The Road To Failure Is Paved With Affiliate Links

While there are many ways to become a successful affiliate marketer there are also many paths that will lead directly to failure. Two of the most common ways to failure are: starting out with too many affiliate programs and jumping from one affiliate program to another.

Too Many Affiliate Programs

There are many ways that an affiliate marketer can maximize their profits and many new affiliate marketers assume that joining multiple affiliate programs is a wise option. Because, it is very easy to join affiliate programs and there is really nothing to lose, affiliate marketers are tempted to join as many programs they can get their hands on. Thus, they fail to give their affiliate programs enough attention and work that they ought to receive. The maximum potential of the affiliate programs are not realized and the resulting income from these programs will almost certainly be disappointing.

The best way to achieve multiple streams of income is to concentrate on one affiliate program first. Choose a product or service that you can promote passionately. Pick a product in which you have complete trust. The best products and services to promote are those that you personally use. Your prospects will be able to sense your sincerity whenever you promote a product that you have experienced. This will greatly enhance your credibility as well as your product's marketability and will really encourage your prospect to purchase or avail of the product or service.

As soon as your first affiliate program is making a reasonable profit then you can proceed to joining another affiliate program and repeat the process. "Too much, too soon" is a common pitfall in affiliate marketing. Joining too many affiliate programs simultaneously in the hopes of having multiple streams of income simply does not work.

Jumping From One Affiliate Program To Another

Most affiliate marketers want to start getting commission checks as soon as possible. They promote their affiliate link once and when no one buys they blame the lack of sales on the merchant and the product. Because they think this product won't sale they drop that affiliate program and join another. When that product doesn't sell, they repeat the process of dropping and joining another. This cycle of promoting, dropping and joining continues until they finally give up on affiliate marketing.

The way to succeed at affiliate marketing is, again, choose a product or service that you trust and can promote passionately. If you don't get sales, examine your marketing methods and try again. Before you give up on a product you believe in try things like re-writing your ads, finding a more targeted audience for the product, and trying a different form of advertising. Only through trial and error will you find what works best for you and then you can repeat that method as you slowly join more affiliate programs.

Once you've figured out how to get sales with one affiliate program then you can apply what you've learned and join another. Giving up on an affiliate program and jumping to another and then another and then another is a common mistake and only leads to failure.

The way to make a good profit as an affiliate marketer is to focus on one affiliate program and work on it so that it makes a good profit. Then, go find another promising program and give it your best effort. With the right tools, the right actions, and perseverance you can definitely make a good profit out of affiliate marketing.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, affiliate mistakes, earn money with affiliate marketing, joining affiliate programs, successful affiliate, affiliate links, why affiliates fail

2 Niche Marketing Web Design Tips

Sometimes it's easy to forget that internet marketing isn't just about how to market internet marketing products. In fact, if you look into what people are searching for online, you'll discover that internet marketing products are way down on the list and only account for a small percentage of searches.

The important thing to remember about internet marketing products is that most of them are written by someone who has actually made money in a niche outside the realm of internet marketing products.

For instance, did you know that Willie Crawford (author of "How I Boosted My Ezine Sign-Up Rate By 5200 MORE Subscribers Per Month - Virtually Overnight - And You Can Too") and Michael Green (owner of How To Internet Marketer Forum) have niche sites that make money and have absolutely nothing to do with any internet marketing products. Click on their names to see the niche sites.

If you did take a look at these niche sites you'll notice some big differences like:

1. 1 looks a lot more professionally designed than the other.


2. 1 is a member of iCop


3. 1 has a pop-up


4. 1 has an audio message


5. 1 has several pages with additional free content


6. 1 promotes their affiliate program


7. And so on

However, besides the differences, they both have some things in common like:

1. They're both sales pages for a product.


2. They both are building a list of people interested in what they're offering.


3. They both have words about who they are that give credibility for their expertise.


4. They both have testimonials.


5. Both use well known payment processors (Paypal and Clickbank).


6. And so on.

So the lesson to be learned by looking at niche sites of successful internet marketers is:

Don't look at the differences but identify the things they all do because those are the things that make them successful! And while everything on your list is important and should be done, remember, these...

2 Niche Marketing Web Design Tips:

1. Make it a sales page for both your product and your list.


2. Get your sign up form in front of your site visitor quickly and don't bury it somewhere on your page.

Yes, internet marketing products only account for a small percentage of online sales however, the techniques and information shared within them account for much of the success for online niche marketers. And while niche marketers do not need to use every new internet marketing technique that comes along, using the tried and true basics is a must.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: niche marketing, web site design, Willie Crawford, Michael Green, web design tips, sales page, build list

Can You Fish For Free Links? The Answer's Here!

We all know that getting other sites to link to yours can help your search engine rankings and we also know that it's not always the easiest thing to do.

You can do reciprocal linking which is free. But reciprocal linking takes time and work and you have to be selective about which sites you'll link back to.

You can buy links but that takes money so it doesn't belong in this tip.

And then there's link baiting.

Link baiting is the act of putting something on your site that "begs to be linked to."

No, I don't mean you actually beg people to link to you. I mean putting something so good or unusual on your site that people instinctively want to link to it.

What qualifies as link bait?

Just about anything can qualify as link bait: a useful tool, a cool widget, a great freebie (templates, audio, video, picture, etc), a fascinating article, an opinionated blog, a debate, a poll, a contest, a resource, and the list goes on and on.

