How many of you prefer to read online product reviews of products you’re interested in buying… before you actually buy?
My guess is that the majority of you would probably answer “yes.”
I admit, I’m a nut when it comes to reading product reviews. I must have spent hours sifting through review after review from customers who bought GPS systems, before I finally decided which one I should get. I went with a Garmin nüvi 255W – the 4.3 inch Widescreen model.
The point is that many people prefer to read online reviews before they actually go ahead and buy something. It’s no surprise that there’s many product review sites for just about every product imaginable, for both physical and downloadable products.
What IS surprising is that not many people take advantage of writing online product reviews on their blogs. This is not only a great way to inform your readers, but it’s also a great way for you to earn additional income.
Have you bought any products recently? Maybe you downloaded an ebook that you found really helpful. Why not write a review about it? Chances are there may be someone looking for information regarding the ebook you just read. Maybe they’re not even aware of such an ebook even exists. This could be your chance to introduce your readers to it so that maybe it can help them too.
Let’s take this idea a step further. Writing well thought-out and unbiased reviews can be quite time-consuming, and I would know. So, it only makes sense if you’re compensated for your efforts, right?
Going back to the remarkable ebook you just read – is there an affiliate program for it? If so, include your affiliate link in your review. If you provide valuable and factual information about the ebook and focus on both the pros and cons, chances are your readers will click the link to learn more about it. If they feel it’s worth buying, you just earned a commission.
Almost every ebook or downloadable product you find nowadays will have an affiliate program of some kind.
A word of caution here: Don’t just write reviews for any ‘ole product just so you can make money. The point of writing online product reviews is to provide your own personal experience – meaning you’ve actually used the product and find it helpful, and you think others might too.
This same method can be applied to physical products as well. A majority of products can be found on Amazon or eBay. Both sites have affiliate programs, and if you refer people to products on either site, you’ll get paid a percentage of the selling price.
A great example of writing a review for a physical product can be found at this post: The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide. I wrote this post based on a book I read about entrepreneurship and finding success selling products online. The book is an excellent read and thought you (my readers) would find it interesting. As of right now, four of you felt that it was worth buying. That’s cool! Great to know at least some of you read what I say.
Granted the amount of money you can make with Amazon is mere cents, but something is better than nothing. I usually prefer to write reviews for digital products because the commission you can earn is a lot more. Of course, I’ll only write a review if I feel the product is worthy enough to promote.
Here are some other online product reviews I’ve written on this blog:
Hopefully you’ll have an idea of how to write product reviews. But since I’m not the best writer (by far), here’s an article on How To Write Product Reviews that Convert.
SFI continues to make changes, changes for the better in my opinion. They already updated the site, added a new store which is the TripleClicks market place, and now, making even more changes to benefit their affiliates.
The newly added changes being made to SFI will enhance the experience for everyone and hopefully make affiliates more money. I certainly can’t complain about that last point.
Here’s what the SFI President has to say about the changes and what you can expect as an affiliate:
Today, we are purging all inactive affiliates from the SFI database. For the purposes of this purge, affiliates are considered inactive if they have not logged in to the SFI Affiliate Center OR generated any SVP in the last 18 months.
This purging of inactive affiliates has several benefits, the biggest of which is the removal of “dead wood” clogging up SFI Genealogies. This will allow you to more easily identify and work with your active affiliates. Removing the “inactives” from our database will also significantly speed up queries and many system processes for you and your team when accessing the SFI Affiliate Center.
With today’s purge, we are ALSO preparing to take this process a step further.
That is, in the next 60-90 days, we will be phasing out SFI’s longstanding policy of allowing affiliates to “test drive” SFI indefinitely with no obligation.
Over the last 11 years, SFI has invested millions of dollars into making us the premier affiliate program on the Internet. And there are still many more amazing upgrades coming to SFI in the next several months, plus a continuous rolling out of a wide spectrum of new and powerful system enhancements and features for years to come. ?
CLEARLY–and as thousands of SFI Affiliates will attest–our commitment to affiliate success runs deep. And that’s precisely why we must focus our time, passion, and capital on those who are serious about building a successful SFI business!
Rest assured, SFI will ALWAYS openly accommodate men and women worldwide and from every background. Indeed, we expect to continue to welcome hundreds of thousands of new affiliates every year. But SFI affiliateship will now require some level of activity, which will be gauged through our new Power Rank program. In short, if you’re scoring points, you’ll be considered an active affiliate. If not, your SFI affiliate status will lapse and you’ll no longer be in our system.
Of course, this is a just a general overview of these coming changes. The specifics are still being worked out. Look for full details announced in the coming weeks.
