Adult Affiliate Guide

As many Web designers soon discover, the vast majority of website traffic generally comes from search engines. In order to establish a successful website, it is absolutely vital achieve high rankings in search engine results. Unfortunately, search engine optimization (SEO) mistakes can prevent high quality sites from achieving top search rankings.

Succeeding in search engine marketing (SEM) is a surefire way to make it to the top of the major search engines. Your ranking in Google is one of the biggest determinants of website success, but you should also consider your MSN rank and Yahoo! rank as well.

With the abundance of search engine optimization tips and guidelines available, it can be difficult to determine which strategies are effective and which are not. The following common SEO mistakes and search marketing myths can help you avoid these errors and determine which tactics you should use in your optimization efforts.

Mistake No. 1 - Thinking search engine optimization is too difficult and complex

In reality, the basics of search engine optimization are relatively simple and easy to learn. Unfortunately, many Web designers simply feel intimidated and overwhelmed by SEO. The sheer quantity of often-contradictory advice makes optimization seem like an insurmountable task for beginners.

The biggest SEO mistake you can make is to ignore the effects of optimization. Instead, focus your attention on learning the basics of search engine optimization, such as how to select keywords and how to write effective page titles. By taking just a few simple steps, you can dramatically improve the search ranking of your website.

Mistake No. 2 - Believing that keywords are not that important

Getting started in affiliate marketing is really quite easy, but too often, many
people mistakenly think it’s a lot easier than it actually is. In most cases, the only
thing you need to do to join an affiliate program is to fill out a form. That’s the
easiest part that there is. But there is still work to be done if you are to be
successful.

The first objective is to find a profitable market or niche. This can easily be done
in Google or by reading magazines. Let’s start with Google. Do a search for any
topic that interests you. Interest in what you hope to sell is important, and later,
you will learn why. Make a list of things that interest you, and do a simple search
in Google for each thing.

Pay close attention to the sponsored ads. This tells you that money is being
spent in this market. Now, do a little logical thinking. As a business person, would
you spend money on advertising that is not making you money? Absolutely not.
So, if there are sponsored – paid -ads for a topic in Google, money is being
spent in this market, which means that there is profit.

The same is true with magazines. Visit your library and look at the past three
issues of a magazine that relates to your interest. Pay attention to the ads. Do
the same ads keep appearing? If the answer is yes, this is a profitable market,
and you are ready to move forward.

What about the competition? What about them? 90% of all people who sign up
for an affiliate program will not do anything to market it at all. Of the 10% that will
market the product, 90% of them will do it wrong, and won’t make much money, if
they make anything at all. The competition just decreased in size by leaps and
bounds. Don’t worry about the competition. Concentrate on promoting your
affiliate products and services to the best of your ability – let the competition
worry about you.

Once you’ve chosen your market, or your niche, you are almost ready to get

Here’s a link to a list of dofollow social bookmarking sites. That means if you post on them and include a link to your site, it will count as a backlink, which is good for the SEO of your site.

VERY useful list.

List of DoFollow Social Bookmarking Sites | Make Money and Create Wealth Online

Also I have found this site which you can use to post to multiple social sites. Social bookmarking services poster and community websites submitter: digg.com reddit.com netscape.com propeller.com Del.icio.us Stumbleupon.com etc.

It will take time to post to the various sites, but no-one is suggesting you do it all at once! Just build it into your schedule and add to a few at a time.

Also remember that the status of these sites could change. The web, as you know, is notorious for changing on a day to day basis. So always check.

Thousands of people do this because they can start making money almost immediately without the expense and time needed to produce a product themselves. Having a website is not necessary and there is no interaction with your potential customers beyond getting them to the sales page.

Getting involved in affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to make a lot of money on the Internet, but one should not go into it blindly. As an affiliate you must invest some time in research, this is absolutely necessary. Know what products you want to promote, how much you will make on each sale and the return rate of the product. If possible it’s a good idea to buy or request a sample so you know the product inside and out.

As a first time affiliate it’s a good idea to start with reasonably priced products making at least 50% commission. The most critical part of affiliate marketing is of course marketing. The issue of traffic is one of the most central and fundamental issues in making any money online. You can separate your marketing campaign into two distinct groups, paid and non-paid. Free marketing can be quite effective if you know how it’s done. Here is a list of the most popular methods for getting traffic for free.

Article marketing – A great way to increase your ranking with search engines and direct targeted traffic to your sites. You should write about what you know. If you do not have more information on your topic than does the average reader you should probably choose another topic. Write your article in a conversational tone so that it’s easy to read. Don’t make your article too long, remember it’s an article you’re writing not a book. A length of 450-750 words should be ideal. Your article should be informative and about your website topic. If its just useless information your readers will expect the same from your website.

The biggest secret to successful affiliate marketing is this… It’s all about the pre-sale.

Putting up banners and links will get you some conversions - if you’re lucky. But if that’s your main attempt at affiliate marketing, then it’s a big waste of your time and effort.

People visiting your site (your readers, web visitors) are looking for information. And if you’re doing your job well and putting together great information, then your articles and reviews will be indexed and well ranked by the search engines - making it THAT much easier for these searchers to find your site instead of someone else’s. The more search engine traffic you’re getting, the better.

This is because people WHO ARE MOSTLY READY TO BUY search for reviews and articles about their products of choice. Sometimes they want to see their options for a product category, but often times they just want to justify to themselves why it’s OK to buy that product they really want.

So - they want to see an honest, objective review of a product before they buy it. They want your personal seal of approval. So find great products, provide and honest review with benefits and weaknesses, recommend the product, and offer affiliate links to purchase them.
But what if you don’t like the product you’re recommending? Is that dishonest? Will it still work?

A question plaguing most beginners with affiliate marketing… "Isn’t it dishonest to recommend something you don’t like?"