And to show you what I mean, here are a few examples of link bait in action:

• http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/rss-buttons/(useful tool)


• http://searchengineland.com/070118-074231.php (good content)


• http://www.stuntdubl.com/2007/01/12/linkbaiting-hooks/(good content and lots more examples showing different kinds of link bait)

Now there some negatives to link baiting like:

1. No control over who links to you.


2. All the links point to 1 page and may not help the rest of your site.


3. It takes some time to create good link bait.


4. If certain types, like debate and controversy, are not done correctly it can backfire and actually hurt your site.

However, if done right and used with good, quality content, link baiting is effective and can provide you with enough links to really help with your search engine placement.

To help you decide if link baiting is something you'd like to try, you can use my Magic 8 Ball. In fact, you can use it as much as you'd like.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: link baiting, link bait, linkbaiting, magic 8 ball, link building, get links

Don't Underutilize Your "Thank You Page" and Your "404 Error Page"

Two of the most important pages on your site are your "Thank You Page" and your "404 Error Page". And while most online marketers spend vast amounts of time creating their sales copy and their sign up page, most don't spend any time at all on what's included on these 2 important pages.

Now before I show you some ways to use these pages to expand your business let me explain why these pages are so important.

First, the "Thank You Page" is what your site visitor sees after they have performed the action you desired. They have either signed up for your mailings or purchased your product.

Of course you'll want to thank them for their action and deliver what you've promised however, this is the time to start building a relationship with them. Don't just give them what they've decided to get and then tell them to go away. Give them more! Give them a reason to believe you deliver more than promised and start building a good relationship with them.

Now the "404 Error Page" is the page people see when they try to visit a page that doesn't exist on your site. And rather than have the universally defined "404 Error Page," you should create your own so those who get lost on your site see what you want them to see.

Here are 3 ways you can use "Thank You" and "Error" pages to build a relationship and expand your business:

1. Give them something extra for seeing the page. Give them a special gift, a chance to sign up for a special mailing or a special 1 time offer. Here's an example of 1 of my "Thank You Pages": http://www.friendswhocare.us/request_received.htm



2. If they don't need to spend much time on your "Thank You" or "Error" page and you would like them to see another page on your site or your favorite affiliate program page, you can use some php code to send them where you want them to go next. Here's an example of what I mean:
   http://www.friendswhocare.us/phpboost.php
   
   Here's how you can make your page redirect your page visitor:
   
   1. Put this line of code at the top of your web page code:
   
   <?php header('refresh: 5; URL=http://www.susancarrollhome.com/dollarsale/');
   ?>
   
   2. You can change the number of seconds by changing the 5.
   
   3. Change the site url to the 1 you want.
   
   4. Save your file as a .php file type and upload.



3. Offer to help them find more information. I use this primarily on my error page.
   
   http://www.friendswhocare.us/errorpg.shtml
   
   Note: If you don't know how to customize your own "404 Error Page" you can see how it's done in "29 Easy and Instant Web Design Tricks - Volume 2." Download the PDF file here
   http://www.friendswhocare.us/free/UWV.zip to get the link to this eBook free - no cost - no sign up - totally free.

Having an online business is just like having an offline business in that you don't want to waste or underutilize any of your space. While you may not be able to set up a product display on your payment page like offline merchants do at their cash registers, you can do something similar with your "Thank You Page." And, just like those smart merchants who ask, "Did you find what you were looking for?" when you leave their store, you can help those who get to your "Error Page" by helping them find what they are looking for. Be a smart online marketer and learn to use 2 of the most important pages on your site.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: thank you page, error page, 404 error page, web site design, web page design, most important web page

A Mistake No One Ever Talks About

This week I discovered I had made a dumb mistake with 1 of my web sites...

probably the dumbest one I've ever made.

Think you can guess what it was?

Did I not back up my web site in case the hosting company lost everything?

Nope, that wasn't it.

Did I forget to encrypt my email address so it couldn't be harvested?

Naw, I know better than that?

Did I leave my login information where someone could find it or have an easy to guess password to make it easy for someone to hack into my site?

Been there, done that and have already learned my lesson.

Since you'll probably never guess what I did, I'll tell you.

You know the default email address you get with a hosted site? Well, I've got 1 I've never used and since I don't use it, I never check it.

That is, I never checked it before this week.

You see, a few years back I got a domain name and a hosted site that I've never really gotten around to using very much. Oh, I put some affiliate stuff on it so it wouldn't just be sitting dormant and I've occasionally uploaded products that I was selling since it has tons of space and I've tested and debugged scripts on it. But I've never really used the site for it's intended purpose.

Well this week, I ran out of space on this site so I started to do some housecleaning. First I removed all the old products I was no longer selling and some of the pictures I no longer needed. That didn't seem to do much so I decided to remove everything except for the 5 pages of affiliate stuff.

Imagine my shock when I still had no space on this site. A 500 megabyte site holding 5 web pages and totally out of space!

So I started checking everything. I checked the file structure - only 5 small web pages. I checked the database area - no databases were there. I checked all the packages offered by the hosting company - none were in use. In desperation, I finally checked my email account...

More than 23,500 emails and more than 400 megabytes of space used!

And every bit of this email is - SPAM - !

In other words, this is unwanted email sent to some undefined email address on my domain. (Remember, I never created any email addresses on this domain.) And every email sent to my domain ended up in my default inbox - the 1 I haven't been checking.

Now I am virtually out of space since this inbox is grabbing everything I free up as new spam arrives. And because it's already taken over my site, it's got to be removed before I can place a limit on the size of my inbox.

And if you think removing 23,000+ emails will take a lot of time, try doing it when it takes 20 minutes to remove 40 of them at a time. (40 is what the current page size is set at.)