PLUS…You’ll be pleased to know that these “quality over quantity” paradigm changes will do MUCH more than make SFI fast and lean–we’re also going to create more incentives for your incoming affiliates to get active immediately and provide a crystal clear path for becoming an Executive Affiliate. Indeed, look for a brand new component to make the Executive Affiliate rank available for ANY affiliate serious about building a successful SFI business.
Yes, SFI just keeps getting better and better. I can’t wait to show you the new TripleClicks commercial seller program that will soon add HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of products from thousands of companies from around the world to the shelves of your TripleClicks store! And that’s just ONE of many other exciting enhancements coming to SFI this year. ?
Onward and upward!
Gery Carson
SFI President & Founder
There was a lot explained in that letter. Hopefully that gives you an idea of what SFI is about and that they truly care about their affiliates’ success.
Did you see the mention of 11 years? They’ve been around for a long time, and for good reason!
They’re a solid company that I’m happy to be a part of and that I want to share with you. I’d be happy to have you on my team, and of course, I’ll teach you everything I know about how to be successful with them as I provide free training for my members.
I always like the fact that Gery is constantly trying to improve the system. There’s way too many affiliate programs that get old and stale and do nothing to try and improve their product or service. This is where SFI really stands out from the croud, another reason for their long lasting success.
Firstly, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day. Secondly, I am not trying to sell you my latest “Get Rich Quick” scheme because I don’t have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt, help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100′s available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.
I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.
I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.
Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.
Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?
If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that’s up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that’s your prerogative.
Step 1 – Finding a Topic
Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what’s popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.
Step 2 – Create Your Blog
Find and create your blog online. I like to use WordPress for it’s SEO benefits but there’s also Blogger and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.
Step 3 – Go Google
Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don’t take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.
If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.
You will also want to add your URL to Google’s index.
Step 4 – Find Something to Sell
If you don’t want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.
Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.
Step 5 – Social Bookmarking
There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.
I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.
Step 6 – Write an Article
Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.
Submit your article to any of the 100′s which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.
Step 7 – Ping The Hell Out Of It
Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. WordPress already does this for you. Add any pinging services to the list already provided. Word of note – ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.
There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.
Step 8 – Yahoo! Answers and Forums
One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don’t just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won’t.
The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.
Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it’s viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don’t already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.
Step 9 – Update Your Blog
This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.
Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don’t want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?
Step 10 – More, More, More
Repeat steps 1 – 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.
Step 11 – A Bonus Step
If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.
How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.
Some important things to remember so you don’t get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that’s how they do it! Your moment could be sooner than you think.
My Top 10 resources I use and recommend are:
1. Rob Benwell’s Blogging to The Bank 2.0
2. WordPress Goldmine
3. Rob Atherton’s Building A Blog Empire For Profit
4. The Blog Challenge
5. Hinge Marketing Magic
6. Blogging For Riches – Complete Video Tutorial
7. Social Bookmarking Demon
8. Adsense Inbox
9. WordPress SEO Sniper
10. RSS, Blogs and Syndication…
Know in your mind that the most important task you can first do to make your online business experience positive is to know your product before you start a business. Virtually every successful partner in any site builder affiliate program knows their product inside out. The affiliate partner program is useless even if the business support is great without excellent products.
Amazingly many individuals, including myself at one time, join a program because they get revved up by the sales pitch. A very high percentage of these result in many drop outs for the discouraged affiliates who make little or no money at all in them. A small percentage of webmasters with big mailing list groups make good money for a short while until the fire of the empty shell product fizzles out. There are ways to increase your chances of being an affiliate making money versus an affiliate losing money. One is by acquiring a top notch affiliate hosting program by your partner who is a free builder of web sites for you.
Some of these partners are good at building a web site of a very few pages for you and most are not. Here are some expensive lessons I have learned over the years that will massively increase your odds of success. See how many of these will eliminate almost all affiliate programs out there and save you time and money. The training of the master affiliate company should give you the potential to be so good that you will not need the help of your sponsor in the first place. This will enable you to learn your product well and be satisfied with the quality of it. You will know you have a product worth buying.
You want a company that gives you a second tier of income to earn on. Others who do well through the affiliate hosting company will multiply your efforts a level down. If the company goes down too many levels with the pay plan, they have to goose up the product price, and that cuts its sales way down. Goodbye profits. Most free builder type host affiliate companies have no second tier in their program because their product is not good enough to be priced higher. You have to know your site builder affiliate program is very good to make a buck. There are sure signs of this you can judge by. They will make claims of being quality programmers, marketers and web masters.
