Discover the Best of the Web, Add your Site, and Organize your Bookmarks with TagTooga - a Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking / Wiki.

The SEOGuy wishes you great success with your Internet marketing efforts. Each of these web 2.0 forums and blog resources have the potential of making a dramatic difference in your Internet Marketing.

Blogosphere Marketing

By Guy Siverson

Blogosphere.

I've heard the term more than once but I wasn't sure if I really knew what it meant. So when I ran across the word for the umpteenth time in a magazine I was reading I decided to investigate.

Not only because of curiosity, but also because I wanted to find out if there were concepts I was missing tied to "blogosphere marketing"

Today, I'd like to discuss my findings.

First, I turned to that ever-handy defining tool. No not the dictionary or encyclopedia. Why use those when the Internet has Wikepedia?

Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.

Ahhh, good ole social networking. I really didn't think it would show up here. I mean I'm cool with the concept of social networking as it relates to…

* Social bookmarking (like StumbleUpon)
* Social networking (like MySpace & FaceBook)

I guess it makes sense that it would be tied with blogging too, since the whole concept of blogging is about building a community of people that enjoy and share your blog.

With that said, my question moves from what is it to how can I ruthlessly capitalize upon it's concept to exploit my own egotistically selfish Internet Marketing pursuit of world dominat….

Okay okay, that's a bit carried away.

Let's boil it down to how it can be used.

*** ADVERTISING ***

Google Adsense, Amazon, Ebay and others all have utilities you can tie to blogs that will help you earn money when people use these tools. Just be sure to monitize them to your own specific offereings. This concept is called affiliate marketing and most people know of it's abilities today.

The above entities are kin to stopping by your local mall; there are others like Aweber, GoDaddy, USFreeAds, and such that are much more specialized in their offerings.
But why stop there, especially as your website increases in Google PR and Alexa ranking? You could begin selling advertising spots on your blog. Just don't get carried away or the local junkyard might become more appealing to the naked eye.

*** CONTRIBUTORS ***

You have a blog.
You post your articles to the blog.
Duh!
Isn't that the purpose of a blog?

However, have you considered inviting tightly niched guest contributors to write for your blog? Why not? Sooner or later your audience is likely to become bored with your same ole rantings and want some fresh blood. In the offline world this is called a magazine. In the online world this is called a nicely managed blog.

*** SEO ***

What are you doing hiding under your coach? Come back here. Those words really aren't as scary as they look. Especially if you use a concept called bum marketing which practically writes the article for you.

*** MORE ***

* Backlinks
* Social networks & bookmarks
* Article marketing
* Video marketing
* Website traffic

All can be part of your blogosphere marketing that helps your Internet Marketing business blossom. Therefore, the ways in which blogs can help you grow are quite likely more numerous than one can imagine, but only if you actually do it.

Make money with affiliate marketing in hours

If you're already an affiliate guru who's making hundreds or thousands a month, this might not be for you. But if you've been trying forever to actually make money with affiliate marketing, you've hit the jackpot. I'm about to show you how to start earning money over night, and how to multiply your earnings exponentially every single day!

I made over $150 in 24 hours! That's one of the greatest things about the Four Tier Annihilation Program, it doesn't take months or weeks to start making money. You will start earning money within a matter of hours! This means your original purchase will pay for itself within hours, and it's pure profit for you after that.

No AdSense, AdWords or SEO! You don't even have to know how to make a website. This software has a fantastically unique template generator that you can customize to fit your products perfectly. These templates will also generate the best SEO tags to make sure your landing page gets indexed by search engines. A lot of programs require you to know a lot about keywords to work with AdSense, but Four Tier Annihilation eliminates these hardships for affiliate marketing.

A single page can make $1,000 a month! Some pages can even earn up to $10,000 per month, totally on auto-pilot. You can build any many pages as you want in as many niches as you want, and earn as much money as you want! You'll see some amazing screenshots of some top earners on the 4TH website, some as high as $100,000 for a month of earnings. I personally haven't reached that landmark yet, but since using the 4TH program, I was able to quit my job and do this full time. Trust me, there is no better feeling in the world than firing your boss!

I don't suggest you quit your job, yet. But if you've ever had the dream of working 10 hours a week from home, and being your own boss, you should at least check out the Four Tier Annihilation Program and see how much you can make every month. Just to give you some last incentive, it only took me two months to totally quit my job after ordering 4TH.

