Let’s take it a little further….

Structure

There are a thousand and one ways to structure your email – some will work, some won’t, like many things in business as in life. But the following works and is heavily adopted by successful ‘list marketers’:

• Greeting with a short introduction on what this issues article will be about.

• A short ad on a product/service that you are recommending.

• The article – this is key and is the content for your Ezine/bulletin.

• Resource box – this can provide associated, contextual information and utilities.

• A list of helpful links.

• Subscriber information.

Building a relationship with your Ezine readers

To follow-on from the piece on business marketing, above, it’s undeniable that having a strong relationship with your readers will take you a long way down the road to achieving your goals.

How do you do this? It’s typically a good idea to ‘get personal’, but not too personal. For example, let’s say you have a list of golfers because you sell golf products. Or a list of bloggers because you’re an expert on blogging. For the golfers, tell them about experiences on the golf course, funny, stupid, or educational – stuff they can relate to as they are golfers and have probably done things very similar. The bloggers will typically want to develop their skills blogging; or to try new things and cover new subjects that interest them.  The blogging community is great at “self-help” – people are keen to share their knowledge and to learn from you, too.

Try to relate to them as best you can. People want to know that there are others out there just like them. When they find out that you are just another person out in the world with the same experiences they are having, it becomes a lot easier for them to trust you.

If you sell products or services, it’s all about getting each subscriber into your life. This should be a huge focus of your list and your marketing efforts across the board.

If you really want to have an incredibly responsive list, then do these three things, in this order:

1) Build a relationship with them.

2) Educate them with quality content.

3) Promote good quality products and/or services that you believe in.

Doing this is a win-win for everybody.

Quality content is king

There isn’t anything good that can come from using bad content.

One of the big reasons to get on the Internet is to research information in some way or another. Who wants to go looking for something and read worthless, unhelpful material?

If you waste a visitors’ time, annoy them, or confuse them with bad content, they are certainly not going to buy from you. You just lost a potential customer. It is pointless. Furthermore, the search engines are not going to like you much either. Especially if your information is the same thing that everybody else is using.

Your information has to be good to make it big online. It has always been this way, and it always will be, so start producing good information now!  Don’t be tempted down another route, whatever the motivations (be them time-saving, or otherwise).

Look at your content from a visitor’s perspective. If you were looking for information on that specific topic, would you be happy with the content that you are presenting?

Get used to stepping inside your visitor’s/customer’s shoes and looking at your business through their eyes.

It is a surefire way to improve your web sites (blogs and others) and business overall.

An Ezine (let’s just call it that, here; there are lots of names!) is a newsletter that is delivered via email that your customers can subscribe or “opt-in” to.

The feedback we’ve had over the years, and experience ourselves, is that Ezine marketing works consistently well. One element of good business is maximizing your return for effort employed. After all, entrepreneurship is essentially about using and deploying resources for return. For the amount of time you put in to run an online list (relatively little), the return is well worth it.

But, remember: online users will unsubscribe from many lists lately because of lack of quality. You need to be creating quality. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and don’t cut corners. Why would you stay subscribed if you just get bombarded with offer after offer and get no benefit?

If you aren’t producing quality content, then subscribers to your list, no matter what topic you are covering, are going to start unsubscribing in droves. It is now more important than ever to start building a real relationship with your subscriber list and nurturing it by offering serious value.

The people who grasp this concept are going to be the ones making a lot of money with email marketing in the future. And they’ll be the ones who enjoy what they do, too. So far, people have gotten away with low or “no” content, but that is changing. Time are changing (at last).

You need to make your Ezine a worthwhile read for people to want to read it. If you do that, success is likely to follow.

Using Ezines

If you have your own product already, then start an Ezine in that market to help promote your product and future products.

If you do not have a market to publish in yet, don’t worry, you don’t need a product to start an Ezine. However, what you do with that Ezine, and what its goals are, must be fully scoped: do you intend to use it to build and drive readership and sell advertising? If so, plan it. See our post on building your website for advice on scoping and mind-mapping.

