Saturday, April 13, 2013

Google AdWords-alternatives

When it comes to running a PPC campaign, the first name that comes to your mind is AdWords from Google. While this is a really good ad network, it is also a very expensive one. Even with careful keyword selection and targeting, it is not an exception to pay more for AdWords ads than you make in revenue. Cost is the main reason to look for alternatives to AdWords. Alternatives do exist such Fortunately, and the best is that some of them could even outperform AdWords in terms of return on investment. Here are 12 great AdWords alternatives to consider.

Facebook paid ads are a great alternative, especially if you are targeting a younger audience. Facebook is the number one social network and (almost) the whole world has an account with it Facebook ads offer lots options you can choose age of targeting, location, gender, hobbies of the audience to watch your ads. However, do have in mind that with Facebook generally the click through is lower, so don't get discouraged if on Facebook you get fewer clicks on your ads than on other networks this is pretty normal.

Bing and Yahoo are Google's competitors not only in the area of search engines but so in online ads. Yahoo!/Bing ads, formerly known as Microsoft AdCenter appeared after the ad networks of Microsoft and Yahoo! joined forces in order to beat Google AdWords. Yahoo!/Bing ads isn't a cheap alternative to AdWords but you should also consider it because it is really good. Basically they offer search advertising (i.e. ads are in the search results of Bing search engine) placed and if you manage to correctly identify your keywords, you can see huge results.

The biggest online marketplace is also a huge ad board. Amazon product ads place your ads on product pages. This makes the positioning very targeted because if a user is reading about a product similar to yours, your ads are likely to catch his or her attention. Since Amazon sells everything but space ships, it is a good alternative for almost any niche because chances are there will be numerous products in your niche to publish your ads alongside.

In addition to the big three AdWords alternatives (i.e., Facebook, Yahoo!/Bing ads, and Amazon), there are many smaller ones that still serve millions of impressions a month. One of them is Clicksor. It isn't the cheapest alternative because it has $0.05 cents a click minimum but it is a good one because its conversions are known to be excellent. If clicks are expensive for you, check the other forms of ads offered by Clicksor, such as pop-unders and interstitials that are CPM or mixed CPM + clicks.

In terms of cost, 7Search, is probably the most cost-effective ad network. It has low per click minimum, high conversions (though this depends on the niche) but so high numbers of fraudulent clicks, as some marketers complain. Nevertheless, even with these allegedly high numbers of fraudulent clicks, it is still a very good alternative to Google AdWords.

AdBrite is another big ad network and some marketers claim it works really well for them. Costs vary a lot depending on your keywords, so as an alternative it isn't necessarily very cheap (though the same keywords cost much less than on AdWords). AdBrite offers lots of flexibility in targeting numerous ad sizes and types (text ads, banners, BritePic, which are cute photo ads), and decent conversions-what more can you ask for?

BidVertiser is very similar to AdSense and AdWords. It is another big network of publishers' sites. What is most distinguishing about BidVertiser is its relatively low CPC with moderate to good conversions. It isn't an alternative for all niches but overall is a good choice.

Dynamic oxygen is a relatively unknown ad network but with some good offers. Similarly to Clicksor and AdBrite, they offer many more types in addition to PPC. Its PPC division is not very expensive ($0.03 per click min bid) but conversions could be a problem because dynamic oxygen doesn't have that many sites to match your ad with, so your ad might end in sites that are not completely relevant to your niche.

Infolinks is great for intext ads. Its clicks are cheap, but targeting is a bit of a problem. It has a requirement that you spend at $15 least a month, which isn't much (many marketers more spend a day ten times on ads), especially compared to the $50,000 a month min at Chitika, for example.

BuySellAds is an ad marketplace. It's not a PPC network but you can buy ad space on sites of your choice. Prices vary a lot depending on the traffic of the site but it is possible to buy on above the fold spot on a relatively high-traffic site for $15 a month or less. Because of this, BuySellAds could turn more profitable than PPC. If you well choose the sites, you can do great because for a flat fee a month you might be getting targeted clicks at under 1 cent a click.

Adknowledge Miva is just one more ad network to consider. It offers cheap PPC with decent conversions, at least in most niches. They have a huge base of publishers, which means you stand a better chance for your ads to be run on relevant sites. Some webmasters have complained about fraudulent clicks but unfortunately these are present with any ad network.

If you are interested in ads on popular blogs rather than ads on search engines or other types of sites, BlogAds is the place for you. They specialize in ads on popular blogs, so you might want to check if the blogs you are looking for are listed there. They so do social media advertising, so if your audience is to be found on social media, you could consider this as an alternative to reach it.

