Monthly Archives: December 2010

Finding merchants that you will promote through your discount code website is actually very easy in a way. All that you need to do is to go to a few large affiliate program directories, sign up to as many merchants as interest you and that is really it.

These merchants will then start to send you regular emails of their latest discounts and offers. There will be emails that you can copy or retype onto your website and XML feeds that you can import in bulk if you are technically competent. So, where is the big problem?

This ease of access is a big problem
Well the problem is this. Every affiliate operating a discount code website in your country will be using the same basic set of merchants and promoting the same discount codes as they become available. Visitors looking around your website will see that it is full of the same offers that they have seen elsewhere and decide that they might as well just stick with what they know. Worse, if the site they are already with is doing the job properly, then you will have less offers and that certainly will not encourage them to come over to your service.

So you need to expand your offering outside of the immediate affiliate programs. And I know from experience that not only does this satisfy visitors, but because you are listing discounts and offers that are not on other websites there is a good chance that people will be finding you more easily on the search engines.

Find some non affiliate merchants
What you need to do is to start thinking of big name merchants (they do not have to be the leading names, just national names) and working out whether they offer affiliate schemes. You are looking those that don’t. Also, you can use keyword research tools to see what merchants people are searching for discount information on and check which of these do not run affiliate programs. It doesn’t matter so much if they have just an in house affiliate program, it is mainly the big network affiliate programs you are steering clear of.

Now quite simply look around the websites if all of these merchants and find their newsletters and sign up for them. Most will make this very easy to do and then all you have to do is to wait for the newsletter to arrive and upload those details.

The vital extra offering
And this second step is actually more critical than the mass joining of affiliate programs. By displaying discount codes that are more difficult to find and interesting to your visitors they are more likely to follow your site and sign up to your newsletter. It is also some great search engine bait.

So use some imagination when you are finding merchants for your discount code website!

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5630848

To start off your own voucher code website you can simply build your website using any available blogging software. Many bloggers use Blogger for this purpose, or you can purchase some hosting and install WordPress or any other blogging tool onto the hosting.

My Preference Is For WordPress
For my purposes, I always use WordPress. Yes, you need to pay for the hosting space, but there are tons of free themes available to use and a wealth of excellent plugins that can extend the reach of the blog. So I usually talk in WordPress terms, although the instructions are fairly similar for any blogging tool you want to try out.

Customise Your Look
So install, or create, your blog. Then look for some free themes and try out a couple. It is always useful to experiment with a few themes as quite often what looks good at first glance doesn’t look so good when you install it. It doesn’t matter too much if the style is not perfect, you can change it easily enough in the future.

Add Some Plugins
With a voucher code website you want to be displaying the latest available vouchers, which is great as most themes do that automatically. But, if you also install plugins such as related posts, then these plugins can detect similar content. This could provide readers with similar voucher codes that they might be interested in.

Categorise Your Blog
A blog can be a very well categorised website, when used properly, and this is an important feature in a voucher code website. Start to create categories for all of the merchants that you will be dealing with. If your search engine optimisation is worked on for these category pages, then people finding your website will see the list of all current posts relating to that merchant.

Use Tags Cleverly
One problem with a discount code website is that you should remove expired codes, or at least mark the expired codes as such. But keeping a track of this can be a nightmare, if not done properly. So leave yourself a clue.

All that you need to do is to use the tags to mark against each post an indicator as to when the offer expires. This could be an exact date or grouped together within a week. But by tidying up the expired codes, your visitors will find your site more useful.

Click To Reveal, Or Plain Text?
This can be a big debate. Some affiliates worry about losing sales if the codes are freely displayed and they do not force the important cookie onto the visitor’s machine, but click to reveal is also hated by many. I say be open, make life easy for yourself and just show the codes in plain text.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5630861

In short, there are two types of voucher codes. There are those that you make money for directly and those that you don’t. This seems a stupid way to start off a discussion on how to make money through a voucher code website, but actually both types of codes have a vital role in your website and you have to know the difference.

Affiliate selling
So how do you make money from some of these voucher codes? Well you use something called affiliate selling. Here, you send your readers over to another person’s website, where they can make purchases of the goods that you are in some way recommending.

In return for sending your visitors over to their website, if the visitor goes on to make a purchase then you are paid a commission on that sale in return. Obviously, there is a lot of trust concerned with such a set-up in that the affiliate (who is sending the traffic) has to trust the merchant to correctly and fully track the visitors and pay the full commissions that are earned. But on the other side of this, it is in the merchant’s interests to pay the commissions fully to incentivise its affiliates to work harder and send more traffic.