It’s a question for debate and planning what your scheduling plan looks like, but from experience in this area we’d suggest you send out an Ezine with a 3-5 page article of good information about once or twice per month at the least with once per week being the most. This may or may not compliment a more regular update (perhaps a mailing list run through FeedBurner or a blog update).  Obviously, Twitter’s an amazing tool in this area, too.

That is all you need to send. When heavily involved in building a list and marketing to it, the ‘formula’ can be to send out one week with a 3-5 page article, and the next week was a solo advertisement for something you want to promote. Then, the week after, you may decide to send another 3-5 page article on something your subscribers wanted to know about, developing their interest and adding real value.

You can alternate successfully between content and advertising, should you wish. Like in most businesses, customers will not balk at advertising as long as the associated content is informative. Remember your brand and don’t damage it.

If you’re going to get into this area of marketing, focus on a content driven Ezine that can help build your business and be a reliable source of benefit for you.

Format

There are various different types of formats that you can use when publishing your Ezine. Focusing on three:

• Put the entire Ezine in an email. This can work well, particularly when people nowadays often read email on mobile devices (Blackberry, etc).

You can put the introduction, marketing/advertising content and article content all in one well-crafted email and send it out to your subscribers.

This is probably the ‘easiest’ way to approach this for newcomers.

We’d advise always sending your email as text and not an HTML page as those can still cause problems with some email readers. But you can give subscribers a choice, obviously.

• Another popular option is to put your article in a PDF downloadable file and then send an email to your list telling them where they can download the file.

This has the added benefit of people being able to save it to their computer and view it later (more views means more people will click on the links in your Ezine which means more traffic for you).

This also has an added benefit of a viral effect. You can put at the bottom (or top if you really want to stress it) of your Ezine that they can pass the PDF file to their friends or make it downloadable on their web site or blog.

This can help introduce your Ezine to people who are not yet subscribed to it. And of course, if your content is good and they like your Ezine, they can subscribe.

A PDF file format is certainly a decent option if you like the ideas above, and you can create PDF file for free with something like PrimoPDF.

• You can use an HTML page where you put your Ezine issue on your website as a regular HTML page, then email your subscribers and give them the link to the latest issue.

This has the same benefit as the PDF file where people can refer their friends, or link to it from their own web site or blog which can generate more subscribers for you.

Plus, it has an additional benefit of being able to use HTML in your Ezine if you wanted to do more interactive content like pictures, flash animations or even video.

If you can add these to your free Ezine to explain your articles/ideas, it will enhance the experience for readers and should attract subscribers. People are drawn to entertaining videos (just look at YouTube’s phenomenal success) so adding these to your free Ezine could certainly help its success.

See Part 2, which will follow soon, about structure, building a relationship with your users and quality of content. Bye for now.

Once you’ve decided to start your own online business (pretty much whatever it is, from a blog to an ecommerce site), you’ll first want to get a firm grasp on how your visitors/potential customers use the Internet. In particular, you’ll need to learn what exactly they use the Internet for.

It would certainly be great for your site if every person who logged on was doing so because they had their credit cards in hand, and were looking to buy precisely the kinds of products and services you offer.  But, of course, we live in the real world. Rather, most people use the Internet to get information. That search for information often takes the form of trying to answer questions that these individuals have been unable to find answers for elsewhere. That quest may or may not lead them to your product or service. So how do people tend to go about finding answers to their questions?  As you might guess, these days most Internet users tend to rely upon search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Whilst very few users won’t have used at least one of these three search engines, there are also hundreds of other search engines available. However, those other search engines generate far less traffic than the big three (Google alone garners well over 60% of the Internet search traffic), so we’ll focus our attention on the big ones. As you probably know, a person uses a search engine like Google by typing a word or phrase into the search box.

This specific word or phrase is the key to your  success, because the word or phrase indicates exactly what that person is looking for. Let’s say, for example, that the individual is interested in losing weight. If they type the phrase ‘weight loss’ into Google, the search results page will provide two things, “paid” and “organic” search results.  Go ahead and Google ‘weight loss.’

Notice the yellow box at the top of the page, and the narrow column that runs down the right side of the page. These are paid search results which companies have paid Google to have their text (and links to their company websites) displayed whenever someone searches on the term ‘weight loss’.  Not surprisingly, you can see that these companies appear to be selling weight loss and diet products and services.

