What is Affiliate Marketing?

Perhaps the simplest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.

There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor
 who takes some kind of action – for example when they sign up for something
 and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave
a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount
per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you)
uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded
into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions
come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser
might give a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to
track conversions.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Blogs

Affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money from blogs and
 it won’t suit every blog/blogger (more on this below) but there are a
 few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the biggest of
 these reasons is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there’s
 a relationship with trust between the publisher and their readership.

I’ve found that as this trust deepens that readers are more likely to
 follow the recommendations that a blogger makes.

Of course this can also be a negative with affiliate marketing –
promote the wrong product and trust can be broken (more on this below).

Affiliate Marketing – Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to
know that affiliate marketing is not easy money.
Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:

• traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
• finding relevant products
• finding quality products
• building trust with your readers
• having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
• you being able to write good sales copy (and more)

There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that
if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you
 can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.

It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs.
Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote –
other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and
 for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach

What Are Blogs ??

Blogs are web logs that are updated on a regular basis by their author. They can contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people’s personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.

Blog’s give you an opportunity to write content that is unique to you and your practice. While some people are uncomfortable with self promotion, your blog gives you an occasion to interact with your visitors while promoting who you are and what you do.

Today blog’s are being used for all sorts of purposes. You have companies that use blogs to communicate and interact with customers and other stake holders. Newspapers incorporate blogs to their main website to offer a new channel for their writers. Individuals also created blogs to share with the world their expertise on specific topics. And so on.

How do you get people to read your blog?

One of the ways to attract readers to your blog is to title your postings so that you can get their attention and draw them in to your blog. Take into consideration the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), when you are writing in your blog, so that you can bring in traffic not only to your blog but to your site. A prime example is the December 10th blog entry for sbplasticsurgeon.com entitled “Botox Safety”. Dr. Lowenstein has placed tags such as Botox, Plastic Surgery, Plastic Surgery in Santa Barbara on his blog thereby boosting his SEO presence.

Where Did Blogs Come From?
The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990’s. Who the very first blogger was is actually unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.

Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?
Just as having an animated image was once cool, blogging has become the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Businesses struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.

Blogs & Your Business
You need to determine how a blog will benefit your practice.  Establish a schedule to keep your blog current and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your practice that you may want to showcase by letting you direct the content and having your readers guide you

The Importance of Backlinks

If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO. In this article, we will explain to you what a backlink is, why they are important, and what you can do to help gain them while avoiding getting into trouble with the Search Engines.

What are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.

A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then that would be more relevant in a search engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.

Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason why backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's algorithm. Lately, however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as with hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to provide inbound links to websites. 

These pages are called link farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm could get your site banned entirely.

How Search Marketers Study & Learn How to Succeed in the Engines

The complicated algorithms of search engines 

may appear at first glance to be impenetrable,

 and the engines themselves provide little insight

 

into how to achieve better results or garner 

more traffic. What little information on 

optimization and best practices that the engines

 themselves do provide is listed below:

 

Many factors influence whether a particular web 
site appears in Web Search results and where 
it falls in the ranking.

These factors can include:

• The number of other sites linking 
• to it
• The content of the pages
• The updates made to indicies
• The testing of new product versions
• The discovery of additional sites
• Changes to the search algorithm – 
• and other factors

 

Bing engineers at Microsoft recommend
 the following to get better rankings 
in their search engine:

• In the visible page text, include words 
• users might choose as search query 
• terms to find the information on your site.
• Limit all pages to a reasonable size. 
• We recommend one topic per page.
•  An HTML page with no pictures 
• should be under 150 kb.
• Make sure that each page is accessible
•  by at least one static text link.
• Don’t put the text that you want indexed
•  inside images. For example, i
• f you want your company name
• or address to be indexed, 
• make sure it is not displayed inside
•  a company logo.

Googlers recommend the 
following to get better
 rankings in their search engine: 

• Make pages primarily for users, 
• not for search engines. 
• Don't deceive your users or
•  present different content to
•  search engines than you 
• display to users, which is
•  commonly referred to as cloaking.
• Make a site with a clear hierarchy
• and text links. Every page should
• be reachable from at least one static 
• text link.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, 
• and write pages that clearly and
•  accurately describe your content.
•  Make sure that your <title> 
• elements and ALT attributes are 
• descriptive and accurate.
• Keep the links on a given page
•  to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Keyword research

Keyword research is one of the most important, 
valuable, and high return activities in the
 search marketing field. 


Through the detective work of puzzling out


 your market's keyword demand, 
you not only learn which terms and phrases 
to target with SEO, but also learn more 
about your customers as a whole. 


The usefulness of this intelligence 
cannot be overstated - 
with keyword research you can 
predict shifts in demand
, respond to changing market
 conditions, and produce the
 products, services, and content 
that web searchers are
 already actively seeking. 
In the history of marketing, 
there has never been such a 
low barrier to entry in 
understanding the
 motivations of consumers in
 virtually every niche - 
not taking advantage is
 practically criminal.

 

Every search phrase that's typed
 into an engine is recorded in one 
way or another, and keyword
 research tools like those described 
below allow us to retrieve this information. 
However, those tools cannot show us 
(directly) how valuable or important
 it might be to rank for and
 receive traffic from those searches.
 To understand the value of a keyword, 
we need to research further,
 make some hypotheses, test, 
and iterate - the classic web marketing formula.

	The following is a basic, but valuable process for determining a keyword’s value:

	Ask yourself Is the keyword relevant to the  content your website offers?  Will searchers who find your site  through this term find the likely answer  to their implied question(s)?  And will this traffic result in  financial rewards  (or other organizational goals) directly  or indirectly?  If the answer to all of these questions is a clear "Yes!", proceed... Search for the term/phrase  in the major engines Are there search advertisements  running along the top and right-hand  side of the organic results? Typically,  many search ads means a high value  keyword, and multiple search ads  above the organic results often  means a highly lucrative and directly  conversion-prone keyword. Buy a sample campaign for the  keyword at Google AdWords  and/or Bing Adcenter In Google Adwords, choose  "exact match" and point the traffic  to the most relevant page on  your website.  Measure the traffic to your site,  nd track impressions and conversion  ate over the course of at  least 2-300 clicks  (this may take only a day or two  with highly trafficked terms, or  several weeks with keywords in  lesser demand). Using the data you’ve collected,  make an educated guess about  the value of a single visitor to  your site with the given search  term or phrase. For example, if, in the past 24 hours,  your search ad has generated 5,000  impressions, of which 100 visitors  have come to your site and 3 have  converted for total profit (not revenue!)  of $300, then a single visitor for that  keyword is worth approx. $3 to your  business. Those 5,000 impressions  in 24 hours could probably generate  a click-through rate of between  30-40% with a #1 ranking  (see theleaked AOL data mining  for more on potential click- through-rates),  which would mean 1500-2000  visits per day, at $3 each, or ~$1.75  million dollars per year.  No wonder businesses love search marketing!

Of course, even the best estimates 
of value fall flat against the hands-
on process of optimizing and
calculating ROI. Remember 
that the time and money you invest
 in a search marketing campaign 
must be weighed against any 
returns, and even though SEO 
is typically one of the highest
 return marketing investments,
 measuring success is still 
critical to the process.