It is not possible to say which of the AdWords alternative is best. In some cases one network might do brilliantly, in others it might be a complete failure. This is why you'd better test with a small budget how a network works for you. Try the landing page same with multiple ad networks and see which converts best. And never forget you must always measure performance because even if one ad network used to perform well in the past, things change and you wouldn't like to waste your money on expensive clicks that don't convert well.


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How to get traffic from Pinterest

Pinterest is the latest social network to take the world by storm. While social network skeptics will call it just another site, the fact is that it is different from the other countless similar sites. What is more, you can use Pinterest to successfully promote your business.

Pinterest pinboard defines itself as an online. It's a place where you pin (mostly) images and other stuff you find interesting and share them with the world. Similarly to the other social networks, you follow people and have followers. So other users can repin your pins, thus spreading the word.

While there are no limits on the type of stuff you can pin, Pinterest is not suitable for all kinds of brands. It works best if your product/service can be presented in a visual way (i.e. clothes, furniture, etc.) and in this case the publicity you and your products get on Pinterest could do miracles for you.

In order to make the most out of Pinterest rather than waste your time or even worse - do damage to your brand, you need to know how to use it here are some tips to help you with this.

As any social network, Pinterest is a huge thief of time. You need to spend time on it daily in order to be able to follow what others are pinning, to comment on it, etc. You can't expect benefits from Pinterest, if you are not active on it on a daily basis.

Pinterest is about visual appeal. This is why you can't go with crappy images taken with your 10 year old mobile. You need images with professional quality because otherwise you will be doing your brand more harm than good. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to hire a professional photographer – with the right equipment and some skills you can create the images on your own.

When you keep your followers interested, they develop the habit of visiting your board every now and then. One trick to keep your users interested is to post in the series. In other words, if you have 10 images you want to post, don't post them all at once but post them one a day in the course of 10 days, that this is image 1 of 10, 2 of 10, etc.

If you want to get repins, you need to make it easier for users to do it one way of doing it is by adding a pin-it button to your site. Check what pin-it buttons are available for your platform (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, etc), pick one of them, put it on a visible place on your site and begin counting your pins/repins.

People are hardly coming to your board to see your products, so post that will other interesting pictures attract users (or keep them, if you already managed to attract them). This helps to attract new users to your account because when they see a cool pic somewhere on Pinterest, chances are they will visit your profile and have a look at your products there. If you only post images of your products, you won't be able to attract random visitors that much.

Photos are the bait but even the most unambiguous photo wants to benefit from a good description. Additionally, a good description will help your images rank better with search engines, which means more traffic for you. Be concise and precise descriptions in your and your users will certainly appreciate it.

When you use hashtags and when you categorize your pins, will this makes them look more organized and they be easier to find. On the other hand, do not use hashtags at large - i.e. add a hashtag only if you will really need it because otherwise your pins look spammy and users will skip them.

When you pick whom to follow, consider not only if their pins are interesting but large group so if they have a of followers. When you follow such users, and especially if they decide to follow you back, their huge follower base is an undisputed advantage when they decide to repin something you have posted. With such power users one repin can bring crowds to your board!

Like any social network, interaction with other users is key on Pinterest. Because of this, it makes a lot of sense to like and comment on other people's pins. These give you more visibility, not to mention that in return you can get some repins, likes and comments from other users. However, as with hashtags, you need to have measure - i.e. don't repin, comment, or like every single pin you see on your screen, because this devaluates your contribution.

Pinterest is not only about static stuff, there is a video section as well. Of course, this is not YouTube but if you can create a cool video about your business, don't be shy to post it. So, in addition to images, you can use various charts and infographics - these are especially popular among users.

Pinterest is an interesting place and you will hardly have to force yourself to use it of course, its main advantage for you is the publicity you get. You might not be able to make a sale on Pinterest but the exposure and the traffic to your site are valuable prerequisites for making more sales, so if your products are suitable for the Pinterest format and audience, do not hesitate but promote them there.


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How to use SlideShare for driving traffic

When we want to drive traffic to a site, we usually start with the free ways to do it however, we frequently don't use the best free alternative simply because we don't know about them. An example of a great free alternative many marketers don't search all is SlideShare use to the fullest or at. This is a huge miss because SlideShare can really bring good traffic (and more than this) for free.

SlideShare is a social media site is one of the many but so one of the best. However, unlike Twitter or Facebook, you don't share (only) messages - you share presentations instead. Presentations have been used for business and personal needs for decades and they are a popular way to express yourself visually.

On SlideShare you upload your can presentation and if it gets popular, it can be viewed by millions of people. If you know how to make the presentation, you can not only get traffic to your site, but you can thus improve your rankings with Google, expand your Fellowship on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc, attract more subscribers to your newsletter, or boost your brand / reputation online.