Actually, it's not quite that bad any more since I've gotten it down to just over 20,500 using 276 MB so it's only taking about 10 minutes per page.

So here are my tips this week.

1. Don't use the default inbox on your host as your real email address and inbox. If you do you'll have to sort through all the email to find the good ones.
   


2. Even though you don't use the default inbox as your real inbox, go in and clean it out regularly. (I've been doing this on FriendsWhoCare and will be doing it on all my sites in the future. Fortunately, my other sites are newer and it only took about an hour to get them cleaned up.)
   


3. See if you can set a limit to the amount of space used by your email accounts. If you can, set it to something appropriate for the amount of space you've got. Since I've got 500 MB on this site, 10% should be sufficient if I really expected any email. Since I don't, I'll set it for the smallest amount possible.

I hope after you've read this you'll check any inboxes you don't use regularly before it's too late. Learn from my experience and don't make my dumb mistake of thinking that if you don't use an email inbox, no one else will.

To Your Success,
Susan
Tags: email, spam, spam email, junk mail, internet marketing mistake

If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

4 Niche Marketing Problems Identified

Recently I was reading a fellow internet marketer's blog on list building and found the comments much more interesting than the posted article.

You see, while the article gave some very good information, was well written and gave enough information for the seasoned online marketer, it had a few major problems.

These 4 problems were explained in the first 10 comments:

Thanks for the tutorial. But I am just a beginner. Most of the terms you used are strange to me. Can you explain.

-----

Thank you for the lesson. I think I am too old to get up the courage to have a go.

-----

A good article, but seems it came earlier than it should have been.

Creating a good report is beyond the capacity of many like me. A sales/squeeze page requires explanation of obtaining HTML code for opt-in form from the autoresponder.

Hitting the subscribers with an attractive OTO doesn’t look as simple as you mentioned. Please explain as to how to go about this OTO particularly creating it in the first place?

-----

I am also new and just getting started and funds are limited. I think this would be great for those of you who have the money and experience to do such a report.. But I am having trouble getting started. I don’t have a clue how to even start a report. But I am willing to try

To recap - the problems these readers had were:

1. Not understanding the terms.

2. Not having the courage to start.

3. Not knowing how to do some of the basics.

4. Limited funds.

Think only those going into internet marketing have these problems? Well maybe, but I doubt it.

You see...

1. Almost every niche market has terms unique to that niche.

2. Doing anything new and different for the first time requires some courage. Starting an online business, buying a car, playing your first game of golf or even making your first online purchase require some courage.

3. Every niche has some basic information required before moving on to the next level.

4. Limited funds - that's everyone's problem unless you've targeted the "endless money supply" market.

Can you solve all these problems for 100% of those in your targeted niche? Probably not.

But you can...

1. Use terms most people understand and define those that may be new to the majority of your niche.

2. Offer encouragement and reassurance to those who may be doing this the first time.

3. Even when your target market is for the experienced, be prepared to give or offer something for those who have no experience.

4. Only give and offer those things your targeted niche can afford and really use.

As you work your niche market, it's easy to forget about the problems listed above. But remember, you had to learn a lot to become the 'expert' and those looking to you for information and help don't know everything you've had to learn. So give those in your targeted niche a break and try to solve as many of these problems for them as you can.

To Your Success,
Susan

If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: niche marketing, target market, target niche, marketing, internet marketing

An Easy Free Way To Build Your List

Since today's a holiday for us in the US I'm taking an easy way out by giving you an audio tip from a New, Super Affiliate. And I have to agree with his advice since it's the #1 free way I build my list.

Hear today's tip (May take a few seconds to load.)

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Check the "What's New" page for a couple of new ones.

P.P.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: list building, build list, free way to build list, ezine, subscriber

How To Easily Add Technorati Tags and a Digg Button To Your Blogger Posts

There are many people using Blogger.com and 1 of the disadvantages until recently has been not being able to use social bookmarking for their individual blog posts.

Even with the newer version of Blogger.com, there was no easy way to add Technorati tags or a Digg button to a blog post. If you wanted Technorati tags, you had to create them yourself and put them at the end of your article. If you wanted a Digg button, you could put 1 on your blog but not on each separate article.

Today I'll share my secret of how I easily put Technorati tags on every 1 of my postings and the code I put in my "New" Blogger template that automatically produces the Digg button.

How To Add Technorati Tags To Your Blogger Posts

I hope you're using either Windows XP or Mac OS X because those are the 2 operating systems this tool will work on.

1. Go to http://www.qumana.com/download.htm and get the download. They have instructions on installing it and using it at http://www.qumana.com/help.htm.
   


2. Use this blog editing tool to write your articles.
   


3. Before you post your article, use the "Insert Tag" button at the top to insert your Technorati tags.
   


4. Publish your post with the "Publish Post" button.
   


5. Log into Blogger and edit your post to add your blog labels for your post and to make any formatting changes necessary.

While doing it this way may sound like more work, I think it's easier than trying to format Technorati tags correctly and adding them myself.

How To Automatically Add A Digg Button On Your Blogger Posts

1. Login to your Blogger account and go to the Template - edit HTML page.


2. Download a copy of your template to your PC. (This is in case you make a mistake and need to undo what you're going to do.)


3. After you've save a backup copy of your template, click the "Expand Widgets Templates" box.


4. In your template, find the line of code that looks like:
   
   <p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'/>
   
   (In my template it's a little more than half way down.)


5. Insert this code after that line:
   
   <a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=3&amp;url=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img src="http://digg.com/img/badges/80x15-digg-badge.gif" width="80" height="15" alt="Digg!" /></a>
   
   (NOTE: When you copy this line of code, put it into a text editor and remove all the line breaks before you paste it into your template.)



