Basically, the idea is that you record media, be it audio, graphic or video, upload it on a site, and direct the traffic to your site. The trick is, as always, to find a niche market that is small enough to compete in initially and eventually dominate. Obviously, there are some types of media entertainment and/or instruction hosting that is so extremely crowded that you would have to find a niche that’s extremely revolutionary or shocking to get even a blip on the radar. No, the best option is to start out somewhere that isn’t so well-trodden. Thorough niche research is obviously essential to get this ball rolling.

After the Niche Research, the Fun Begins

Okay, so now you’ve done your niche research. You’ve started recording media. Now you need to upload it to your website. While certain media forms, such as pictures and texts, are a piece of cake to upload by normal means, some audio files and nearly all videos are going to take seemingly months to upload, especially if you have to break them into smaller chunks.  Luckily, technology exists to make this go much faster.

The benefits of this technology are immediately obvious. For one thing, the faster you can upload your media, the more media you will host immediately. That way, you can start reaping your harvest earlier. Also, the faster you can upload your content, the fresher it will be. Depending on your content, doing so has the added bonus of keeping your content more relevant and up with the times. This has the net result of keeping your clients interested and continuing to go where you want them to.

Content is King with a Media Site Account

In summary, a key to success in operating a media site account is keeping the content rolling in as fast as possible. The competitiveness of such sites depends on the owners’ ability to keep up with or ahead of the others. If this is your gig, don’t get left behind. Stay on top of the quickest uploading software.

The rationale here is that pretty much, if you designate certain keywords as “headers,” this will draw the attention of the spiders to those keywords. It kind of makes sense, except that it doesn’t work that way. Multiple testing of this idea has consistently proven it wrong.

There are several reasons why this couldn’t work out. First of all, let’s assume that keywords have the same monumental importance that they previously had. The algorithms that the spiders work by don’t include header tags. It’s pretty much the same thing as saying that bolded or italicized keywords help your rankings.

Meta Descriptions – The Exception to the Rule

There is this one exception: It may be more likely that your keywords will show up in the meta description. Again, this will not overtly help your rankings. The search engines don’t consider much about websites based on their meta descriptions, whether they are generated by the search engine or the developers. You might increase some human traffic by theoretically ensuring that your keywords are in the search engine generated meta description, but don’t hold your breath. The keywords tend to be in there anyway.

The second reason that header tags don’t work for rankings is simply that keywords don’t have that much importance anymore. They have importance, yes, but there isn’t a magical formula to use them to improve your rankings. However, you can still get banned for keyword stuffing, so make sure that you’re not doing that in your header tags any more than the rest of your site.

It’s All about the Content

Another reason that putting keywords in header tags doesn’t work is that if the spiders come to that page, they’re going to crawl enough of the content on it to determine what they need to know about the keywords. If header tags DID get special consideration and draw attention to certain keywords, then so what? They’ve seen enough of the rest of your content that the headers don’t matter when it comes down to it.

Keyword Stuffing in the Header Tags

Why is it that the spiders don’t really care about header tags? Call it a hunch, but it looks like an easily exploitable flaw that could be used as a black hat trick. If header tags got special attention, and you can pretty much put in however many you want, guess what? You could spam the crap out of your header tags. You would, of course, have to be careful about keyword stuffing, but you could stuff less and have more weight. Guess who would catch on and not like it?

In the final analysis, you can use header tags all you want, but you shouldn’t expect any big results out of them.

Be Careful About Your Domain Name

Choosing the right domain name is all important, especially if you’re planning to keep it in the long haul. Affiliate programs come and go, but your domain has to stay. If it’s irrelevant to your future products, your site isn’t going to rank as well. It has to be universal but still relevant.
The thing to keep in mind is that you should never name your domain after your first product or even necessarily after your niche. You will probably change products in the future, and you may even go out of your niche. Your website named www.shawnspeanuts.com isn’t going to work if you’re selling t-shirts one day.

A good rule of thumb is to think of it either as www.yournames-affiliate-marketing.com or www.yourname-affiliate-marketer.com or something similar. Unless you have a very common name, your name will make it unique, and the rest is about the keywords. If your name is so common that no keyword combination works, consider an alias.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Free Sites Like Geocities

It may seem like a good idea at first to use a Geocities or Homestead free site for your first affiliate marketing site. It’s not—that is, if you expect to succeed. “Some” money CAN be made by setting up shop on a free site, but you’re not in this to make “some money,” are you?
You see, search engines and directories don’t count these sites most of the time. They’re technically considered “personal home pages,” and personal home pages don’t usually last long enough to be worth the search engines’ interest. In order to make ANY money from one of these sites, you have to seriously hit the mass mailings and social media sites. These strategies are great ways to start a campaign, but free sites defeat the purpose of trying to rank on the search engines.