By Alex Weidmann

How to Use Christian Affiliate Programs to Make Money on Line

It is a true fact that you can make money online with Christian affiliate programs as the source of starting your own Christian business. Through building an affiliate web site, blogs, or email marketing as a source of your business, it’s a great way to have a steady flow of income. Joining free Christian affiliate programs is the less expensive way to start, and at the same time, you can make a very good living, if done properly.

Christian Affiliate web sites post links to the merchant site and are paid a percentage according to an agreement. This agreement is usually based on the number of people the affiliate sends to the merchant’s site who purchases something from them. If a link on an affiliate site brings the merchant site traffic, the merchant site will then pay the affiliate site according to their agreement. Usually these Christian affiliate programs are free to join.

A good Christian affiliate program will provide you with the tools necessary to promote their product, such as text links, banners, graphics and articles. You will also find that many affiliate programs will provide sample email news letters set up and ready to use. Change it around a little, add some good content so you can be unique, then copy and paste them in your email news letter with the unique url they give you so you get the credit for it. If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, a unique url is a cookie used for tracking the customer you send to the merchant site so you get the credit for the commission.

When your signing up with Christian affiliate programs, check out what the cookie duration is. Cookie durations vary. Some companies have a short duration and others have a long duration. The duration of the cookie is how long the cookie will last after you send the customer to the merchant site. When that duration of the cookie is up, your cookie then expires. The longer the cookie lasts, the better it is for you. Customers usually don’t buy the first time, it generally takes several contacts before the customer makes a purchase.

Check out if the cookie can be overwritten. When a cookie is overwritten, the customer who first learned about the product from your affiliate link, but go’s to another site or blog and so forth, and go’s through their link, and buys that product, you will not get the credit for it, therefore you will not get the commission on the sale.

You’ll find that most merchants who are serious about selling their products will give you the tools and training you need to promote them. This gives you a good opportunity to get the concept of how online marketing works, when you see how the merchants use their promotional tools to their advantage and your advantage.

Your advantage of starting a Christian affiliate website as the source of your Christian business is that you don’t have to do any copy writing. You don’t have to do the hard work that is involved with making a sales copy. Your job is just to get the customer to the merchant site. It is up to the merchant to make the sale. This is why it is very important to pick a Christian affiliate program with a merchant who has a good sales page and a good reputation. Remember, it is your reputation that is on the line, so choose wisely and choose a merchant that is honest and has a good reputation that will match yours.

To be successful with Christian affiliate programs you must select a company that offers a product that your costumers will be interested in. For example if you run a video game site, do not place links to a site that sells oil paintings. They will seem out of place and do poorly. You have a much better chance of making money by placing affiliate links to game stop, EBGames, GameFly, on other video game companies that have affiliate programs. Choose your affiliates that meet your criteria.

Affiliate programs are arrangements in which an online merchant web site pays affiliate web sites a commission to send them traffic, usually in the form of a commission based on a percentage of sales.

There are different types of commissions that range anywhere from 5% to as high as 75% depending on the type of affiliate program payout. There are also affiliate programs that pay you in the form of residual income. A residual income program is a program that pays you on an ongoing basis as long as the customer stays with the program, where a product site pays you a one time commission for each product they sell through your referral.

When you choose an affiliate program, pay special attention to the profits you receive from each sale. In order to make money with affiliate programs, you should choose a higher percentage commission pay out rather than a lower commission pay out.

Let us look at it from this point of view; if you are only paid 5% commission on the sale of a $10 product, you will only be making 50 cents per customer. It would take 2,000 paying customers just to make $1,000 in profits. You cannot make money online like this! Look for reasonably priced products with a high conversion and higher commissions, especially commissions in the 25% or higher range.

If you want to make money online with Christian affiliate programs, the best strategy to use are a combination of both, residual income programs that pay on a ongoing basis and product sites that pays a one-time commission.

To be truly successful with Christian affiliate programs, ask yourself these questions. Is this something that I can really use? Would it help me? Would I buy this product myself? If the answer is yes, you’re off to a successful and profitable Christian business.

By Francis Hirak

Affiliate Internet Marketing – There Is No Other Simpler Way To Make Money On The Internet

One of the best ways of making money from Internet marketing is through affiliate marketing. It is one of the least understood, yet also one of the most profitable forms of online marketing. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make a substantial income from running a home based business.

There are many sides to online marketing, but it can basically be broken down into the following 5 areas: Niche Marketing, List Building, Affiliate Marketing, Traffic Generation, and Email Marketing. Now these five areas are not really separate "components" but are more like "ingredients" - like the ingredients on a donut, they all fit together nicely to make the end product. For online marketing, this generally means getting a sale through your sales page or that of the affiliate product you are trying to promote.