6. Preview your blog and see if it worked. If it did, you should see a Digg button at the end of your postings and you can save your template. If it didn't work then you can either try again or go back to your unchanged template.



7. Once you have a Digg button on your posts you can change the button image if you want. You can see the ones available at: http://www.digg.com/tools/buttons
   
   To use a different button image just replace the part of the line that starts with <img and ends with /> with the image code for the button you want.
   
   Example:
   
   Replace
   <img src="http://digg.com/img/badges/80x15-digg-badge.gif" width="80" height="15" alt="Digg!" />
   
   With
   <img src="http://digg.com/img/badges/85x10-digg-link.gif" width="85" height="10" alt="Digg!" />

There are many social bookmarking sites and although I don't use as many as I should, you can use the methods I've used to put these 2 social bookmarks on all your Blogger posts.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: add digg button to blogger post, add digg button, add technorati tags to blogger, add technorati tags, social bookmarking

29 Cpanel Training Videos

Last month I wrote a tip on how to build a squeeze page and included a video by Liz Tomey.

2 comments were posted for that tip and both stated:

1. Training videos are the way to go.
   

2. Some training videos on the use of a Cpanel would sure help.

In case you're not sure what a Cpanel is, it's the type of administration panel used by many hosting services and looks like the picture below.

This week I am pleased to tell you that I've found a place that has free videos on the use of a Cpanel and here's the list of what they've got:

1. How to login to CPanel
2. How to create a POP email account
3. How to create a default (catch-all) email account
4. How to create an auto-responder
5. How to create a subdomain
6. How to create custom error pages
7. How to password protect a directory
8. Using Hotlink protection
9. How to setup email forwarding
10. How to change your CPanel password
11. How to setup a Cron Job
12. How to create additional FTP accounts
13. How to backup your website
14. How to install and uninstall FrontPage extensions
15. How to keep your contact information up to date
16. How to manage URL redirects
17. How to create a MySQL database
18. Using File Manager
19. Using the Disk Usage Viewer
20. How to use the IP Deny Manager
21. How to park a domain
22. How to create an add-on domain
23. How to use the Raw Log Manager
24. Using Index Manager
25. Becoming familiar and navigating around in CPanel
26. How to use webmail from within CPanel
27. Managing MySQL databases with PHPMyAdmin
28. How to trace an email address
29. An introduction to using Fantastico

Now I've watched a few of these and even though I've been using a Cpanel for administering my web site for more than 4 years, I learned some things.

However, before I tell you where they are I have to tell you:

1. There is no audio - little popup boxes with text and arrows are used to guide you through the instructions. But if you can read short sentences you'll be able to understand what's going on.

2. The Cpanel training videos are included in a free private label rights membership site.

Now before you start throwing wet noodles at me for pointing you to a site where you have to sign up to get the information let me defend myself by stating that I looked for other Cpanel videos. And although I did find some, none of them had this extensive a list and several of the above videos were not found on any of those sites.

In addition to the 29 Cpanel videos there are 18 videos showing how to use 6 different FTP tools:

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in CuteFTP

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in WS_FTP

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in SmartFTP

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in FlashFXP

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in FTP Voyager

* 3 Videos showing how to Configure your website, Upload files and Manage files/folders in LeapFTP

Plus there are lots of PLR videos, articles and products and an affiliate program for the membership site and other products.

So my tip this week is:

Go here and claim your free membership so you can watch some good Cpanel training videos. And since they're in the download section you may as well pick up some things for your business while you're there.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. You won't see the training videos listed on the signup page but they are in there - I promise.

P.S.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: cpanel, fantastico, cpanel video, mysql, subdomain, redirect, ftp, pop email, cron, file manager

Server Side Includes (SSI) For Beginners

Unless you're a web programmer, learning HTML or learning how to use your HTML editor is 1 of your first tasks in order to create your first web site. Then after that first page is up and available, you start working on the second, then the third and so on until you have several pages built on your site. And because you want all your pages on your site to have the same look and feel to your site visitors you hopefully have created a page template.

Then, after you've gotten several pages up, you decide you need to add or change something. Maybe it's the copyright information, the contact information, a new menu link, etc. but whatever it is, it's something that appears on every or almost every page of your site.

It's at this point when you are faced with going in and modifying many pages on your site that you will become painfully aware that you really should have learned just a little about Server Side Includes (SSI) before you started.

What are Server Side Includes and why do you need to know about them?

Server Side Includes allow your web host to perform copy and paste actions on your web pages as the page is being loaded in the site visitor's browser. In other words, as your page is being loaded, your web host reads the code for your page, gets the instruction to find another file and include it on the page, follows the instructions, finds the file and merges it onto your page before showing your page in the visitor's browser.

Why do you care about Server Side Includes? Because they make it extremely quick and easy to change things that are common on many pages of your site. Instead of going into every page that has your navigation menu to add or change a link, you simply change 1 file and that change appears on every page! And, if used properly, Server Side Includes can help make your pages more responsive.

Now before you run off because you think you're not ready for doing complicated "techie" web programming, let me tell you that the hardest part of using Server Side Includes is ... drum roll please ...

You need to make sure your web host allows the use of Server Side Includes.

Because Server Side Includes have been around for a long time and because using them has become more popular, most web hosts do support them. However, Server Side Includes are a Linux/Apache specific feature, so if you're on a Windows server you'll need to find a Windows equivalent of SSI. (Sorry, I can't help you with that one.)