The Problems with Black Hat Strategies

Black hat strategies often seem appealing, but they come with their own problems. Sure, you get a super-high ranking from using them, but you won’t last long at the top. Depending on how quickly the search engines update their indexes for your niche, you could be on top for as little as a few days, especially if you make a HUGE spike in your rankings. Not enough days to get many conversions.

Now, you may think, “No problem, I’ll just put up another site.” This site will also get de-indexed, and any future ones will also get de-indexed quickly. Meanwhile, while you beat your head against the search engines’ walls, you’re losing money.

This is especially pertinent in social media like Facebook.  How many times do you think that people “like” something just because their friends do?  By and large, as social animals, many people just like the same things out of habit.

Great, but Does Conformity Do Anything for Converting Traffic?

Yes, in fact, it does.  If you play your cards right, the same reason people do what their friends do can apply to converting traffic.  You just have to convey somehow that these followers’ friends are clicking through to your sales page.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve put out a message on Facebook that “This website has the greatest stuff ever!” and provide the link.  People click on the link and see a phrase like “This is what they’re all talking about!” pointing to the link to your opt-in page.  A small little phrase like that will suck them into your list and sales page.

This Thinking Increases Upselling

One of the trickier parts of Internet marketing is upselling.  Most people don’t want to spend more than they absolutely have to for a product.  Sometimes, merely informing them of the benefits of buying the “platinum package” isn’t nearly enough.  A lot of people will just think, “That’s great, but the standard package does all I need.”

Now, try upselling to the platinum package by saying in so many words that “everyone is doing it!”  Even better, say, “Don’t miss out on the great stuff your friends (or competitors) are getting!”  Chances are, with a little bit of social pressuring, more people will cave in to the upsell than without it.

To a lot of people, 15 extra features simply aren’t worth the extra ten dollars to buy the larger packages.  Most people will simply settle for “good enough.”  However, with just a little peer pressure, the upsell is worth the extra 50 dollars as long as everyone else is doing it.

This is quite often how television ads work.  McDonald’s emphasizes that people all over the world are “lovin’ it” with the Big Mac.  7-Up shows how their soda makes a cranky celebrity “bubbly.”  You, too, can capitalize on this in 420 characters or less.

Multiple Traffic Streams Increase Your Footprint

Think of multiple traffic streams this way:  Imagine your website being the hub at the center of a wheel.  Each traffic stream—that is, each link—is a spoke in this wheel.  The more spokes you have, the more it accurately resembles a wheel.

The more traffic streams you have, the more chances a surfer has of finding your website.  Outside of the search engine results page, wherever you have a presence is an opportunity for a viewer to find you by you placing a link there.  While it’s certainly great getting a backlink off of a “relevant” website, it’s much easier to put them up yourself on social networks.

Why Social Media Networks are Great for Backlinking

There are several opportunities for backlinking on social media networks.  You can make a link in your profile, you can post it in a blog entry, and you can create fan groups for your business.  The backlinking doesn’t end there, though.

You can create multiple profiles to backlink to your website.  You can also make links to your other social media accounts to generate more interest in your products.  Also, once you start getting a solid reputation, other members of the social media platform may start backlinking to your site.  That’s when you know you’ve hit a goldmine.

Getting Traffic This Way Increases Your Search Engine Ranking

The effect that multiple traffic streams have on your search engine ranking cannot be understated.  The simple fact of the backlinks to your website looks good to the search engines.  This alone has a positive effect on your search engine ranking.

Let’s also add that the increased traffic that you will get from the multiple traffic streams will dramatically increase your search engine ranking.  Search engines rank websites significantly based on how much traffic they get, as well as by how many backlinks they get.

This, in turn, will increase the traffic to your website.  The relationship between your website and the search engines takes on a feedback loop that will continue to increase the traffic to your website.

Ultimately, the more places that you can be found on the Internet or in the real world, there are more ways people can find your site.  The more people find your site, the more people will be able to find your site.  This ultimately is the goal of every marketer, to get the search engines to favor your site over the others.

Your Business’s Website isn’t All that Benefits from Bookmarking

Because of this, not only can you link directly to your business’s website, but you can also upload links to your blogs, your submissions to YouTube, your ezine articles, and whatever else you have put up promoting your business! For everything you have posted about your business, you can post keyword-empowered bookmarks, share them with others, and check out what others have posted.

Social bookmarking websites include Digg.com, Mixx.com, and Delicious.com. These are the most advantageous to use, so use them all! It probably wouldn’t hurt to look for other social bookmarking sites to use. Remember, the more avenues you have to put up keyword tags related to your business, the more visible you are on search engines!