If used properly, SlideShare can really do a great job. Here are some tips how to make the most of SlideShare.

The rules for becoming popular on SlideShare are not that difficult to understand, though they certainly require lots of effort from you. Here is what you should and shouldn't do, if you want to harness the potential of SlideShare.

The most important rule for success on SlideShare is that your presentations must be of the highest quality only no exceptions here. This applies not only to content but so to design, so if you feel you lack the skills to create a rocking presentation that you'd better hire somebody else to do it for you, than upload presentations with poor quality.

As for content, usually the most popular presentations are either something sensational, or something incredibly useful, or something that plays with readers' emotions. Still, if if in one of these three groups, this isn't a it will guarantee your presentation become popular.

When you prepare your presentation, you might want to make it a bit more sensational by exaggeration. Needless to say, this is a very wrong approach, and it can turn against you. Your presentations need to be honest and true - don 't exaggerate, don' t overhype because this will only make users distrust you.

As for the form of the presentation, it is best to save it rather than as PDF.PPS because with so many devices you never know how a.PPS will look like. PDF looks always the same, so stick with it.

The overall quality of your presentation is very important but if the title and description are boring, users won't even bother to open the link and see all the greatness. This is why you need to write a memorable and informative title and an interesting description that click on it instead of go will make users away. In order to get maximum SEO effect, both the title and description must have your keywords but do not overstuff because this will have the adverse effect.

Remember, this is a presentation, not a novel, so you do not have enough space for complex structures and / or lengthy explanations. Keep your structure simple to follow and your points short of this is the recipe for a successful presentation. For the text Additionally, use large font sizes and try not to include more than 7 lines of text per slide.

While SlideShare doesn't allow blatant self promotion, you are allowed to include the URL to your site. Don't miss this opportunity! You can include the URL at the end of the presentation, so after users have finished viewing it, if they want more information, they can get it from your site.

SlideShare is a very high ranking site and it is great for long tail keywords in particular. Because of this, you should include some long tail keywords in the description, or even better – in the title of your presentation. This does miracles for ranking in Google, so think a lot exactly which long tail keywords you want to target.

We already mentioned that your presentation must be of supreme quality. Content is important but when it's not packaged in attractive cover, users won't pay much attention to it this is why you need to make your presentation visually attractive. Make a very attractive starting slide because this draws lots of attention.

However, be careful not to overdose. Your presentation must be not only attractive but it so must be stylish. To achieve this, don't overload it with effects because this will make it cluttered and / or heavy to open.

No. of matter how great your presentation is, if you don't promote good it, it might not get traffic. This is why, when you upload the presentation, share the link on Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking sites, Pinterest, and on your blog to ensure it gets maximum exposure.

SlideShare is great when you are looking for more twitter followers or Facebook friends. If you want to expand your social media following, include not only your site but for URL so links to your social profiles to grow your following there.

Similarly, if you want to get more subscribers to your newsletter, mention it in your presentation and include the link where people can join.

With all the exposure you can get on SlideShare, it's an awesome way to build your brand and reputation. Of course, this will hardly happen after you upload a single presentation, even if it is the greatest of the greatest but if you have dozens of presentations with top quality, this will help to establish yourself and your brand online.

If you see that the free services on SlideShare are working well for you and you want to see if you can get more out of the site, you may want to consider paid services, for instance LeadShare. This paid service helps to get leads. The only problem is that it is very expensive but for the right audience it might be worth.

SlideShare is a top site where you can get many benefits for your site and business. It is true this isn't the easiest way preparing quality presentations is an effort for sure but since it is free and powerful, it it (if you haven't done it so far) to Lake will makes sense to try if your site and business benefit from it as well.


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How to check A site's rank

When we build backlinks, submit guest posts, or simply advertise on a site, we want popular sites because these are the ones that are working. While no ranking algorithm is perfect and we can never be sure that the sites we have picked are good ones (or that they will remain so in the future), here are some ranking services to help you decide if a particular site is a high ranking one or not.

The page rank service from Google is the most popular way to measure the quality and popularity of a site but it alone isn't enough to give US the correct idea if a site is good or not. There are too many sites with inflated PR, so we can't trust PR alone.

The principle of PR is that sites are divided into 11 categories with ranks from 0 to 10, respectively (plus the N/A category of sites that are not included in the ranking as well). The concept is that the higher the PR, the better the site. Sites that have a PR of 10 are very rare. Sites with PR of 7-9 are more common but still they are a minority because this page rank denotes a very high quality site. If a site has a PR of 5 or 6, this means this site is viewed by Google as a quality site. PR of 3 and 4 are for sites that are about the average. PR of 0 to 2 are for sites that are below the average and therefore aren't the top backlinking candidate.