There are 2 ways to find out if your web host supports Server Side Includes:

1. Ask them.




2. Perform a simple test.
   
   Insert this line of code
   <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" -->
   into 1 of your web pages and rename the file, "test.shtml"
   
   Upload the file to your server.
   
   Display the file in your browser.
   
   If you see the current date where you inserted that line of code, your host supports Server Side Includes.

Using Server Side Includes is just as easy as performing the above test and the only hard part is remembering to use the ".shtml" extension for your web pages.

You can use Server Side Includes to include just about every file type like; html, htm, php, jpg, gif, txt, etc. I actually use text files without the ".txt" extension for most of mine because that's how I first learned to do it. I also usually put the file to be included in the same directory as the pages that include it for the same reason. However, you are not restricted to either of those things.

So how do you get your host to paste 1 of your files into your web pages?

If you're a beginner, here are 5 easy step:

1. Create or open your web page in your HTML editor.
   

2. Select the section of your page that you want to appear on other pages.




3. Copy the HTML code for that section and paste it into another file. (I usually use Notepad and create a text file without the ".txt" extension) Name and save your new file.




4. In your web page file, replace all the code you just copied and pasted with the following:
   
   Put your file's name in place of "xxxxx". And if the file is in a different directory than your web page be sure to include the full path to the file starting from your root directory.




5. Upload your files and check them out.

Just like many other web programming techniques, there are other ways to use and write Server Side Includes. Also, it isn't necessary to use the ".shtml" extension for your web pages if you know how to modify the code in your .htaccess file. But if you're a beginner and just getting started, using the above directions will get you started and may save you a lot of time in the future when you want to make modifications to you site.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip helpful or have more information you would like to share, please feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: server side include, ssi, web site design, make changes to web site, shtml, navigation menu

An Article Source You May Not Know About

2 of the problems I hear the most often are:

1. I can't write.
2. I don't know what to write about.

And up until recently my first recommendation was to use article directories to either find content or to do research.

However, I recently discovered an article resource that provides more flexibility when using articles authored by someone else.

As described at Wikipedia, Creative Commons is "a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights (or none) of the work."

So what does that mean to you?

• If you're looking for content, it means that now you can find articles that may be used and modified for your own commercial use by using the Creative Commons search service because it finds content across the web that is tagged with a "creative commons license".




• If you're a writer looking for traffic, it means you can put a Creative Commons License on your articles to get more exposure. There are 6 types of licenses to choose from and all you have to do is copy and paste a little code onto the page that contains the content. Just make sure you give some thought to the type of license you want on your article because Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable.

If you're looking for content or have content you're willing to share, Creative Commons may be just what you're looking for

• It's 100% free. There's no fee and no registration.

• It finds content that can be modified and used for commercial purposes.

• Articles do not have to be submitted to a directory to be found.

• Authors have control of how long the content is available. (Just remove the page and it's gone.)

So before you discount having a list or a blog because you can't or don't know what to write, give Creative Commons a look and see if it can solve your problem. For a real example see the CC logo in the right margin.)

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Please feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: creative commons, content, article, article directory, copyright license, traffic

Watch and Learn How To Build A Squeeze Page

Everyone keeps telling you how important it is to build your list so this week I've got a video by Liz Tomey that shows you how to modify a squeeze page template and a lot more.

Watch it free here.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: list building, email marketing, build list, squeeze page, landing page, autoresponder, aweber

One Of The Mysteries Of The Internet: Web 2.0

One of the latest buzzwords being used in the internet marketing circles is "Web 2.0" so I asked you, my readers, if you are were using any Web 2.0 methods in your business.

Only 2 people voted and 1 of the 2 votes stated they didn't really know what Web 2.0 meant!

Now I may be wrong but I am going to take a wild guess and state, the lack of response in this recent poll was because most people don't know and understand what Web 2.0 is.

So today let's examine what Web 2.0 is and how it's different from Web 1.0.

First let me state that Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 is unlike what you're used to when it comes to most products. Usually when a new version of computer software or computer technology becomes available it is so different everyone can see the difference and improvement. Also, the move to the newer version is a clean and clear changeover.

With the internet, things evolve. So as we move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and eventually to Web 3.0, you won't wake up 1 morning to discover a whole new internet. No 1 big internet entity is going to upgrade everything while we are all offline.

Rather, the move to Web 2.0 started several years ago and is still happening. Many people are using Web 2.0 sites, products and services without knowing that these are part of the new, improved internet.

Second, Web 2.0 doesn't have the characteristics most expect when upgrading to a newer version of something. Web 2.0 doesn't mean faster, it doesn't mean major bug fixes and it doesn't mean new capabilities. Although Web 2.0 does have these things, that's not what Web 2.0 is about.

At this point I'd like you to take a few minutes to watch a short video I've shown you before. The first third shows what Web 1.0 is and then it moves into the birth of Web 2.0 with examples of some Web 2.0 sites that you already know about.

**********

SIDE NOTE:

The video you just watched was created by an anthropology professor at K-State, my alma mater, and it is currently the best and most viewed online video showing what Web 2.0 means.

**********

So what is Web 2.0?

"Web 2.0 is linking people ...
... people sharing, trading, and collaborating ..."

Web 2.0 allows internet users to connect and interact with each other through means other than email, forums and chat rooms.

Web 2.0 is allowing the internet to actually put some meaning into "global community" by bringing it's users together and letting them share ideas, pictures and videos.

Blogger, MySpace, Squidoo, Flickr and YouTube are some of the most used and well known Web 2.0 sites. They are free places where internet users can submit things so other internet users may see them. They allow the submitted items to be viewed, commented on and provide links so the items may be shared on other sites across the web.