Affiliate Directories
To make all of this system a lot easier to work with, most affiliate programs are controlled through large systems. You can sign up to two or three of these and get access to a whole load of merchants. And to add confidence to the set-up, the affiliate tracking is controlled by the system, not the merchant.

So what voucher code websites do is to provide a range of affiliate links to different merchants through major affiliate schemes. As they display relevant voucher codes the visitor then clicks the affiliate link and if they then make a purchase (possibly using the voucher code) then a commission is earned.

The Click To Reveal Question
The problem can be making sure that visitors do click on the affiliate link. A lot of people do not do this because they do not see why someone else should make a commission from them, even though they are happy to get the benefits of using the voucher code. This is the reason why some people prefer to use the click to reveal technique to make sure the link is used, but this is very unpopular in many circles.

Non Affiliate Vouchers
And what about those voucher codes that don’t make you money? Well these add to the mix and make sure that your site is different to other people’s websites. They give your visitors a reason to be there and although they don’t give you a direct income, they do give you better traffic stats.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5630872

Tongue in cheek the three reasons I love affiliate marketing is Money. Money. Money! Wouldn’t you agree that those are three very good reasons to?

Although, what I have said is a little bit tongue in cheek, it is actually very true, one can make a lot of money online without ever owning a website. But that is not actually the three reasons I really want to talk about as there are three other reasons why consideration should be given to becoming an affiliate marketer. But you will agree that money is not a bad discussion point though.

I have already mentioned the first reason why it is a good choice when looking at which aspect of Internet marketing you would like to get involved in. As an affiliate marketer you do not have to create a product, which means you do not stress about the product creation, worry about hiring the ghostwriter to produce a website and sales pages and all the advertising material. As an affiliate your only requirement is to get traffic and sales, that reduces a lot of front up costs and time.

The second reason also means less time is spent on administration duties, these all lie with the product creator and that is you do not have to deal with any customer service issues. If there is a problem with the product the complaint will come through to the vendor, and if you have ever had the responsibility of looking after the customer service of a website you would realise this is a huge bonus.

The third reason is also an administrative reason and that is you do not have to be responsible for the stock control and delivery service or spend time with handling and shipping issues. Even if the product is a digital product there is no customer follow up required it is all hands off, secure the sale and walk away!

Affiliate marketing might not be the perfect solution for everyone and that it is very true that as the owner of a product one can create a great deal more money than one can as an affiliate, if the correct product is created. But in saying that the affiliate marketer can also make a great deal of money without the stress associated with product ownership so do not write it off as an option when looking at which Internet marketing strategy is best for you.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5628352

Are you successful in Internet marketing? Have you just got started or are you a seasoned failure? Most people never make a dime selling products on the Internet. The main reason? They don’t know what they are doing. They were attracted by the “If I can make one penny on only 10% of the people on the Internet, I’ll never have to work again.” While that sentiment is true, you are not the only person who has had that revelation.

There are hundreds of millions of websites. A study at Cornell University revealed that the top 3 search results get 79% of the clicks. The traffic that goes to the Internet to buy products is not evenly dispersed. To make those millions of dollars, you need to get to the top 3 spots. You have 2 choices, you can pay someone else to do it for you or you can learn how to do it yourself.

One of the most talked about Internet marketing training programs is Full Frontal Niche Marketing by Bryan Zimmerman and Jeremy Kersall. These guys are in-the-trenches affiliate marketers who do this on a daily basis. They don’t work for some large corporation and have access to millions of dollars for research or development or large payrolls. They do this by the seat of their pants. Probably the same way you are going to do it.

Their class is an over-the-shoulder approach where they record their computer screens while doing daily activities. The voice-over is them explaining what they are doing. The nice thing about this approach is they can talk at normal speed but if you miss something you can rewind and watch it again.

During the first week we covered the following topics. They also made a sale during the testing phase. Prior to watching this program I had no testing phase so I learned something already. My actual campaigns were in effect testing phases.

After watching the first week I had already gained a lot of respect for them. I learned why I probably have not been successful. I could actually see my evolution over the past couple of years. In the beginning I had chosen markets that were too competitive. Later I was choosing better markets but was not getting the traffic. Then I would chose a market and learned how to buy traffic but that means the margins were razor-thin and I barely broke even. Now I was in the mode where I wanted to learn and automate functions. I could have compressed this 2 year learning curve into a couple of weeks watching videos. I could then use the videos to duplicate a campaign step by step.

That’s exactly what these guys teach.