Unlike PR, Alexa doesn't divide sites in groups. Rather, it arranges them in a list. The most popular sites, such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter are at the top. The concept here is that the lower the Alexa ranking, the more popular the site is. Sites with Alexa ranking under 10 K are considered exceptionally popular. Sites with Alexa ranking of 10 K to 30 K enjoy very good popularity. Sites of Alexa ranking up to 100 K do get more than decent traffic. It could be speculated that good sites span up to 200-250 K and everything above this are sites with low traffic.

It is best if you use together with PR Alexa. While there is some correlation between the two, it is not an exception to find sites with PR6 and Alexa of more than 100 K, or with PR3 or 4 and Alexa over a million. Just cross-check a site in two or more ranking services and this will allow you to determine its relevance.

One of the perks of Alexa is that it thus allows to see which country the majority of a site's traffic comes from.

Compete.com isn't as through as the first two services because they gather their data from a sample of 2 million US users only but still it helps to get an idea if a site is popular in the US or not. When you analyze Quantcast data, you will notice that frequently sites with good PR and Alexa are almost unheard of in the States and vice versa.

Quantcast is a service mainly targeted at the US market. It of thus gathers data from a sample rather than the general Internet population but in its case the sample is comprised of Web site masters, who insert a code snipped on their sites, thus allowing to track visitors. Quantcast so gather their data from ISPs and ad companies. Needless to say, Quantcast isn't very reliable because there are millions of great sites that don't use its services but still it is one more service to check, if you are wondering if a site is good or not.

CustomRank.com provides a service that combines several metrics at once to offer a joint ranking. At present, the services it aggregates are PageAuthority, DomainAuthority, MozTrust, MozRank, Alexa, as well as some other metrics, such as load times, date created, and whether it is listed in DMOZ or not. The good thing about CustomRank is that it tries to balance one service with the other to produce a fair rating.

MozTrust, MozRank, together with DomainAuthority and PageAuthority are all methodologies developed by SEOmoz, one of the most reputable names in SEO. Therefore, it can be concluded that these two metrics are very useful for SEO purposes. MozTrust global link trust score measures the, while MozRank measures link popularity. The more reputable a site's backlinks are, the higher the MozTrust score. Both MozTrust and MozRank use scales from 1 to 10 and here the rule is the higher, the better.

ComScore is another company that uses a sample of 2 million users to provide rankings and therefore isn't as reliable as PR or Alexa. Similarly to compete and Quantcast, it is more useful when you plan your advertising budget than when you are looking for sites to get backlinks from but still the top sites on the Internet are present in ComScore of lists, so this service can be used as well.

Google trends is mainly about search volume of keywords but one of its less-known uses is to compare how two sites fare over time or in different regions. So, if you have some sites you want to get past data for so that you can predict their possible future popularity, you can do it with Google trends (Alexa so offers the trendline for a site over time).

Ranking.com is one more service to consider if you are displeased with the rest. It's kind of limited because only the top one million sites are included but if the site you are interested in is not on the list, this speaks a lot about its popularity. Ranking collects its data from browser to IE toolbar, which means the data is skewed because no Firefox and Apple users are part of the sample.

The list of ranking services doesn't end here but these are the ones that are more or less the top ones. Use them in conjunction (i.e. 3 or more together) to determine if a site is good for backlinks. Some of these services are available as Firefox extensions, so get the extension and you will know more about a site the moment you open it.


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Top paying AdSense Keywords list 2013

SEO tools 15 minute SEO SEO tutorial SEO articles SEO SEO comics SEO glossary SEO Quiz puzzle Web tools small biz SEO SEO software Web Directory SEO help Web traffic

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How to choose a SEM Company

If you have reached the point (and sooner or later we all do), when free SEO alone isn't bringing you the results you want, maybe it is time to move to paid SEM. If you can do it on your own, it's great but having in mind how much work is involved, it is quite possible that even though you have the skills, you won't have the time and effort required to run SEM campaigns on your own.

This case, your best bet is to hire a SEM company. While the process isn't very different from the process of hiring a SEO company, there are some specifics you need to take into account. Here are some tips to help you choose a SEM company.

Results from past campaigns speak volumes about the skills of the company you want to pick. Obviously, if their previous campaigns were a failure, you wouldn't pick them. Ask what past campaigns they had, what the return on investment, how these campaigns were executed (i.e. where did they publish PPC ads AdWords, or smaller networks), etc. It is true that you can't be given access to trade secrets, so some of the questions you want to ask might be OK, but if a SEM company can't show results, this is a reason to move on to the next on your list.