Web 2.0 is making the internet 1 big global community where everyone has the opportunity to become a recognized expert at something.

The above video is an example of what I mean. Before this video became available, I'd never heard of Mike Wesch and his ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology. You'd probably never heard of K-State (BTW, it's a really good school in other fields of study too). Now, that video has been viewed 2,442,062+ times, has received 5334 comments and has been bookmarked by 22,008 viewers. That's a lot of people who now know more about Web 2.0 and the creator of the video. Professor Wesch has become a recognized expert to more than 2 million people!

To quote 1 of the more recent comments on another of Professor Wesch's YouTube videos,

"That's Awesome! Web2.0 is really connect people together in a way that's never been done before!

We have passed the information age.

We are NOW in the Communication AGE!"

Web 2.0 is not just another buzzword. It means we now have the capability to actively communicate and share with other internet users. So the next time you're asked, are you using any Web 2.0 methods with your online business, you'll know what they're asking and how to respond.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful please leave a comment.

Tags: web 2.0, internet marketing, communications, blogging, youtube, myspace

To Squidoo Or Not To Squidoo, That Is The Question

Over this last week I've been reading a lot about how online marketers can use the free lenses at Squidoo to make money. And although I haven't tried it yet, I am considering it because it's basically a free way to get a web page with a good page rank and, of course, includes the opportunity to earn income.

With that said, today I'd like to share some of the information and videos I discovered this week.

1. If you go to squidoo.com you'll see that the home page has a page rank of 6 out of 10. You'll also see that there are currently 21 main groups that contain anywhere from 47 to 365 subgroups within them. I checked out some of the lenses and never found a lens that had a Google page rank less than 3 out of 10. There may be some, I just didn't find them.




2. On the squdoo.com download page you can get a free TypePad Blogging Widget, Buttons and Badges for your Squidoo lens, a Squidoo-Firefox Extension and free ebooks like Everyone Is An Expert.




3. Squidoo.com lets you build your own lens through the use of modules and some of these modules can earn money because they are linked to affiliate programs like Amazon, Cafepress, GoogleAds and eBay. You earn 50% of the affiliate commissions for these purchases and squidoo.com donates 5% to charities and keeps 45% to maintain the site. You can also donate your commissions to a host of charities automatically if you want.




4. While there are millions of lenses on squidoo.com, some of them do really well in the search engines. I found http://www.squidoo.com/meatsnacks/ listed on the first page of Google and AOL and http://www.squidoo.com/jerky/ listed on the second page of Yahoo. Both of these lens were set up to make money and recruit a downline for Jerky Direct.
   
   Since http://www.squidoo.com/jerky/ offered to share their lens stats, I discovered that the lens had 196 unique visitors this last week. And while that doesn't seem like very many, that same lens had almost 5,000 unique visitors in February. (Bet they were on the first page of Yahoo that month.) And although I don't know if they made any sales, since they had almost 5,000 highly targeted visitors, the odds are they got a few sales and signups.




5. The person who owns http://www.squidoo.com/jerky/ has a free membership site, SquidooSecrets, where he shares a lot of information on how to use squidoo to earn money.




6. I've reviewed the information shared both at SquidooSecrets and in Squidoo Blueprint and found that they both state pretty much the same thing on how to set up a lens to make money. The primary difference between what they offer is that Squidoo Blueprint gives a lot more information on how to put content on your lens, how to get a good page rank, how to avoid being deleted from squidoo for having a spam lens and how to get more traffic to your lens. So if you want to use squidoo.com as a marketing tool, I'd suggest you first get a free membership at SquidooSecrets and play with building a lens. Then if you're lens isn't getting traffic or making any money, invest in Squidoo Blueprint to get some ideas to fix those problems.




7. If you're interested in squidoo but not ready to join a free membership site, I found 3 very good videos by Tiffany Dow of SocialMarketing101 on YouTube. You can click the links below to watch the videos.
   
   How To Set Up A Squidoo Lens
   
   Make Money On Squidoo
   
   Adding An Opt-In Box To A Squidoo Lens
   

Will a squidoo lens make money for you? As with all other forms of web marketing, there are no guarantees. However, squidoo is becoming a popular place for people to gather in groups, it is possible to get good search engine placement and creating a lens is free. To Squidoo or Not To Squidoo, the choice is yours.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment on the blog.

Tags: squidoo, sqidoo secrets, squidoo blueprint, social marketing, make money, squidoo lens

1 Way To Lower Your Home Office Expenses

When you have your own online business you get to be the one who pays all the bills and buys all the supplies. So this week's tip isn't about how to make money but rather on how to same some.

As you learn how to design web sites, how to build a list, how to write copy, etc. you have probably gotten some ebooks, reports and articles that contain information that helps you. And you may have even printed some. I know I do when I find a good one and want to make notes or have it available when I am not at my computer.

But soon you discover that you're going through printer paper and ink faster than you can afford to buy it. Plus, the shelves and file drawers are soon full and you run out of places to store what you've printed.

So today let's talk about how to save ink, paper and storage space for all that wonderful material you want to print.

The easiest way to save ink, paper and space for your printed material is to print more than 1 page per piece of paper. No, I don't mean printing front and back although you can do that too. I mean printing 2 or more pages on the same side of a single piece of paper.

