Make a Better Living Blog

To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.

[ad#bbs1]

Choosing a good niche subject to base your website around is one of the most important aspects of making money off of your articles. This will give you a foundation to build from and you can target one general audience with a pack of keywords that they are most likely to be searching for. You should take each one of these keywords and use it for the basis of one article on each page. This way, even though you are targeting one specific subject, you will be sure to interest a wide variety of people in that one niche. They may also find other pages that interest them, which will keep them returning to your site to learn new information about the niche subject.

The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase. Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then deicide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.

If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!

[ad#bbs1-1]

One of the first things you will need to do, or possibly last if you need some inspiration, after you pick your niche topic is to pick a catchy URL. You want it to be one that will stand out and that will be easy to remember for those who plan on being return visitors.

To get some ideas and inspiration, take a look at the various keywords that you have singled out for your niche to see if any of those have a catchy ring. You want it to be kind of “used car salesman” sounding, rather than something that is boring or does not have an original sound to it. For example, if your niche is “blah”, you could try “MegaBlah”, “Blah4u”, “HouseofBlah”, or “BlahKingdom”. These will all be original, explain what you niche is, and, most importantly, will be easy to remember.

How easy your URL is to remember is the most important so that your visitors will not have any trouble returning and clicking on more affiliate links!

[ad#co-1-2]

Believe it or not, there are over 100,000 new blogs created every day. With so many blogs already published and nearly 3 million new blogs every month, how it anyone supposed to make sense of it all, or at least weed out the good ones. BloggersBase is trying to do just that. While there may already be sites like Technorati to automatically rank blogs based on their popularity, and sites like Digg to have users vote on the best content… BloggersBase strives to bring you the best of both worlds. In short, “BloggersBase is a citizen journalism magazine powered by YOU!”

How BloggersBase Works
To participate in the BloggerBase voting system, you will need to signup for a free account at their site. They only as for your email, name and password… so it’s a quick easy setup.

As a blogger you can write your content directly to the BloggerBase web site, or you can add your original blog content to their database. Your original blog content can be added by using an RSS feed, or simply copy and pasting your original work. The pros to duplicating your content, is that you will get more people reading your content. The cons include the possibility of getting outranked in the search engines by BloggersBase in the search engines, or Google possibly seeing the post as duplicate content.

User Feedback and Voting System
Everyone loves to see that people are reading their content, and when feedback is left, it’s that much more important. I think the biggest potential for BloggersBase lies in the future of it’s community.

Right when you visit the BloggersBase site, you aren’t overwhelmed with options or a million different categories to separate blogs into. There are four main categories which are Entertainment, Lifestyle, Technology and World Affairs. Once you select your desired category, it will further group into small categories if you want tighter search results.

Below is a screenshot on how users can rate and comment on your blog postings. Much like regular blogging, the comments and user information are listed below the post, but users also have the ability to rate of agreement, presentation, professionalism and value of the posting. I can see this being very value and effective for anyone starting out in the blogoshere and doesn’t have any money to spend on user feedback and getting people to their own sites.

Prizes and Awards on BloggerBase
One of the big incentives that will drive a lot of people to BloggersBase, is their ability to offer cash prizes and an affiliate program. Each week BloggersBase awards $50 to their top bloggers and a rewards/cash system through their affiliate program. Based on ratings and feedback from the community, the top blogger of the week would receive $40, while the second place blogger receives $10.

The Future of BloggerBase
With so many directories and voting sites out there, it is hard for any new sites to compete. One of the hardest thing to build in any niche market, is a loyal user base. If BloggerBase continues to grow, and user participation stays up, they can be one of the big players in the blog tracking area. A few areas BloggerBase may need to work on, is creating better incentives for bloggers to write or add content to their site. The cash rewards and prizes are a good addition, butare most likely not large enough to bring over any decent sized bloggers. On the other hand, the system is perfect for anyone that doesn’t want to learn wordpress or setup their own blog.

What are your thoughts on BloggerBase and how they can improve their site?

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

Jeremy from Facebook just called to let me know the success many affiliate marketers are having with Facebook. He also wanted to let me know they have relaxed some rules affecting affiliate ads so I wanted to share this with you.
Good news! Facebook recently began allowing affiliate ads in categories that were previously prohibited. [...]

Jobless? Take this as an opportunity to start your own business. click on this link to see a few ways you can do that http://www.makemoneywithus2day.com

Allure of money, the perception of the ease with which some made it, less than FTC abiding style with which it is made doesn’t give much hope of a litigation free year or the perception of performance marketing

Good video from the SESConferenceExpo YouTube Video Channel.
“Jeff Molander, CEO of Molander & Associates, interviews Lee Gientke, Partner/Affiliate Development Director at Orange Soda, who discusses how advertisers, publishers and affiliates can overcome various challenges to help them work more productively together.
Lee says for affiliate networks to survive and avoid having publishers bypass them, they must [...]

While older and recent hot marketing techniques may be dying out, new tricks and methods are being discovered daily. Most recently there has been a massive increase in marketing with President Obama. While there are many ways to market products or services using Obama’s picture or status, government grants have seem to be most successful and noticeable. Though that may soon come to an end…

As reported by Bloomberg News, the White House is trying to limit the commercial use of the President. The article states:

“Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Obama’s calls for change and his “Yes We Can” campaign mantra are being evoked to sell assembly-required furniture in Ikea’s “Embrace Change” marketing campaign, bargain airfares during Southwest Airlines Inc.’s “Yes You Can” sale and “Yes Pecan” ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. shops. (continue)

How long before we start to see legal effort put into place and people get made examples of? We already know the BBB and FTC are starting to crack down on the fake testimonial weight loss blogs… but with the White House getting involved on the President’s image, things may heat up even faster with Obama’s fake in the flog blog mix.

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

What do the best franchise owners know about online marketing that you need to know, too?