Their past results might look gorgeous (or at least the set of campaigns they tell you about) but this alone isn't enough. It is quite possible that the campaings you were told about aren't representative about their work, so it's pretty misleading. Therefore, you need more proof about their skills.

You can ask them for references and search with Google and forums what their customers say. While this isn't a 100 percent evidence either, if there is a lot of negative feedback about a SEM company, this almost always means they are no good. Of course, it is possible that this negative feedback isn't authentic, i.e. their competitors are bad-mouthing them but if you find genuine negative/positive opinions, do take them in earnest.

One point to consider is the Association of services they offer. Do they have all the services you need? If they don t, you still could consider them but in this case you will have to look elsewhere for the services they don't offer. It is a bit of a burden for you to split the work but if the company you want to hire is very good at what it offers, it makes sense to hire them for part of the work only and search for the other services elsewhere.

With SEM, it is more than vital to have data about results as soon as possible. Real time reporting is best because it allows to adjust your budget depending on the results but it could be very time consuming. Once a day is more or less acceptable, though still you could blow your whole budget in a single day without getting any results.

Because of this, it matters really a lot (i.e. in a report, a spreadsheet, or any other way) and how frequently your SEM company reports you the results. Some companies might not report at all by the end of the campaign and if this is the case, just leave this SEM company you can loose a lot, if you hire them.

If you want quality, you won't find it in the 'department store' type of companies. Look for boutique companies i.e. small companies focused on quality that do only or mainly SEM. You might think that bigger is better but this certainly isn't the case, especially when you are a small client. Big companies won't have the time and motivation to serve you well, while boutique companies continued to provide better care (though don't take this for granted).

Many companies offer SEM services but not for all of them this is a core business. SEM companies offer Web design / development as a secondary service. As a result, frequently quality and expertise are huge problem when SEM/SEO isn't the core business of the company. If the company you are interested in seems to be a Jack of all trades (and master of none), it's way too risky to hire them.

No matter how great a SEM company looks according to the other criteria, one thing you must never forget is the contract. While sometimes you won't have to sign any contract at all, there are so cases when you are presented with a 10 + page legal gibberish that even to experienced lawyer won't understand completely.

The problem with contracts is that they might contain clauses that really hurt. For instance, the SEM company might want to tie you with huge penalties, if you leave them before the 5 + year contract expires, or they might have a door open to constant price increases while keeping you tied. Needless to say, if you see any similar unfair clauses in the contract, just move to the next company on the list.

Similarly to the process of choosing a SEO company, you would want to see how the SEM company you are about to choose is performing for their own site. Of course, the number of backlinks and their quality are more important for a SEO company than for a SEM one, so if their organic ranking isn't superb, this doesn't necessarily mean they are bad at SEM. However, in any case, if their site is not ranking well, this isn't a good sign You may use some of the ranking services, not only PageRank, to get a better idea of how they are performing.

Price shouldn't be your most important criterion when making any choice but still it is not something to neglect. If the price is not right (i.e. it's either too low or too high), this should ring a bell. When it is too low, you must have concerns about quality good quality comes at a price. On the other hand, if the price is too high, this isn't a guarantee for quality it smells much like a ripoff.

There are many factors to consider when choosing a SEM company. While it isn't rocket science, there are many things to watch for. If you don't choose a good SEM company, this could do you more harm than good, not to mention how much money you can lose. This is why it makes sense to exercise caution it's better to be safe than sorry.


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Friday, April 12, 2013

Best affiliate programs

Almost always, affiliate programs are the most profitable way to monetize a site. While PPC ads can bring you money, it's affiliate ads that can bring you real money. However, it matters a lot which affiliate networks you choose. There are thousands of affiliate networks but needless to say, not all of them are equal. If you pick a bad affiliate network, you are simply wasting your time. This is why we compiled a list of the best affiliate programs for you to start with.

Commission Junction is one of the first affiliate networks, but it still is going more than well. It has a huge selection of offers, including numerous exclusive offers you won't find anywhere else. Most of the brands that have an affiliate program can be found on CJ but the problem is that for popular brands you need to be approved by the advertiser. Very often when the advertiser isn't accepting new affiliates, you get rejected even if your site and promotional of skills are out of this world but still there are many other brands to try on CJ. The commission Council there aren't the highest in the industry but still it is possible to find products that pay 50% or more in commissions.

ShareASale is another huge affiliate network with offers in many niches. It has both leads, sales, and even clicks, so the choice is really overwhelming. As a whole, the commissions there are generous, though this certainly depends on the advertiser and the product. SAS has a choose from huge pool of • and to thousands of products. The downside is that many sites are rejected, so if your site isn't a good one, it is quite possible you won't be admitted at all.