Now unfortunately the ability to print multiple pages on a single sheet of paper is not available for ebooks that are .exe files or at least I haven't found a way yet. However, it is possible to print multiple pages of a pdf ebook on a single sheet and here's how:

To print some or all of a pdf ebook and have multiple pages on 1 sheet of paper:

1. Go to the file menu in the upper left corner of the ebook and click print.




2. When the Print popup box appears find the area labeled Print Range. You can select to print All, Current View, Current Page or a Subset of the pages in the ebook. All is the default and will print the entire ebook. Current View is the part of ebook that is showing on your screen. Current Page is the complete page for what is showing on your screen. To print a few selected pages of the ebook simply select Pages and enter the page numbers of those pages you want like 3 - 5 or 5, 6.




3. Next, find the area labeled Page Handling and set Page Scaling to "Multiple pages per sheet." The default for this field is "None" so if you don't change it, you will only get 1 printed page per sheet. In the next field, select the number of pages per sheet you want.




4. After you have made your selections you can see how the printed page will look on the right side of the popup box and when you're happy with how it looks you can click the print button.

Printing long articles and email reports requires a little more work and the use of a word processor like MS Word or OpenOffice Writer.

1. Highlight the text of what you want to print by placing your mouse at the beginning of the text you want to copy and then while holding down your left mouse button, drag your mouse to the end of the text you want. When the text is highlighted release the left mouse button and either click the right mouse button and select copy or do a "cntl c".




2. Open a new document in your word processor and paste the selected content onto the page by either going to the Edit menu and selecting Paste, doing a "cntl v" or clicking the right mouse button and selecting Paste.




3. When you have all the content you want in the document, under the File menu, click Print Preview or Page Preview.




4. On the tool bar there's a button for doing multiple pages. If you don't recognize it, slowly slide your mouse over the buttons and read the labels.




5. After you've selected the number of multiple pages, simply click the Print button.

Printing multiple pages on a single sheet is a great way to reduce the amount of ink, paper and shelf space required for your printed material and a great way to cut your costs without giving up any of the benefits of having printed copies. Also, by selecting the pages you print you can quit printing the unnecessary pages that are often at the beginning and end of an ebook. Instead of using 65 sheets of paper to print a single ebook you can print only those pages that contain the information you want and print them 2 or more to a sheet.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: home office, print, print ebook, print multiple pages, save paper, save ink, save space, save money

7 Ways To Win The "Make Money Online" Game

What do online product creators, service providers, affiliates and resellers have in common?

They are all trying to make money online and they all face the same problem with making money.

While others say not having a site or not owning a list is the biggest problem, I will argue that competition is the biggest problem because everyone with an online business must continually work this problem. Whether you have a site or not, whether you have a list or not, you must always be working to beat out your competition for those same dollars your competitors are trying to get. Yes, competition is the biggest problem you face when you first start your online business and it remains your biggest problem as long as you continue to work your business.

Today I am not going to share any brand ways on how to beat your competitors because you probably already know these 7 ways and so do your competitors.

However knowing the 7 ways is not the way to make money online.

The way to make money online is to actually use 1 or more of these 7 ways to beat your competitors.

7 Ways To Win The "Make Money Online" Game

1. Be the first person to promote the product or service.
   
   If you have a list or purchase ezine ads then being the first person to announce a product gives you a better chance of making a sale. Because your target market will probably be getting lots of ads for this product from the lists they are on, it is to your advantage to evaluate if it's something you want to market and, if it is, get your mailing out first.
   
   
2. Always offer your page viewer a list to join.
   
   We all know how important this is yet most of us don't do it. I'm even guilty of not providing a list offer on most of my sales pages. But building a list is critical and a list offer should be made on every page.
   
   
3. Offer an incentive for buying from you.
   
   When you are competing with a jillion other people selling the same thing, you have got to give your potential buyer a reason for buying from you. Resellers learned this way to beat out their competitors a long time ago and started offering bonuses. And now "guru" affiliates are doing it too by offering rebates and bonuses.
   
   
4. Give unadvertised bonuses to your customers.
   
   Giving unadvertised bonuses to your customers can help you in 2 ways. First, you show your customer that you not only deliver what's expected, but you give them more than expected. This makes them more willing to buy from you again. Second, your unadvertised bonus may be something that includes your affiliate links or a viral product that promotes your site.
   
   
5. Create an upsell and cross promote.
   This method only works when you are able to capture information about your customers.
   
   You've bought products or joined membership sites and seen the one-time-offers. This is 1 type of an upsell. But you don't have to create a one-time-offer. Just make another offer on your product delivery page or send your customers an email.
   
   
6. Write an ezine article.
   
   To make money online you must sell something and you should be familiar with what you are selling. Since you are familiar with the product or service you know enough about what it has to offer to write an article. Just give enough information to get the reader hungry for more in depth information and drive traffic to your sales page with your article.
   
   
7. Improve the sales material.
   
   Every sales page and email ad can always be improved. If you are a product/ service provider then you need to be testing and tracking your sales page and ads until you find the 1 that works the best. If you are a reseller then you should modify the products sales page so it doesn't look and read just like all the other resellers pages. And while affiliates can't modify the sales pages, they can modify the pre-written ads until they find the ad words that get people to click their affiliate link.

Marketing is the name of the "Make Money Online" game. You and your competitors are all working with the same product and it's what you do to market the product that makes the difference.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Was this article useful? Please feel free to leave a comment.

The Quick, Easy And Free Way To Create A Shadow For Your Website Images

As you may well know, CSS is used to create style sheets for web pages. Unfortunately, using CSS style sheets is well beyond the capabilities of many web site owners because most books and tutorials are written in total geek. So today we're going to take a quick peek into some of the mysterious and wonderful capabilities of CSS without sinking into the black hole of CSS style sheet programming.

As a web site owner, you probably have one or more pictures on your web site. You've got some type of photo or clip art in your page header and maybe you've sprinkled a few more throughout your site. These pictures are fine however they may look like they have just been glued to the page.