Of course, there does come a point where managing so many memberships will become cumbersome. Never fret; there are resources to handle this situation. AutoPoster.com can enable you to make semi-automatic blog submissions to over 50 social bookmarking sites. Incidentally, AutoPoster is a good place to search for more social bookmarking sites to include in your web empire.

Getting Free Labor for Bookmarking Your Blog Submissions

Another technique that you can use to maximize your exposure is to encourage your blog readers to bookmark your blog submissions. This can be done with a WordPress plugin called ShareThis. This way, you can employ your reader base to promote your business without paying them a dime. Talk about having free labor!

Some people might think this is a bit insidious. After all, aren’t these sites meant for social networking, making new friends, and seeing new things of interest? Consider this fact: Many online business owners do this sort of thing all the time. A little bit of time spent on nearly any social networking site will show you that businesses exist on them. MySpace.com is a major example. One of the intended uses of MySpace was as an avenue for musicians to promote their bands. Many other types of groups have caught on to this trend and have MySpace accounts for their groups. In short, there’s nothing wrong with advertising on social sites as long as your business is legitimate.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. The more work and thought you put into your Internet marketing campaign, the more you will get out of it. The basic idea is that the more websites you have linked together with your keywords and related to your business, the more exposure you will have. The more exposure you have, the more potential clients you have. It’s really that simple.

Tweeting About Your Blogging

The most useful thing about Twitter is that you can use it to drive traffic to your blogging site or your other monetized sites.  What it basically amounts to is that you Tweet something to the effect of “My thoughts on…” and provide a link to your website.  Your followers see this, and if they’re interested, follow the link.

Of course, this means that you have to have a list of followers on Twitter.  The great thing about this is that since nearly everyone has a Twitter account, you can just announce that you have one, and everyone that follows your other social media sites will follow your Twitter.  Some, because they already have a Twitter account, and others may create their own accounts to follow yours.

Are the Old Social Media Sites Dead?

Many social media platforms have tools that allow you to import posts from other media sites so that what you Tweet about on Twitter becomes a post on Facebook, Plaxo, Multiply, and so on.  Many people still want the older social media accounts so they can post longer blogs.

From this, it’s easy to see that your more established social media sites aren’t rendered useless by the new micro-blogs.  Some people actually abhor Twitter, just because they don’t want to write little mini-blurbs about their grilled cheese sandwiches.  When your Tweets are imported to these larger sites, you don’t lose the customer base that isn’t impressed by Twitter.

Listbuilding on Twitter—What to Keep in Mind

When you start listbuilding on Twitter, there are some things to consider if you want to impress your new followers.  You don’t want them to think you’re a “spammer.”  Don’t delude yourself. “Spammer” is a loosely given title that people give, and it doesn’t necessarily follow the technical definition.  If you’re a marketer, you’re at risk of being defamed as a spammer.

The first thing people look at when you make a friend request is your previous posts.  Twitter shows up to 20 of them.  A mistake that the actual spammers make is that they make a bunch of friends and immediately flood them with links to membership sites.  It doesn’t snag many users, and it gives marketing a bad name.

Instead, you can make a few small Tweets about your grilled cheese sandwich, your family, and then a link to your blog.  Do this a few more times, and you can start adding your other monetized sites.  The point is that if you start off on Twitter thinking that you’re going to make quick money, you’re wrong.  You have to establish trust with your followers in order to keep making money.

Maximizing Traffic — the Beginning Stages

If your plan for maximizing traffic lies in your search engine page ranking, you’re selling yourself short.  Page ranking works, but the wheels of Google often turn way too slowly to have a good start.  From the get-go your page should be optimized, but don’t hold your breath for that page one ranking to begin with or even getting indexed.

If you’re ambitious, you should be maximizing your traffic no more than a second after you get your page published.  Write about it in your blog, tweet all your followers, and update your Facebook.  If you have a mailing list already, tell them.  Spread the word far and wide since the traffic you’re already getting and the backlinks you’ve made will reflect on your page ranking.

Getting New Traffic to Your Site

Of course, it’s great that traffic from your already existing sources is going to your website.  Of course, who doesn’t want more traffic?  There are several ways of getting new traffic to your website.  Creating a new group and inviting all your friends on Facebook is a start.  If they join, Facebook will tell all their friends.  If they join, then Facebook will let all THEIR friends know and so on.  Make friends and influence people!

All this activity and hubbub about your site will naturally increase your page ranking on the search engines.  This is good for the long haul traffic.  Once you see that traffic is starting to come in from these sources, most of your work will be in changing the page content periodically.  It can be an informative blog, which makes content changes perfectly natural.  You can tweak around a few of the page elements.  The idea is to keep people coming back for more.  Of course, you should throw the occasional plug in for your ads.