Of course it’s dishonest to recommend something you don’t actually believe in. And here’s a little secret. If you write a dishonest review, your readers will pick up on that, and they’ll probably move on and NOT buy using your affiliate links.

So here’s a radical solution. Focus on doing reviews and writing articles for products that you LIKE and can actually RECOMMEND.

Ah, the mysterious and sometimes black art of affiliate marketing… the well kept secret of the most successful Internet marketers.

Many people have tried and failed to make any money online with affiliate marketing… usually because they give up way too quickly. Fact is, affiliate marketing takes some up front effort to get optimized and working right, but when it’s working, life is very, very good.

Most bloggers only use Google AdSense to monetize their sites. AdSense is a great revenue option, but affiliate marketing can easily bring in double your AdSense revenue, WITHOUT impacting your AdSense earnings.

What’s more, the work you put into developing a good affiliate marketing strategy will pay off for months and years to come. You only do the work once, and it keeps on giving! Now that’s working smarter, not harder.

Passive income, and Blog Monetization Zen.

The majority of online users judge a website in a matter of seconds. In order to reach your readers and get your message across, you need to capture their attention in the blink of an eye. Careful website layout that places key content above the fold is one of the most important website design techniques for achieving the best usability, establishing effective conversion techniques and increasing readership.

What is Above the Fold Design?

How can you grab reader attention before they click away to another website? You might have the best content on the Internet, but it will not do much good if potential readers never see it. In order to hook readers, establish brand recognition and inspire repeat visits, you need to take advantage of the benefits of above the fold design.

Above the fold website design places the most important information on the top half of the page. For websites, this means placing content at the top of you site so that users can find it without scrolling. By using this highly effective website design technique, you can ensure that your site provides the best usability possible.

What Should You Include Above the Fold?

1. Your business name

The first element you should include in your affiliate website design is your business name. Who are you? What kind of information or service can you provide? By featuring a logo with your business name and tagline, you can quickly and easily let readers know who you are and the service you provide. Placing this information above the fold also helps build brand recognition and customer loyalty.

2. Navigation

As you learn more and more about the affiliate industry by perusing affiliate forums, network creative offerings and simply chatting with other affiliates, you'll notice that the term "datafeed" comes up more and more. But what exactly is a datafeed, and how can it benefit your affiliate marketing plans?

What are datafeeds, anyway?

A "datafeed" (also referred to as a "product feed") is code offered by affiliate programs that enables you to display an automatically generated and updated product guide on your website. This product guide generally features a small image of the product, a brief description of the product and a price. Datafeeds are often broken down into categories and SKU numbers, enabling you as an affiliate to display only products by the categories or SKUs of your choice.

What are the benefits of datafeeds?

For Merchants

Datafeeds offer many benefits, both from a merchant perspective as well as an affiliate's. Merchants that benefit the most from datafeeds are generally retail in nature and offer a large number of products in a number of categories and are regularly adding to their product roster. One perfect example would be a ticketing merchant such as Celebrity Seats, who add hundreds of tickets to their database and datafeed on a daily basis.

Merchants that are regularly updating pricing (through regular sales, etc.) can also benefit from the datafeed. The datafeed allows merchants to include all of their products as potential offerings to their affiliates through the maintenance of a feed, as opposed to relying on product-specific banners or text links.

For Affiliates

The job of a search engine is to give the Web shopper the most relevant results. Just like in the Yellow Pages, you wouldn't want to flip to auto parts, call the number listed in the biggest ad on the page only to be connected with a plumber just because the plumber happened to pay extra money to get listed in auto parts ad because he knew that's what people were looking for. In the early days of the Internet, things like that did happen. There was much abuse when it came to keywords like adding popular keywords to a site and making them only visible to the search engines. Or, adding keywords in the code that weren't site relevant, but were very popular searches – sex, for example. Fortunately, the search engines cracked down on this kind of practice and in order to rank high in the search results not only do you need keyword-rich copy, but this copy needs to be added to and updated frequently.

What the Spiders are Looking For

Spiders crawl the web regularly to re-index pages,and they particularly love Websites that are frequently updated with fresh content and information. This includes adding new pages to your site. A good rule of thumb is the more pages, the better. Why is this? As I mentioned above, it is the job of the search engine to give the Web shopper the most relevant and up-to-date information possible. That's what users are looking for – the latest information. Therefore, when you add fresh content to you site on a regular basis, the search engines will pick up on this.

Quality Content Makes for a Quality Website

Affiliate marketing is a low risk, high potential business. This is one of the reasons that it is becoming so popular. Many new entrepreneurs start their businesses off with affiliate programs. Here are some of the reasons why this business model is considered low risk:

1. Low start up costs: Affiliate programs are usually free to join. Tools and ad copy come with the package and the only expense incurred will be the cost of promotion. Of course you will be starting your own website and newsletter, but this will not really cost too much. If you start with a simple website template you can actually do it yourself. There are no office expenses or employee overheads.

2. No inventory: Of course you will not have to buy product, except for personal use. This saves a lot of money and means you will not have the risk of having to keep unsold inventory.

3. No Employees: You don't need employees to pay or hassle with. The only time you will have to pay people to work for you is when you outsource or hire others for a project. You can do this fairly cheaply when you use freelancers.

4. Very Little Customer support: One of the best parts about affiliate marketing is the fact that there is little or no customer service needed. Usually your sponsor as the actual seller will handle all this.

Of course affiliate marketing has a lot of potential. This will depend on exactly how hard you wish to work your business. In fact once you have done your research into each and every promotion you do, you will be seeing good returns on your advertising dollar. Even with affiliate marketing you cannot expect too much for the first three months but after that it will increase as you expend promotions and gather tools, so that you will realize a growing return on investment.