They should be able to demonstrate their excellence. If not, say bye, bye and move on to another program. Their web site will be more than one or two pages. They will have been in business for more than a couple years. Preferably five or even ten years. They will have testimonials by the truck load from marketers who started with very low web marketing skills. Experienced marketers could sell snow cones to Eskimos in Arctic weather. They can make any awful program work! Please understand this very important point. You want and need someone who has the capability of hand-holding you through the learning process. Someone who has dramatic, professional and even funny videos to apply to many business cases. Quality referral web sites are a must. If these are not available save yourself the future grief and move on. You want warm enthusiastic people to work with who will pull you to success. No one can do it all for you. That is a big lie we have all seen over the years in many business fields. A very few companies do have the goods to show you the way. Please note I said a very few companies. If you stick with them and learn their techniques you have your best shot to make it. One affiliate program I highly recommend is the Plug-In Profit Site.
When many people decide to work from home, they may have an idea of what they want to do, or they may not. Just as a regular JOB provides a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck, you want to look for a residual income program that’s going to pay you month after month.
The reasoning is this. Why work hard to only get paid one time? What if you could get paid over and over again for the same amount of work and for work you performed months ago?
The only thing left to do now is find the residual income affiliate program that most interests you and meets your needs. I’ve already done most of the hard work for you.
I’m going to provide you with two options that I’m currently using and getting good results with. These two residual income affiliate programs have been around and are well established. They both provide training as well which is very important for anyone new to the internet.
The PIPS program includes 5 affiliate income streams all into one. The best part about this residual income affiliate program is that you have your very own customizable website. It’s yours… you own it. You can do whatever you want to it.
Marketing is much easier and more rewarding in the long run when you have your own website and domain name. Again, check out the review to learn more or visit the Plug-In Profit Site to get all the facts and get started within the next 24 hours.
Here’s a video about the Plug-In Profit site you should watch…
This is a program I haven’t heard about till recently. I’ve gotten to look over the program as well as the training. All I have to say is… WOW! I’m literally blown away by all the marketing material and training they provide.
They also provide coaches that you can call as often as you like when you have a question. With over 20 years of experience and knowing what works, who better to ask?
This residual income affiliate program provides a great compensation plan as well as a refund of the start-up price once you complete a checklist of marketing strategies. Trust me it’s very easy to follow and accomplish, even for complete beginners. You really can’t lost with this one.
Both of these residual income affiliate programs offer a money back guarantee if you’re not 100% satisfied, so you can try them risk free to see if they’re right for you.
I honestly don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t want to stay in either of these programs as they’re two of the best around on the internet today. I’m not just saying that to create some sort of hype.
There’s a lot of crap out there and getting scammed is a serious issue. Why not do something that already works and is proven to get results? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here.
Check these residual income affiliate programs out for yourself, and let me know what you think.
Blogging can be a great way to build your online business. Don’t know what blogging is or what a blog looks like? Well, if you’re reading this, you’re on one right now. A blog is basically an online journal where you can share your thoughts and ideas with others, or in this case, expertise.
Blogs can be setup as a website, meaning the blog is the website, or if you already have a website, you can install a blog on your site making your site even more powerful. There are several advantages to having a blog on your website.
Advantage One: Google
Google loves content. Google ranks content very high. Provide relevant and fresh content on a regular basis. Post to your blog at least two or three times a week, if not more. The point here is to keep it updated on an on-going basis.
Advantage Two: Branding
Blogging allows you to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Keep your posts on-topic and relevant to the subject of your blog. Build credibility with your readers and give them a reason to come back.
Advantage Three: Connecting
A blog allows you to connect with your readers on a more personal level. With the use of commenting you can interact with others. Blogging is a more personal approach to online business practices and is sometimes a better way to market and promote what you have to offer. Make sure to create an “About Me” page that includes information about yourself. Remember to add a personal touch to your blog. Build trust with your readers.
Advantage Four: Promoting
Blogging is a great way to promote products and services. You can sign up for affiliate programs and post banners on your blog. This is just one way to monetize the traffic that your blog receives, assuming it’s getting traffic. A blog can allow you to promote anything you want. I would recommend promoting products or services related to the topic of your blog. Get a Google Adsense account and place Adsense ads on your blog for extra income as well.
Here are some blogging essentials:
Make sure to use an RSS feed that your readers can easily subscribe to. I recommend FeedBurner.com.
Make your blog a “DoFollow” blog so that your readers will want to leave comments on your posts.
Use WordPress as your blogging platform to take advantage of the SEO benefits.
Install social bookmarking plugins for your WordPress blog.
Install CommentLuv and KeywordLuv for your WordPress blog.
Actively promote your blog!
Be sure to check out my Blogging Resources for more links and information on blogging.
P.S. Since I’ve started this WordPress blog, my posts are getting idexed almost instantly by Google! That’s the true power of WordPress in action.