To get started, you can enter the affiliate business by joining an affiliate program for free and market it using the free or cheap advertising methods and start getting some cash rolling in. All across the Internet, there are many businesses and companies that offer affiliate programs. Once you have found an effective affiliate internet marketing program that you enjoy promoting, you will need to advertise that affiliate's URL on your web site, resource box, pay per click campaigns or any other traffic generation methods.

However, be aware of affiliate programs that promise they are the best, giving you the impression that all you have to do is implement their banners and links, and wait for the 5-figure commission checks to start rolling. Although affiliate marketing is simple, it does not mean that it is effortless. You need to spend time and money into building a successful affiliate business.

Be sure to take the time to learn more about affiliate programs, marketing tools, and other Internet home business opportunities before jumping into one. By following and learning from internet marketing experts, you will gain the skills and knowledge that will allow you to become a successful affiliate marketer in a much shorter period, and you get the avoid the costly mistakes these experienced marketers have made in the past.

All the best to your Internet Business,

Ewen Chia

By Tianyi Lim

Use Affiliate Marketing to leverage the Internet Platform

The internet is a network. As a platform, the internet should therefore lend itself to network based marketing. It does, and the process is called affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing? Let’s forget about the online world for a mo0ment and imagine that we have a product to sell in our market. We could acquire or lease a retail premises and attract customers to our store to buy the product. This will work OK if all our customers are concentrated in one geographic location or if we have deep enough pockets to open stores in many locations. What are our alternatives?

We could hire sales people to call on customers in an effort to sell the product. This would expand our reach quickly however it would still be quite costly. People are not typically low cost. To get around this, we could offer the sales people a commission only remuneration structure so that we only pay the sales person a proportion of the selling price once they make a sale. This would not require a lot of up front capital and we would only pay for performance. This is the closest model to that of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketers, or affiliates as they are known, specialise in selling other people’s products on the internet for a commission. Each affiliate invests their own capital to take the product to market, often in their own unique way, and when they make a sale, they receive a commission.

There is a common theme in research that twenty percent of the sales team will make eighty percent of the sales for a particular product. Some people are very good at selling. In the affiliate world, these people are known as “master affiliates” and their services are in great demand. If I have a product to sell, I really want to attract a few master affiliates if I can.

There can be more than one level of affiliate marketer. For example, you could be an affiliate selling widgets for ABC Company and receiving a sixty five percent commission (that level of commission is not uncommon in affiliate marketing circles) and you might recruit other affiliates to sell the same product for, say fifty five percent commission. You would therefore earn ten percent of every sale that they make. This is called a “two tier” affiliate commission structure.

Now why would an affiliate marketer be prepared to take fifty five percent when they could be earning sixty five percent directly from the source? Because they benefit from the knowledge, support and experience of the master affiliate. It is in the master affiliate’s best interest to help his or her affiliates to perform to the highest possible levels so they typically do whatever they can to pass on their knowledge and also provide resources for the affiliate to perform. In a way this is similar to multi-level marketing in the off line world.

So, in summary, affiliate marketing is a network marketing concept that lends itself to the network (because the internet is a highly effective platform for networking). Affiliates invest their own capital, knowledge, experience and time into marketing products and when they make a sale, they receive an agreed commission. The best affiliates are called master affiliates and they often recruit their own affiliates in a two tier model and then share the commission on sales.

By Billy Nudgell

Beginners Affiliate Marketing Tips

Beginners affiliate marketing can be quite overwhelming. It is clear from the start that you have a huge learning curve before you will see your first commission earned. But what many do not realize is that they are their own worst enemy. By not knowing some vital "affiliate marketing tips" you can lose quite a bit of money right out of the box without even realizing it.

Below you will find some beginners affiliate marketing tips that are often over looked or unknown altogether.

1. Test URL's - Never assume you have put your URL's in your ads correctly. I have been advertising affiliate programs for years and still make mistakes with this. Always copy the URL from your ad and paste it in a browser and hit enter to make sure the URL goes to the site you intended for it to.

2. URL's Capitalized - if you are using a URL and typing it out such as this: YourAffiliateProgram.com instead of this youraffiliateprogram.com then you need to know that some browsers will not parse this correctly from an email ad or even a web page link. I.E. included. As an advertising agent for many customers over 10+ years, I have seen this happen over and over. Don't risk it. Always use lower case letters.