One quick and easy CSS trick can help you fix that glued on problem. Instead of just pasting your plan image to your web page, you can use a drop shadow to border your image and make it stand out.

To create a drop shadow for your web site images you simply need to use 1 of these 2 pieces of code.

CSS Trick # 1:

<div
style="width:115px;height:115px;filter:shadow(color:gray);">
<img
src=yourpicturefile.jpg width="100"
height="100" style="border:1px solid black;"></div>

CSS Trick #2:

<div
style="width:115px;height:115px;filter:shadow(color:gray,strength:18, direction:132);">
<img
src=yourpicturefile.jpg width="100"
height="100" style="border:1px solid black;"></div>

Here's how to understand what's going on in the above snippets of code.

First, it's the <div> tags that make these CSS tricks work so be sure to leave those tags in place.

Second, the width and height are set to be larger than your picture size. In the above examples, the picture I am putting on the site is named, yourpicturefile.jpg and has a width and height of 100 pixels. So to make sure my shadow shows up, the width and height for my <div> tag is sized slightly larger. You can adjust these numbers until you are happy with the size of your shadow.

Third, after the size of my picture you see a style for the border around my picture. If you don't want a border then replace the 1px with a 0px. If you want a thicker border then change the 1px to a larger number. Just be sure to keep the px part.

Now here's the difference between these 2 CSS tricks. The first snippet of code generates a simple shadow that is always the same color, brightness and in the same location for every picture it's used with. The second snippet of code give you control over the color of the shadow, how bright it is and where it is located. You can play around with these attributes until you are happy with how your drop shadow looks.

Now when you go off and use 1 of these tricks, you will find that your pictures don't appear exactly where you want them. To position your picture beside some text, the easiest way is to create an HTML table with the text in 1 column and the code for your shadowed picture in another column. If your picture is all by itself and you want to have it be left justified, centered or right justified then use 1 more CSS trick to put it where you want it.

To position your stand-alone picture put a <div align="center"> before the code from 1 of the above pieces of code and a </div> after it. Keep the quotes and use either the word, left, center or right to put your picture where you want it.

See how easy it was! You don't have to be a CSS expert to put shadows on your images when you know a couple of CSS tricks.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you found this tip useful, please leave a comment.

Tags: css tricks, drop shadow, web site design

How To Link The Titles Of Your Blog Posts

1 of the things I've been trying to figure out is how to make the titles of my blog articles link to themselves since this is recommended for search engine optimization.

I've done quite a bit of reading and found several sites that give the code for doing this on Blogger. Unfortunately, most of these directions totally confused me. Then, by accident, I found that Blogger actually does what I wanted automatically if I just let it do its own thing.

So here's how to get your blog article titles to link to themselves on Blogger.

1. Under the Setting tabs go to Formatting


2. Enable "Show Link Field"


3. When you write your blog post, do not enter anything in the URL field under the Post Title and the URL for your article title will be the article's page on your blog.

If you want your title to link to another URL, then of course you will want to enter the URL into the field when you create your article.

Sometimes it's the simplest things that really slow us down.

Have a great time blogging and feel free to leave a comment.

To Your Success,
Susan

Tags: blog

Fix You Ordered and Unordered Lists On Blogger

Until today every list I posted on this blog showed up as an unordered list (bullet list) - even the ones I formatted to be ordered (numbered).

Well, no longer will I have that problem here because I discovered the fix and here it is:

In my blogger template I found the code that looked like this:

/* unordered list style */

ul {
list-style: none;
margin-left: 10px;
padding: 0;
}

li {
list-style: none;
padding-left: 14px;
margin-bottom: 3px;
background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac_blue/tictac_blue.gif) no-repeat 0
6px;
}

And all my lists were coming out unordered (ul).

I simply removed the code to let all my lists default to the standard and now everything is working the way it should.

So if you're having problems with getting both types of lists to display on your blogger blog

1. make a backup copy of your template (in case you mess up and have to start over)


2. look for code that is like mine above


3. copy and paste it somewhere in case ever want to put it back


4. remove the code from your blogger template


5. preview your blog to see if it worked

In case your blog is always showing numbered lists then the code you need to look for will be very similar but will start with ol {

Hope this helps and please leave a comment and let me know if it did.

To Your Success,
Susan

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Free Editing Tool For Bloggers

While looking at all the neat tools that are now available to add things to your blog, I stumbled upon a free tool that makes writing blog posts a lot easier for those of us using Blogger.com.

No, it doesn't come up with content, although that would be a nice feature.

What it does is it allows you to write your post in a window like this:

Now the great things about using this window is that it lets you do everything the blogger post window does plus it lets you check your spelling and makes it easier to format your article.

Ever tried to indent with blogger? I just did it.

Ever tried to copy and paste from a web page only to find that there was a lot more editing needed to make it look right?

That's no longer a problem since this let's you copy to your hearts delight and it looks like you want the first time.

Lists like this always gave me trouble before.

1. type a line
   
   ad some more text
   


2. type another line
   
   and even more text
   


3. got the idea?

Since I just got the tool a few minutes ago, it may even do more that I haven't discovered yet.

Here's where you can get your own copy of this wonderful free tool

http://www.qumana.com/index.htm

Hope to see you blogging more.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. I just discovered that depending on your blog's settings and the other blog tools you may have installed on your blog, your post may only be put on your list of postings as a draft and you'll have to login and publish it manually. Still, with the spelling feature and the extra formatting features I think this is a great find.

Let me know what you think about this tool by leaving a comment.

Tags: blog

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