Revenue Sharing—What It Is and Isn’t

Revenue sharing is a great way to make money off of your traffic without charging them anything.  I’m sure you’ve seen the banner and sidebar ads on a number of websites.  These are the source of revenue sharing income.  Basically, if a viewer clicks on these ads, you make a percentage of the income.

As I said earlier, you don’t tend to make a large percentage of the income from these links…not anything compared to an affiliate commission, anyway.  The plus side is that you make your commission whether or not your click through traffic converts.  Granted, conversions are what your “partner” is hoping for, but that’s not what you’re getting paid for.

Use the Software. Ditch the Domain Hosting.

You can start off one of two ways with affiliate marketing on WordPress.  You can either get a VIP membership, pay some extra money, and have certain restrictions on your marketing, or you can download the software and use it with your own domain hosting.  Truth be told, the latter is the better option.

The reason for this is simple; if you have your own domain already, then why pay for another?  Furthermore, if you have complete freedom to post what kinds of links you want on your own domain, why would you use domain hosting that doesn’t allow it?

WordPress Has More Static Pages and Plugins.

One problem of using Blogger rather than WordPress is that Blogger’s static pages aren’t immediately easy to create, whereas WordPress is pretty straightforward.  If you want your affiliate links to show up immediately on Blogger, you have to backdate your recent articles.  Only then will your blog posts be static rather than dynamic.  You can do that, or you can use several Blogger accounts for each link.

Simply put, WordPress has more plugins than Blogger does.  This can make your blog more interactive and all around more useful for your marketing strategy.  There are several so-called Blogger plugins created by independent programmers, but keep in mind that there’s a good chance that they won’t work.  They could even get your account suspended.

Affiliate Link Do’s and Don’ts on WordPress.com

As long as your blog isn’t overtly about affiliate marketing, you can use an affiliate link from certain affiliate programs.  The trick is that it has to be a “real blog,” so if you’re aggressive with your linking, you definitely don’t want to host on WordPress.com.

There are certain types of affiliate advertising you can’t do on WordPress.com, though you can do it to your heart’s content if you download the software and put it on your own domain.  That is, you can’t use AdSense or other dynamic contextual advertising on their domain.

They do allow links to “reputable” vendors such as Amazon, and if you’re making your own products and selling them on sites like Etsy.com, you’re okay.  Now, while many merchants are actually quite reputable, WordPress may not think so.  These rules are also subject to change, so it’s better to just download the software and put it on your own domain.

So, What Good is Blogger for an Affiliate Marketer?

Let’s go back to the beginning.  Blogger ranks higher than WordPress, right?  For the affiliate marketer, this makes Blogger great for testing the waters on a niche.  If things look good, you can scrap the Blogger account and start a WordPress blog.  If it doesn’t look good, you’re not out any money.

If you’re interested in creating a joint venture with someone, there are several benefits to consider:

Joint ventures increase website traffic.
Other than financial gain, joint ventures (also known as a “JV”) attract more traffic to your website, as well as your partner’s website. As you promote your project through your websites, blogs, or other promotional activities, people will want to get more information about all the people promoting the products.

Joint ventures are an effective way to build your lists.
The added benefit of having two or more names promoting a product is that you can extend your reach to more people online. Be sure to have an opt-in form on your blog or website so you can capture leads from the added traffic.

You may even want to interview your JV partner and post that interview as a podcast on your site. Then he or she can do the same and interview you and post the podcast. Podcasts not only showcase your expertise but also place a personality on a product. In Internet marketing, a good personality can have a lot of pull when it comes to listbuilding and sales.

Joint ventures allow you to split the work.
A joint venture can often be a huge undertaking. The good news is that you can split the work so you won’t have to carry the entire load on your shoulders. Some people opt for a 50/50 split in the workload; others may do a 90/10 split, with one person contributing more financial resources while the other does more footwork. As long as both parties are happy with the arrangement, JVs are beneficial to everyone involved.

Joint ventures are a great way to promote your brand.
Because of increased visibility, JVs can promote your brand as well as create a new one. Working hand-in-hand with a partner opens up many more doors than working independently on your own projects.

Once launched, a joint venture is a great way to earn passive income.
There’s no doubt that it takes a lot of elbow grease to develop your JV from an idea to a full-fledged product launch. However, once initiated, your JV can create a source of passive income for weeks, months, or years to come.

Joint ventures are a great way to team up with someone to create and launch a product. If you’re interested in using JVs in your affiliate marketing business, your best bet is to partner with someone you’ve known for a long time or with someone who has already experienced a moderate degree of success in affiliate marketing. For best results, you should team up with someone whose strengths balance your weaknesses (and vice versa).