There is one exception to this and that is if a file name has been named with upper case letters or you have signed up with a username with upper case letters in it. Examples such as: youraffiliateprogram.com/FileName.html, .php, .asp etc. or youraffiliateprogram.com/?YourAffiliateUsername or ID then it must be used just as named and cannot be altered. This warning is pertaining to the main domain name part only.

3. Using Direct Affiliate Links or URL's - using direct affiliate links in your advertising can mean less click through's, to your web site, because of a possible block on the link. There are many major ISP's that keep up with URL's that have complaints on them. If there are so many complaints then this URL will quickly go on a block list. Then what happens is when you use this straight affiliate URL in your advertising as the advertisers send your ad out, many bounces come back with the warning that this message could not be sent due to a URL in the message being on a blocked list. It is always best to use your own web site to either forward to your affiliate URL or a quality tracking or cloaking system of some type. Again I highly recommend setting this up on your own site as well with something like Covert Affiliate Links orProtrack Manager.

One side note for tracking and/or cloaking software. Avoid having to use a ? in the tracking URL. This is a major problem with many free advertising sites and numerous other reasons I don't have room to list here. A URL without a ? in it is always better.

4. Cloaking - also be aware that cloaking your URL can keep your affiliate id from being passed to the visitor. Cloaking is different then simply tracking a URL. Cloaking usually sets up a frame set itself making the site it lands on look as if it is from your own web site or the site of the cloaking software. Test any cloaker or tracking system you use before advertising with the URL. Because if your cloaking software or the site your are advertising on is using frames it can prevent your affiliate ID from passing on to the visitors that land on your site.

Check this by clearing your cookies and temporary Internet files, then use a URL frame breaker tester such as you find on many traffic exchanges and safe list sites. While your affiliate site is in the frame, go to the join page and make sure you are the referrer being credited. This will let you know if your cloaking software is doing more harm then good.

A good rule of thumb on the above is not to use the cloaking option on a URL that will be used in any framed environment, such as a traffic exchange or a credit based safe list. Ask any one you are paying to place ads for you, about this, if you are unsure. Any good tracking software will give you the option to cloak or not cloak a URL.

Use these beginners affiliate marketing tips to quickly become a pro affiliate marketer without worries of missing commissions due to you.

Sincerely, Debbie Ducker

By Debbie Ducker

SEO for New Affiliates

SEO stands for search engine optimization, very important if you are a new to affiliate marketing. A large majority of a website’s traffic comes through search engines, and so you want a website for your home based business that is search engine friendly. The way to make an affiliate marketing website search engine friendly is through search engine optimization.

Though it may be tempting to design a website that appeals to the eye, this type of site may not be search engine friendly, which will result in difficulties getting the site indexed by major search engines.

Designing a website with content that is search engine friendly is the cornerstone to successful SEO marketing for your affiliate program website.
To have a search engine friendly affiliate marketing website, you will want a site that has a good layout, as well as good navigation. The site should load quickly, and have no HTML errors.

The second challenge of SEO marketing for your affiliate programs is content. Not only will you need great content, but also it will have to be search engine friendly. What this means is that you will have to have informative content for your visitors, while at the same time, within the content you will need to have keywords that the search engines will pickup as relevant. In this way, when searches are done for information linked to those keywords, the site will show up in the search results.

To have good SEO content you will have to do some research to find out what the best keywords are for your site, and you will have to have good content within the site that features these keywords, but you have to be careful not to use the keywords, or keyword phrases too often, as the search engines will pick this up as keyword stuffing and you may not get listed at all. A good rule is to have a keyword density of about 1% - 4% of total words used.

SEO marketing does not necessarily have to be limited to your website, it can also be useful in creating content for article directories. By submitting article content with your link, to article directories, you are getting links back to your website, which will also help to improve your site’s ranking with the search engines.

It has been a new strategy with many search engines to not just rank websites based on keywords and content, but also by how popular that website is. The search engines decide how popular a website is by how many back links that site has; the more back links, the higher you are indexed.

SEO marketing is absolutely essential for any Internet home based business, including an affiliate marketing business. If you don’t take advantage of SEO marketing to help get traffic to your online home based business, you are throwing away all the benefits that SEO marketing can bring to your business, and many potential sales for your affiliate programs.

If you already have a website, it would be in your best interest to evaluate your site to see if you can make it more search engine friendly, and if you don’t have a site yet, ensure that you create an SEO friendly page from the ground up. SEO can help you make money with affiliate marketing.