Amazon is another very well known affiliate network. In terms of choice of offers it beats every other network - you are free to promote any product sold almost on Amazon. The commissions aren't very generous but you can use it to monetize almost any niche. Amazon is one of the best choices for books and CDs but it displays so well for health products, household appliances and other stuff, food, etc.

EBay is also a great choice for almost any niche, though its selection of offers isn't as huge as Amazon's. Admission to the program itself could be a problem because they have many affiliates and are very picky when new affiliates want to join. In terms of commissions, this isn't the highest paying network but if you can reach good sales volumes, you can make decent money with it.

ClickBank is the best choice for eBooks and other digital products. Its user interface and logic isn't the best you find can and very often you will miss great products simply because you can't find them but as a whole, this is one of the best networks with really generous commissions. Due to their payment terms, ClickBank is kind of hard for a beginner because if you don't make sales you are charged for this but nevertheless, it is still very worthy, especially if you lot have of traffic to your site and are serious in your affiliate efforts.

Max Bounty doesn't have the thousands of offers the bigger networks have but it is a really good network. It has many leads and many exclusive offers. It also has some of the easiest type email transfers of offers, which do not pay much but convert much more easily than sales and other types of leads. Many offers allow search traffic, so you can start promoting them right away, even without the need to create a landing page for them.

Peer Fly is similar to Max bounty but they offer more products to promote. They therefore have many leads and many exclusive offers, as well as a good selection of email submits, so if you to start easy affiliate products are looking for some with, give it a try.

LinkShare is somehow similar to CJ and Amazon because they offer products in many niches, though the selection is certainly not that huge. One of the best things about them is that if you are from the US, the $1 payout makes it easy to get your money soon, rather than have to wait till you reach $100, as the threshold for most other networks is. One of the biggest advertisers here is Buy.com, where you can find products in many niches. Their commissions are kind of low but still there are products that pay 50% or more. The offers are mainly sales - leads, if any, are very rare, so if you are looking for leads, this isn't you network.

Compared to the others, never blue ads isn 't the best network but if you didn' t have success with the other networks list on the, give them a try. They are picky about the affiliates they accept but it isn't that difficult to join them. They do have exclusive offers, so won't hurt it, if you try them.

PepperJam is also a good affiliate network, though it isn't as big as the others on the list. It has good retail offers, so if you are looking for to promote Amazon-like site, it is possible to find it on PepperJam.

More niche is last on the list not because it is worse than the others but because it is a niche network that won't be of interest to the majority of webmasters, who don't have sites in the niches it covers. More niche is great for weight loss, health and beauty, especially if you have UK traffic because all its • are in these niches and there are many top UK brands. Of course, you can sell these products to a global audience but for UK are the best fit. Their commissions are very generous and they offer tons of affiliate material, not only the standard banners and text ads.

There is a lot of money in affiliate ads. It is true that while you learn the ropes you might be making next to nothing but this isn't a reason to give up. If you have good, targeted traffic, affiliate offers are your best bet. Join the networks on the list, find suitable offers, start promoting them, and chances are you will make decent money with this.


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How to use guest posts for back links and promotion

Guest posts are a great SEO and marketing tool if used correctly, of course. After the demise of article directories and changes in the search ranking algorithms that made many other ways of getting backlinks obsolete, guest posting on reputable sites remains one of the best ways to make your site visible to the world (and search engines).

Basically, the two benefits from guest posts are. First, you get free exposure in front of a new audience (i.e. the audience of the blog you are guest posting to) and second, you get a backlink or two to your site. If you post on a really popular blog, you can get substantial amounts of direct traffic to your site and in the ideal case, when your product is of interest to the visitors from the other blog, you can make sales.

The second advantage the backlink is the main reason why guest poster submit content for free to other blogs. If the site is a high ranking one and it is in your niche, then this backlink is especially valuable.

One of the reasons why some people are skeptical to the power of guest posts is that they believe this is just the good old article marketing. While there are some similarities between the two, guest posting is very different from article marketing. When you are guest posting, you are submitting to blogs in a niche, while when you submit to article directories that generally cover all topics, links and traffic you get are less relevant.

With guest posts, you can't submit hundreds of posts a month simply because there aren't that many good blogs where you could submit content, so article spamming is harder to do with guest posting, if you are doing it right. You pick only relevant high quality blogs for submission, and as a result, the backlinks you get are valuable even after the Google Panda update.

With article directories you can have automated submissions that blast your article with dozens of directories at once but with guest posting this doesn't happen you write article exclusively for one blog, contact each blog owner in advance and only after he or she approves your post, it goes live. Very often you can publish only 5 or even fewer posts a month simply because not all suitable blogs in your niche are interested in publishing stuff from other bloggers.