The majority of the page displays the so-called “organic” search results. This means that the Google search engine determined these web pages to be most naturally (or “organically’”) related to the phrase ‘weight loss’. The phrase ‘weight loss’ is what we refer to as a “keyword term”.

You can see the importance of the keyword term by the fact that the phrase ‘weight loss’ is highlighted throughout both the organic search results and the paid search results. In order to maximize your business opportunities, you’ll need to research and identify the terms and phrases that potential customers will use when they look for the kinds of products and services you’re selling.

After identifying those keywords, you could certainly launch a paid advertising campaign, with Google AdWords or one of the other paid ad services. This would be an easy way of driving lots of relevant traffic to your website, right?  Unfortunately, because of the level of competition for the attention of prospective customers, it’s very easy for beginner advertisers (and even some advertisers with more experience) to end up spending a lot of money but have very little to show for it.

New websites may well choose to do paid advertising until they are more firmly established, and instead focus on getting the best organic search results placement for their website.  This can take longer but it’s safer to start with and, ultimately, organic search gives you the bedrock to build upon – most people who really understand the Internet will tell you that building solid, quality content over time is the way to the top of the search engine rankings. You can do this by using keyword research skills and optimizing your website accordingly.

To do this, you really need to “get” the search engines. Remember, we’re talking business, here: you don’t need to be a rocket scientist (mostly), but you do need to understand it and get it right.  Don’t go in blind. In our opinion, the ‘king’ of keyword tools is here.  They have a wide range of tools and a high proportion of professionals in the business of keywords rely on this tool every day.

What’s a targeted visitor?

You begin an online business in order to make money, right?  Well, some reading this may be more interested in a hobby, or another purpose blogging, perhaps.  But if it’s business you’re interested in, it’s probably apparent you’ll have a greater chance of making more money from individuals who are interested in the kinds of products and services you sell. Let’s use the example that you run a website that promotes a product which helps people lose weight.

So, the types of people you want to find and visit your website are those who are interested in becoming thinner.  Conversely, if a visitor to your website isn’t particularly interested in losing weight (but is instead searching the Internet because they’re interested in video games or gardening), then it is unlikely that they’re going to convert into a paying customer.  Or, perhaps, they’re looking for reasons why people lose weight (e.g., illness, etc).

Subtle differences make a big difference. This is the concept of a “targeted visitor”: a person who is already “in” your website’s topic before they find your website and see the products and services you offer. It’s not hard to see why the most successful web business are those who get traffic comprised of individuals who are already interested in the products or services offered by that business.

It’s essential to your success that you build you individual website pages to contain and focus on the individual keywords that relate to your products and services. In addition, it’s likely that your appearances on a given search results page won’t be limited just to pages on your own website.  The search engine is likely to find and list many external resources, too.  These will include marketing-type materials that you may publish through other websites. Go ahead and type a generic search term or phrase into your favorite search engine.  Chances are that near the top of the natural search results there will be links to external aggregations sites like YouTube and EzineArticles.  This is something that you want to emulate as well.

So, in order to make sure you’re driving the greatest number of targeted visitors to your website as possible, you first need to create a site in which each web page is focused on the particular keyword terms and phrases that you’ll identify.  Second, you’ll support this by creating promotional materials (again, using the relevant keyword terms and phrases), and making sure these are properly distributed on the Internet. Finally, once your website is live, make sure to submit your web address directly to the major search engines.  Each search engine has a page that permits you to do this:

• Google’s is here.
• Yahoo’s is here.
• Microsoft’s is here.

The search engines would eventually find your pages, of course, but using these quick submission forms helps the process move forward more quickly.  Next time we’ll be digging into the detail of Keyword Reasearch.

If you blog is your hobby, your interest, your passion – don’t hide it away. Otherwise you may as well make your posts in your personal diary

There are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed. One of those ways is something that you can do everyday, easily, and that you may not even consider as a way to share your blog: put the link to your blog in your email signature – this is an example of viral marketing.

Viral marketing is about ‘buzz’ and brand awareness

One of the most amazing things about the Internet is that news, be it of a major political incident or the release of a new product, can travel the globe in minutes.