By Frank Woodford

7 Interesting Facts About Ebay

Ebay! If you haven’t heard the word in your life, then you might want to check your pulse. Here are 8 interesting facts about Ebay – one of the “virtual world’s” leading giants.

1. Ebay maintains four copies of most of its databases.
Talk about redundancy. It’s nice to know they’ve got our back when we use Ebay. Good reason for us to do the same for ourselves. My 7 gig hard drive is nearly full. What would happen if it suddenly stopped working? Without a backup I would be sunk.

2. On an average, EBay.com experiences down-time related issues for about 50 seconds each day.
Considering it’s size, that’s certainly not bad news.

3. There are nearly 1 billion page views of Ebay per day.
If only my site could reflect that volume. Can you say Adsense Cha Ching!

4. Ebay users exchange nearly $1,700 worth of goods every second.
I’m not sure how this “recession” we are in affects those numbers. It would seem that the totals might be down, but I’ve heard that the online economy is still booming unlike many parts of the “real world” today.

5. Today, Ebay boasts around 600 million listings, as well as, 204 million registered users.
Given that those who join Ebay become members, this fact demonstrates how powerful a membership related website can really be.

6. The “real world” acts as a load-balancing engine for the “virtual world” of Ebay. When Europe is the most active the US is asleep; and vice versa.

7. Europe is the 2nd largest regional user of Ebay.
Can you guess who the largest user of Ebay would be?

8. 10 terabytes of new storage are added to Ebay every week to cover new transactions that are being made.
And to think that in yesteryear a highly technical guru stated that there would never be a need for more than 12 personal computers across the entire US.
So next time you are enjoying a dinner party, remember to bring up these facts about Ebay. They are certain to lead to some interesting discussions.

By Guy Siverson

Affiliate Marketing Business - How to Reach Your Goals

What are your goals when it comes to creating a successful affiliate marketing business? Some will say they want to earn a particular amount per month. Others strive to receive a certain amount of traffic every month. And still more want to grow their affiliate marketing downline to make residual income. Are you finding it difficult to get from point A to point B? This article will discuss a realistic approach that a beginner can use to form a working strategy to reach their affiliate marketing goals

Have A Schedule

Creating a daily schedule is what separates those who succeed in their online endeavors from those that fail. Even if your daily schedule consists of 30 minutes each day of reading some material you've found about how to make sales and drive traffic to your site. After a few weeks, once you've read that material, you can create new goals and ways to spend that 30 minutes such as writing an informative article about topics related to your business and publishing them to 25 new article directories a day.

This natural progression of every scheduled day will take you a long way in your business. Keep this trend alive and you can go from working part time to full time in your affiliate marketing business.

Try New Advertising Methods

As a new marketer there is always a rush to make money right away. You may be eager to prove to friends and family that your business will be a success. The trick is to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that in order to have a solid affiliate marketing strategy you will have to determine what works from what doesn't primarily from trail and error. Only then can you create a true marketing plan based on facts and figures.

The best advise when trying out new advertising methods is to try them one at a time. The goal is to perfect one method of advertising and figure out a way to test the results before moving on to the next. Treat every forum of advertising as a science experiment. Keep track of the visits to your website each methods brings. Some methods may take longer than others before you see any rise in traffic so be patient and realistic in your analysis.

Let Time Take It's Course

It takes time to find out the best course of action to take in advertising your online affiliate business. Some methods will bring you permanent or long lasting traffic such as article submission and submitting your website address and website description to various link directories in your niche. Other methods will be a waste of your time and money. There are many scams on the internet, so unless you seek advise before proceeding you can waste money easily. You can look to various internet marketing forums for the experience of others.

The point is that both time and money will play a factor. If you don't grow your business enough to see your seeds bear fruit then you have only yourself to blame for it's failure. However, you will surely begin to taste success if you have at least a one year plan, a small budget in place, and can understand that you'll have to be consistent in your advertising in order to earn the "automatic profits" that all the online guru's promise.

Along the way you will find information and people who will lead you in the right direction and offer you ways to make more money, get more sales, and more traffic to your affiliate marketing business website. Even those offering "get rich quick" schemes know that it takes time to learn the secrets that work. In fact, they probably learned along the way that the more enticing they make their offer, the more likely people are to buy and that's why they promise so much. We all have different skill and experience levels which can make one person's business bloom faster than another's. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can decide how long it will take you to reach your affiliate marketing goals.

By Michael Laleye Laleye