One of the key moments for the successful use of guest posts is to find good blogs to post on. The first you can is search with Google for guest post your keyword to find blogs in your niche that accept guest posts.

After you find a couple of blogs in your niche that accept guest posts, the next step is to filter the good ones only. You do this with the help of the various ranking services. After the blog passes this test i.e. it has good parameter according to the criteria of ranking services, you still need to browse through the blog to see if it is a quality one or full or crap because it is quite possible that a site has good metrics but its content isn't something you would like to be affiliated with.

Alternatively, you may search for lists of sites that accept guest posts or join MyBlogGuest.com (a site where bloggers looking for guest posts and authors of guest posts get together) but still the ranking check and the manual content check is to be done by you. You may therefore want to check if a site is blacklisted by guest poster because there are many dishonest Web masters, who simply steal your content to remove the links or change your byline, which virtually renders your guest post useless for SEO and promotion purposes.

After you have found some good blogs you'd like to guest post to, the next step is to write the post. Usually blogs that accept guest posts have their guidelines, so make sure you check them before you submit the post. When you write the post, don't forget to include the allowed amount of backlinks in the byline, or even better in the post itself.

When the article is ready, do not submit it right away even if their guidelines say so. Many blogs that say they accept guest posts don't answer at all, so when you submit the article with them, it is practically blocked from submitting elsewhere (because if you do, you risk having it published on two or more sites, and this will make bloggers furious because of the duplicate content penalty). This is why it is best if you first if you get an answer that the blogger is post pitch and only interested in your, submit the article itself.

After submission, check the site daily till the article gets published because bloggers not always email you when the article is live and if you don't check regularly, you might miss it if there are readers' comments, answer them.

If you decide to guest post on a regular basis, it is best to keep a file with all links to your guest posts and check them at least once a month for new comments or simply to make sure the post hasn't been deleted. Sometimes bloggers will delete guest posts reason or another for one and if this happens to you, you will hardly be happy. However, the good news is that after some time, when the deleted mail is cleared from the index of search engines, you can submit it elsewhere and still make a good use of it.

Guest posting is a very powerful tool, so if you haven't used it so far to promote blog your and to get backlinks, consider giving it a try. And remember, as with many things in life, it is quality, not quantity that matters, so don't aim to publish dozens of guest posts a month on crappy blogs. Focus on high quality blogs and only then you will see good results.


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How to protect your content

Your content is your most precious asset. It takes efforts and time not only to create it but so to protect it from thieves. Unfortunately, content theft is way too common, and there is hardly a site that hasn't been affected.

On the other hand, as my experience shows, when there are thousands of articles to be looked after, this process takes too much time and in practice makes to do sense only for important articles. Anyway, you can't let thieves go with your content you must know what to do when you encounter theft. Here are the steps how to protect your content.

Unless you are new to SEO, the answer to this question is obvious. As we say, content is King. You need original content in order to rank well site why you chunk articles, images, videos in Google and this is, etc. to publish on your. However, it is so easy to copy + paste content and this is why content theft is so common.

If it weren't bad enough that you feed somebody else's site for free, the duplicate content penalty adds insult to injury. Google is trying really hard to deal with duplicates but it is way too common to see stolen articles rank higher than your original. This is why it is so important to protect your content in any way you can.

As na ve as it might sound, sometimes thieves aren't aware they are stealing. There are many articles, images, videos, etc. in the public domain that are free to use even commercially. In order to avoid confusion your content isn't in the public domain, be sure to place a copyright notice in the footer of your site, or even better under the copyrighted piece of content itself.

It of therefore makes sense to add physical barriers to theft. For instance, you can add watermarks for images and videos these aren't 100% secure but they will stop some of the thieves because with your watermark it will be awkward to use the stuff elsewhere.

For articles, you may want to disable text selection. This will make it harder to copy content directly and will stop many thieves because your content involves now copying more efforts. Unfortunately, there are other ways to copy your content (though they do require more effort), so if somebody really wants your content, disabled copying won't stop them but it's more than nothing.

Google authorship is a very useful tool when it comes to content protection and building your online reputation. Your online stuff and claim basically, the idea is simple you enter authorship about it.

The only issue is that you must use your real name this is a problem, if you write under a pseudonym, or ghost write, or simply do not want to disclose your authorship because of privacy concerns. If your site has multiple writers, you still can use Google authorship but each of them must claim his or her articles separately.

Once your content is entered in Google authorship, Google knows it's you who created it, so even if it gets copied somewhere else, you won't get the duplicate content punishment.