Something ‘goes viral’ when it is forwarded by email, or shared by whatever method (video file sharing, other file sharing, direct from a website) from one person to another, from that person to another person, and so on.

Viral marketing is one way in which a business can go stratospheric – from zero to hero.  If you have something which becomes the latest ‘craze’ (whether an iPhone App, a kids’ toy or a video clip) on the Internet, it can be an amazing opportunity to build a business, whether by piggy-backing sales onto it or using it to enhance brand awareness.

Success stories and practical application

To really understand the application of viral marketing and understand its impact, it’s helpful to look at situations where it has worked like a dream.

One of the most successful viral marketing campaigns of all time was based on using the email signature in just this way.  Hotmail grew and grew and grew as people used it, because every Hotmail email sent by every Hotmail user contained a signature inviting people to sign-up to Hotmail. Obvious, perhaps, but only when you think of it – just like most great ideas. Truly a beautiful thing from a business perspective.

You, too, can use this method today. And not only just in your email signature.  If you post comments on blogs, participate in forums online or submit stories to sites like Digg, then it does not cost you a penny to use the footer of your message (or whatever it might be) to promote your product, brand or whatever it might be.

Why?

The effect can be very powerful:  you’re indirectly ‘selling’ by sending people where you need them to be.  Often this is much, much better than the hard sell. People find themselves ‘pre-sold’ sometimes, depending on the topic (see above about pre-selling) – they are probably genuinely interested in what they’re seeing if they click on a well-worded link in a viral context.

It’s likely that you send out emails more times that you can count during the day. Each time you send out an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your email’s signature.

The message

Naturally, you should always write something catchy and interesting.  Life’s a rich tapestry and your business life should reflect that.  Draw the eyes to your post with impact copywriting and great ‘headlines’.  These should be short but direct.  You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off.

As with any advertisement, you want to give the reader just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are writing about.

Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people about it and want (no, let’s say need) to visit. That is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.

Don’t forget to use existing blog resources as those are the guys who have done it and are doing it. You can find some excellent ones, here.

We’re only scratching the surface, here. But scratching the surface of a really, really key topic if you want traffic. In terms of wider ‘tools’, we have already written about social networking and social media to “buzz your blog” and will be doing so again, soon.

Truth is, it’s a bit of both. The jungle bit can be hard to cut-through, but there’s help out there. And when you’ve cut through it, you start to glimpse the dream part.

If you’re a blogger and you use WordPress, and it’s one of the best, you need the right theme. If you don’t have a custom-coded theme which has been put together for you at your own cost (often substantial cost), you need a theme which works well for a reasonable amount.

There are, as we all know, a high number of templates and themes which promise the world but never quite deliver. They may be free, but your time and effort is not, so use a good one.

There’s a new breed of WordPress specialist who is, predominantly, a marketer first and a blogger second. These are the people who know what they’re talking about. Joel Comm is one such person who falls right into this category. His products have been featured with some of the ‘big names’, from Fortune and HBO through to TechCrunch.

The key with blogging is to start with your objective. If you want to tell the world about your life, or hobby, shoot. You know it well. Tell people in an engaging, interesting way.

But if you want to make money from your blog, then you must really, properly, genuinely understand marketing. ‘Light touch’ understanding will not suffice. However, that said, you don’t have to face this alone. People like Joel are working on products which really help you you to get from your plan to your goals.

In the online world, starting from demand (i.e., understanding your keywords and your market) and developing supply (a product or service you can supply that is quality and people believe in and want to buy) is the magic circle. Apply your killer site (often your blog) and you can really, really, over-deliver. That’s a map to success and it’s rewarding, professionally and financially, in a big way.

Best of luck.

Here’s the key: You must own your blog. Are you wondering what I mean by “owning your blog”? Here’s what it does not mean: It does not mean a blog hosted by Blogger or WordPress that’s essentially just on loan to you.

Instead, you should make your blog a self-hosted WordPress Blog, meaning that you should host it in your own hosting account. That way it’s yours to keep and you won’t be at the mercy of the whims of Google or WordPress.