Day 1

Video Length 39:19

Intro by Instructors – Bryan Zimmerman and Jeremy Kersell

Steps in selecting a niche to market

What kind of niches should you consider

What to look for in the vendors websites

How a vendor page should flow

What are some things a vendors website should have

Day 2

Video Length 45:44

Testing a niche using article directories

What competitive factors should you consider

Estimating initial traffic BEFORE committing to a niche

A trick to maximize exposure and create more traffic

What patterns should you look for in the competition

Activities and time estimates for testing a niche

GOAL Setting and Planning

This supplemental video sets the tone for the business. If you don’t commit to a goal, your business will be a failure. I was very surprised to see this addition as its usually something that’s completely overlooked except by the most exceptional people in industry. The authors show you how to set reasonable, achievable goals on a long term and short term basis. This allows you to track progress and make adjustments when necessary.

Should be required viewing by anyone about to start a business.

Day 3

Video Length 31:13

Writing article

What are the 5 components of a good article?

How do you build needs to get someone predisposed to buy?

Day 4

Video Length 36:00

Analyze competitors websites to find strengths and weaknesses

Go to ezine to see how other websites promote same keywords

What do the other websites linked from the article look like. Steal the good stuff.

Look for ideas

Day 5 Video

Length 16:16

Analyzing click throughs (CTR)

What is a reasonable rate?

Using Facebook to test a niche

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5593960

You are reading this, so it is obvious that you already do some things on line, but how much do you use the Internet? Do you use it to its full potential? Do you just spend money on the Internet or do you make money on the Internet too?

You may say that you have never spent a penny on line, but that would not be true, would it? You have a computer that you almost certainly use generally for going on line and you pay for a broadband connection.

If you find yourself merely surfing to use up free time, why not set yourself the aim of using the Net to pay for your monthly connection fees and your next (replacement) computer or a new laptop? That could become a project, a task, a challenge, if you want.

If you have too much time on your hands this would be a decent excuse to extend your knowledge of computers, the Internet and business or business on line too.

If you already have a business, on or off line, you ought to be using the Internet to advertise it. If you are unfamiliar with the on line methods of marketing, we can stick with traditional off line ways that have been imitated on line.

For example, there are thousands of free on line classified advert web sites. Just enter ‘free classified ads’ into Google and stand back!

However, classifieds are generally perceived as not being as effectual as their off line counterparts. This is because idiots spam these free ads web sites from all around the world merely for a free back link and so many of the ads are irrelevant or not local.

Another kind of on line advertising imitated from the ‘real world’ is banner marketing. Business people can pay to have a banner placed on a relevant website in order to promote their firms. It is comparable to having a big advert in a newspaper. Unfortunately, this form of promoting does not work on line so well as it does off line either. Experts say that surfers expect items for free on line, so their eyes ‘look through’ banner adverts.

So how can you promote your business on line? Well, believe it or not, it by using the really top, up-market off line marketing techniques of having recommendations, reviews and articles written about the goods that you are advertising. This would cost thousands or more in a newspaper, but it is practically free on line.

The number one best manner of advertising on line is to write pieces on or about the issue of your products or firm and posting them to article directories with your URL in the byline. This will give you a back link which Google values very highly in working out your company’s ranking in their search engine.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5630492

When you acquire an office space the first thing you need to do is make it look professional to suit the purpose. This is imperative because employees tend to work more efficiently if the environment looks professional and sophisticated. This is one aspect that you need to keep in mind when you are looking for an office space. You can acquire one that already has a professional feel to it or you can re-vamp your office space to match your needs. Apparently this is not a difficult task if you know what you are doing because it will help you save and you will get what you desire. It is very essential to have a budget so that you don’t end up spending only on designing your office.

The best thing to do is to hire a professional interior designer who will tend to your needs and design the space the way you want it. Sometimes you don’t even need to tell them what they have to do because they are experts and can do their work without being told what they have to do. You must be thinking that hiring a professional interior designer will just add to your expenses, this is true in some cases, but if you hire the right one you will be able to acquire the desired results within your budget. You can hire one online as there are many interior designing companies that render their services to their clients. This way you can find one that you can hire by paying reasonable fees.

If you are good with picking paint, furniture etc. then you can make a list of the items you require and adorn your office with this yourself. This way the amount that you would have to spend on hiring an interior designer can be saved and you can use it for some other purpose. It is not that difficult to make an office space look professional within your budget. The only thing that you need to do is purchase the right stuff so that you won’t have to keep spending on the same thing time and time again. Your budget shouldn’t be too low as it is not always possible to get everything within your budget. You should consider everything first and then set a budget so that it works to your advantage.

You can take the help of you family and friends and get ideas from them on how to make your office look professional. If you can’t do this you can always take tips from the internet because the net has the best search engine from where you can get all the information that you require. Once you have decided on what you want exactly you can make your office look professional on a budget.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/5630618