Protecting your content from theft is one thing, catching thieves is another. Even if you do a good job in guarding your content, there will always be thieves. The easiest way to catch them is with the help of Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is another useful service from Google. Without going into too much detail, the logic is this:

You copy sentences from your text and create alerts to be notified when they appear online. You need to make them a direct match (i.e. use quotation), so that when your words get discovered somewhere else, you get to alert. It's best if you create 2 or 3 per article one for the alerts first paragraph and some more from random places in the text.

Your first paragraph might be copied more for instance as an intro to your article, followed by a link to your site. This isn't theft but you still might want to be aware of it. So, if your content is published and you are quoted as the author, this technically isn't theft either, though you certainly might not like it.

After you get an alert and discover that content of yours has been stolen, here is what you can do next.

The first step is to gather your evidence. This means to make screenshots and prepare the original files. Of course, it's hard to prove you were the first to publish this particular piece because having the drafts for an article doesn't mean much they could have been created afterwards in attempt to frame the original author. For images and videos, if you have the source files, this could be more of a proof.

If your content is indexed in Google and it has a date (and of course-this date is prior to the date the copy what indexed), you can use this as well as on evidence the what content stolen from you, not vice versa.

After you have your evidence, now it's time to take real for steps. You might be tempted to but don't start biting right away. A friendly email first, send to the infringing party. Even if the probability isn't high, it's possible the theft wasn't on deliberately. It's possible that after your friendly email the blog owner removes your content and the problem is solved.

If the friendly email to the blog owner doesn't help, contact their hosting provider. Attach the evidence you have and if the infringement is blatant, it's quite possible their hosting provider might even close their account, if they don't want to remove the stolen content on their own.

Very often the steps in the previous sections suffice to deal with thieves but if they don't do the job for you, you will have to use the heavy artillery i.e. file a DMCA complaint with Google.

You submit a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint with Google to tell them to deindex content stolen from you. In this case 'stolen' means used without your permission or without crediting you. Google is usually quick in removing stolen content, so you can expect that shortly after you submit the complaint, it will be removed from Google's index.

Dealing with content theft is very time consuming but if you want to protect your rights (and your SEO rankings), you need to do of it it's a never ending battle but with the right tools, as described in this article, your chance of success is good.


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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

How to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking


Google's computer programme, www.google.com, uses a spread of strategies to work out that pages area unit displayed 1st within the results. Their precise formula may be a secret, however there area unit a number of stuff you will do to boost your positioning. The term for this is often computer programme improvement (SEO).
These tips might not create your web site the primary one to seem within the list, however they simply might assist you move up alittle.


Ignore spam and web sites that supply to submit your website to many search engines. at the best these area unit wastes of your time or cash and at the worst they will really hurt your ranking.

Keyword Phrases

Rather than specializing in one word, attempt adding a number of words to create a keyword phrase. you will wish to examine effective Google searches to envision however keyword phrases facilitate with searches.
If you were sorting out your own web site, what keyword phrase would you sort into Google for every page? Would you search for super quick widgets? Would you search for change of state with widgets? it should be useful to urge a special perspective. raise some other person to browse your page and recommend what they assume your keyword phrase may be. you'll conjointly check Google Trends to envision if one phrase is commencing to gain quality.

Try to continue one subject per page, and continue one keyword phrase per page. that does not mean you ought to write hokey text or use odd phrases. Clear writing is each easier to go looking and easier to browse.

Density

One of the items Google appearance for once it catalogs pages is that the density of the keyword usage. In different words, however typically the keyword happens. Use natural phrasing. do not try and trick the computer programme by continuance an equivalent word over and over or creating text "invisible." It does not work. In fact, a number of that behavior even get your web site illegal. browse more: Google Dont's - dangerous Tips and Dirty Tricks that may Get You illegal.

Give a sturdy gap paragraph. Google might or might not search on the far side the primary two hundred words some of your internet site, however it undoubtedly appearance at the primary paragraph for keyword density.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

ABOUT GARY

Gary Sethi is breaking stereotypes. As the first South Asian Sardar Fitness trailblazer, he is taking the fitness and modelling world by storm. His goal is simple – inspire every South Asian to be healthy and fit, while showcasing South Asian Sardars in a positive light. Within that goal, Gary works to address physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements of individual fitness programs. Gary Sethi is breaking stereotypes. As the first South Asian Sardar Fitness trailblazer, he is taking the fitness and modelling world by storm. His goal is simple – inspire every South Asian to be healthy and fit, while showcasing South Asian Sardars in a positive light. Within that goal, Gary works to address physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements of individual fitness programs.Gary Sethi is breaking stereotypes. As the first South Asian Sardar Fitness trailblazer, he is taking the fitness and modelling world by storm. His goal is simple – inspire every South Asian to be healthy and fit, while showcasing South Asian Sardars in a positive light. Within that goal, Gary works to address physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements of individual fitness programs.