If you’re going to put work into your blog — and you should, or else it won’t do you any good — then you don’t want it to be snatched away from you without notice just because… That would make all your hard work go right down the drain.

And that could happen even if you follow all their rules. And just following their rules can put a bit of a crimp in your style and might hold you back from maximizing the profit potential of your blog.

So make it your own blog. And there are reasons beyond being in complete control.

1) Google loves them

First of all, Google LOVES WordPress self-hosted blogs. They score very well in search engine results. So why not take advantage of that.

2) More themes

You’ll also have a much wider range of themes to choose from, and you can edit those themes at will. It will really help with your branding and with making your site stand out. Otherwise, you’d have one of a few (or maybe a few dozen) templates, and everyone in the know would recognize them.

3) Your own domain name

You get to use your own domain name. Sure, you could redirect it, but people can tell. So why not go for the real thing.

4) More plug-ins

You can use a huge variety of plug-ins that will give you options that wouldn’t even exist otherwise.

5) You own it

But mostly, the biggest reason is just that. It’s yours. To do with as you please. And to keep for as long as you like.

If you’re serious about building a presence online, you need to be able to count on it being there for the duration. And if you rely on anyone else’s hosting, and especially a free blog, you simply can’t.

They even might add advertising, and that would make you look rather unprofessional, wouldn’t it.

Does that mean you can’t ever use a Blogger blog? Not at all. You can use it as a supplement to your main blog, whether as a sideline or as a backlink builder.

Just don’t build your business on it. Or else you may find that you’ve build your business on sand.

Want to win a business blog? Click on the link and enter the Win a Business Blog contest! Just for entering the contest, you’ll also get a special report on how a blog for business can help your bottom line.

For more information, click here: http://www.RichmondWebMarketing.com

by Elisabeth Kuhn

1. Do you really need a blog?

Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don’t enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog. But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing – like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?

2. Whom do you want to reach with your blog?

The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products. If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.

If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.

- Internet users

Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.

- Blog readers

Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.

- Search engine users

A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.

- Social media users

A blog is an excellent way to provide a focal point for your community. Regular content updates through social media networks will help you offer something of value to your community users.

3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?

There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you -

- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings

- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company

- Build a community and network with people who have similar interests

- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence – Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field

- Put a human face on your business

- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders

Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.

4. How much time can you spend on your blog?

Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information. If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business. If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.

5. What blogging platform will serve your needs best?

Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option. The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it.

Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don’t take this decision lightly. Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.

If you are short on time, and want to spend more time writing, then a hosted solution like Blogger, Blogware, Squarespace or Typepad might serve your purpose better. This might also prove a better option if you want to get started as soon as possible, are new to the internet, or are unfamiliar with scripts or code.

If, on the other hand, you’re a control freak (like me) and don’t mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like WordPress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you. If you don’t want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.

6. How do you plan to promote your blog?

Why is it good to know this before you start your blog? Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog. You’ll learn more about the methods to promote your blog when you subscribe to the email course below.

Some of these tasks can be outsourced, while others you would have to do yourself. Decide what you want to take on and look out for service providers to handle the other functions so you can start building traffic to your blog as soon as possible.

7. How will you assess the success of your blog?

To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it. Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.

Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It’s just another form of communication. Don’t get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message. Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.

But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business.

Priya Shah is a former journalist, editor and online publisher, website promotion and SEO copywriting consultant. She runs a content marketing agency that offers optimized content creation and syndication services.

Author: Priya Shah
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Canadian crossborder shopping

How Many Types Of Affiliate Marketing Programs Do You Know?

Affiliate marketing programs have never been as popular before as they are today. Why? There can be a number of reasons. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly that affiliate marketing can work for both of them. The merchant sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into greater heights, so has the people’s outlook about it changed. No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing, and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them. The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

* Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads. The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site. However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

* Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action–that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

* Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site actually buys something from the merchant’s site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

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Affiliate, Article and Internet Marketing in general isn’t as easy as many would have us believe. I fully understand (through my own experiences) that it is a lot easier said than done. However, you are here, right now, because you have a desire to improve your business, grow your business, and be more successful. These articles are here with the sole intention of helping you to make the whole process a lot easier.

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* Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Apart from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant’s site.

* Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS, PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

* In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant’s site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation. Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

* Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant’s site. Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell. Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

NOW is the time!

O.K. you have read the article. Now is the time for action. Without action, this article adds no value whatsoever to your affiliate success. But remember, without action, you cannot blame this affiliate marketing article or any article for that matter. So, take action NOW.

Even if only one piece of advice, one piece of information, one tip makes a difference, then the whole article has been worth it for all of us.

NOW is the time!

Providing a focused problem solving approach through our personal and business coaching (especially to small businesses). This approach is linked to providing work at home businesses, affiliates and online businesses with PROFITABLE INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS.

Finding help and resources for making money online or by affiliate marketing are some of the most sought after subjects on the internet. Our Independent Affiliate Review Site gives that much needed help and resources to ordinary people who want to run extraordinary businesses.

Independent Affiliate Reviews Provides All The Help And Resources You’ll Need

Author: Andrew Gowans
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

So, some stats about Facebook, first, as at the time of writing:

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of active users logon to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

We could end the post there  Fortunately, CB isn’t a lazy site.

Facebook’s big.  It’s impressive (whether you like it personally or not).  But how does it really lift your blog/site to a different level?

1. People LOVE to interact – they love to discuss, feedback, comment

It’s one of the building blocks of human nature and it’s what, most of all, blogs are  all about.  Using Facebook on your blog allows your readers to interact and share.

Let them ask questions.  Get opinions.  Make your blog’s Facebook page come alive (if you don’t have a Facebook for your page, really get one – it’s free, quick and easy to do).

You’ll see a real spike in traffic and you’ll get so much more from what you’re spending your time on.

2. Fan the flames

Hey? Er…  Don’t worry, it’s not that complicated.  When interaction starts, encourage it and keep it going.

All you’re doing is advertising, or driving people to, the discussion on your Facebook page.  This is done in a variety of ways, including via other social media (your Twitter account), email updates and from your other blogs.

Seriously, this is powerful.  Just try it.

3.  Engagement

We have talked about guest blogging before and we’ve had some good fun with it, as have some of you.  But that’s only one element of engaging your users in your blog. Only one way of really delivering value to your readers.  We’re keen for ClubBlogger to be shaped by you, and we recommend you guys allow your readers to do that, too.

There’s an amazing concept out there called cognitive surplus, which some of you will know about.  It examines the concept of community contribution (the sum of the parts being much greater than the whole) and the results are astounding.  We recently read Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and can’t recommend it highly enough.

Ask readers to comment on your theme, your logo, your style of writing.  Be open and really benefit from it.  It’s a two-way street.  Facebook is a superb tool for this and it’s standing ready for you to get the most out of it.

4.  Overlap your existing social connections with your business (whether it’s your blog or other).  This can have really powerful results, but it doesn’t work for everyone – some people like to keep the two separate and distinct.

Personally, given we love what we do, we find the overlap just fine.

Speak soon, CB

You don’t want to ‘scatter gun’ any list; certainly not one you haven’t built and generated in a targeted, controlled way.

Yes, you can ‘rent’ or ‘buy’ a list.  But it’s a one-hit wonder.  And actually probably a one-hit failure.

But if you develop and nurture your own, valuable list you benefit from generating a customer relationship; a reader relationship; real engagement with those who buy your produce, use your service, read your blog

The 10 key areas:

• Who’s your audience and why should they listen to you?
• When you email them, what, exactly, are you trying to achieve?
• What will your mailings look like – would you read them? Would they make you take action?
• Will you – actually, SHOULD you – do the writing and construct the mailings? Are you really up for it?
• How regularly will you mail and how long will your mailings be?
• Those email addresses won’t just magically appear – how will you collect them?  Always do it ethically, whether via web form or other opt-in method – do it right, do it well, do it consistently.
• The last point bears repetition: ALL recipients must have in advance expressly asked you to mail them.  And if they don’t want to hear your drivel anymore, make it easy for them to switch you off!
• Is your technology scalable to grow your list?  Will the length of the list actually become a problem? How will you store/host your list – internally or will you outsource.
• Whatever you do, you MUST create and maintain TRUST.
• You must add value.

Be honest. Be genuine. Be successful.

CB