In my last article, “Discover The Easy Way of Building Link Directories” I told you about how search engine optimized directory pages can attract more traffic to your website, when people search for those related products or services that you have listed on those directory pages. I also told you that by maintaining well laid-out and organized directory pages, you could get reciprocal links from those websites. Or, in other words, you can get more inbound links to your website.

Link Popularity Means High Page Ranks!

Let’s face it - the greater the number of links pointing to your website, the higher is your page rank with most search engines! Google, AltaVista, HotBot - they all use the number of inbound links parameter as a very important factor in determining your page rank. As such, link popularity still plays a vital role in getting those top ranks and search engine positions for your websites.

Moreover, if those links are coming from high quality, related websites, then there’s nothing better than that! Search engines will love your site if all your links - both inbound and outbound - are completely relevant to the content of your web pages! And if your inbound links come from pages having a high ranking, then that automatically increases your page rank too! If such high-ranking pages consider your site worthwhile enough for linking to it, then your site must be offering some really good content!

The Catch

The only catch here is that acquiring a decent number of legitimate inbound links, from good-quality, related websites, requires a considerable amount of ingenuity and expertise. You don’t want to irritate the search engines by accumulating generic links, so that they throw you off their grid completely! Neither do you want to end up linking to a banned website!

As we discussed in the previous email, accomplishing this task can consume a lot of energy and leave you tired, even more so when you have to maintain more than one website! Besides, there is always the time factor that is essential for gaining the upper hand over your competition.

Use Of SEO Software For Link Maintenance

Using a reputable SEO software program, for establishing and maintaining your link partnerships, can greatly ease the burden off your shoulders! It can accomplish within days what would manually take months to achieve! A good link maintenance program -

• keeps track of the locations you’ve already submitted your site to
• prevents being linked to banned websites and thus, keeps you out of trouble
• allows you to manage information about all the sites connected from your website
• generates highly targeted directory pages automatically, based on the information specified for your outgoing links
• automatically uploads the link files to your web server
• customizes the structure of your link pages through automatic category creation and management
• has an internal link check feature, that easily and conveniently ascertains whether your link partners still have reciprocal links to your site or if they have been dropped
• effectively manages all your link email campaigns - handles all email tasks of contacting and managing prospective link partners, and also keeps them notified of any updates

Popularity: 90% [?]

The only way to survive and flourish in business is to provide outstanding customer support. This brings us to the leading question - are your customers satisfied? By the end of this article, you should be able to confidently say - Yes.

Customer dissatisfaction usually arises from a host of simple things - failure to reply to an email promptly, availability of insufficient information about your products resulting in losing the customer to the competition, being left hanging on the phone to boring music when you called that toll free number - all these create annoyance, and leads to unhappy prospects and customers. And when this becomes a habit, the business simply ceases to exist. End of story.

But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to see how you can stay ahead of your competition by taking care of all those multiple things that help you commit to customer service. There are some rules that are worthwhile to print and keep:

• The first step is getting everyone in your organization together and collectively committing yourself to doing everything possible to ensure customer satisfaction. Customer service is not the sole domain of the marketing or customer service department. It involves every single person in the company.
• Make sure that everyone is familiar with your product range and company return policies. Brainstorm about the kind of questions you can expect and prepare a ‘frequently answered questions’ document that is accessible to everyone and save time. Preferably upload this on your website.
• Get to know your customers. Communicate with them regularly to know their buying habits and their specific needs. Pay attention to their complaints. Learn about their experience with your business. Did you know that good experiences could be turned into customer testimonials, which in turn can do a great job of endorsing your business? This means free advertising and more sales.
• Remember to treat a customer with respect at all times, regardless of whether you interact with them via email, phone, snail mail or meet them face to face. Everyone likes to be treated with courtesy. Thank them for orders placed, and show them you care. Phrases like “thank you for your patience” ” sorry to have kept you waiting’ ‘ we really appreciate your feedback’ makes a customer feel great about dealing with you.
• Arguing with a customer is a no-no. The customer is always right. Empathize. Do not take it personally. Focus on finding the solution to the issue. 80% of your customers will become loyal customers and give you repeat business when you solve the complaint in their favor.
• Prompt responses are the foundation of great customer service. So if you keep your customers hanging - they are not going to love you. Find ways to resolve complaints promptly and keep in touch with your customers - show a sense of urgency in your willingness to resolve the problem. This is another surefire way to get repeat business.
• Only promise what you can deliver. In fact, most gurus will tell you to under-promise and over-deliver. When expectations are exceeded, everyone is happy and you enjoy the fruits of this through sales. Over promising and under delivering on the other hand will make you lose your credibility and customers will lose trust.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Success in life comes through time management. Time is money. Once you believe this, your planning efforts will be more focused. You probably started out that way, but someone got bogged down with your growing responsibilities. Now it is time to protect your time, conserve your energy. Use these three precious resources only on things that take you nearer to your goals. Determine what your time is worth, and only do things that meet this value. By doing this, you will also be able to decide on which tasks you should take on and which ones to outsource or delegate to others.

What is your financial goal for this year? Let’s say you want to make one million dollars this year. Every one is blessed with twenty-four hours in a day of which we should be working ideally for 8 hours. Out of the 365 days a year, discounting weekends and holiday makes it 220 working days. Converted into hours you’ve got 1760 hours. So how much is your one hour worth?

If you look categorize your time into productive and unproductive you can probably classify what you do as follows:

Non productive time is chatting with friends, aimless internet browsing, checking and answering mails too frequently, attending the phone, learning time, monitoring your website stats, clearing up your desk, cleaning up your office and so on.

Productive time would be the time you spend on product development, promoting your products, tweaking your marketing process to improve it, managing projects that make money, initiating and setting up joint ventures and looking for ways to automate your business.

It follows from the above that you must look for a return on the time you invest, based on your financial goal. Let’s look at some proven time management rules:

• Prioritize - first things first
• Create a to-do list
• Set aside specific time to do things
• No frequent email checks
• Learn to say no
• Become computer savvy
• Make your work environment conducive to your productivity
• Maintain focus
• Be busy and show it.

It might be worthwhile to keep this in view where you can look at it from time to time.

To manage your time and get more out of it, do the following:

• Make a goal statement of what you want to achieve
• Remove yourself from the routine day-to-day involvement
• Set up a system with well designed procedures for specific tasks
• Provide your employees with the requisite training to use the system
• Make it so that your employees cooperate with and support the system
• Make a detailed operations manual for reference

These steps will help you have your business going the way you want, freeing up your unproductive time. To sum up, don’t micromanage your business. Delegate routine tasks for a start.

Popularity: 20% [?]

In this article, I’m going to look at the best sites to broker for. After all, this will be the basis of your earnings. As a JV broker, here’s what you do:

• Find someone who wants to sell products
• Find a marketer to sell these products
• Broker a deal between them
• Earn profits

You’ll remember in my last article, “Taking The First Step Towards Profits“ that I talked about how two-tier affiliate programs are the best ones to sign up for. To get a little deeper into this, here’s what you should look for.

Sites That Pay A Minimum Second Tier Commission Of $10

We are looking at a minimum commission of $ 10 per second tier sale. This is not tough to do. Even if the marketer you broker a deal with makes ten sales, you earn $100. If the marketer has a huge list of subscribers, just by sending them a simple email, you are looking at a high conversion rate that can earn you thousands in commission. See how powerful this method is? So even with a product that doesn’t cost much, you can still make a lot of earnings by identifying and leveraging marketers with huge lists.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

The marketer you are brokering the deal with will love it when he can earn without doing a thing. If you outline even a couple of simple jobs like sending out an email or setting up a banner ad, chances are that they’ll never get around to doing it. Instead, if the product site you are brokering for provides all the promotional material in a ready to use form, you can tell your marketer that all he needs to do is copy paste it into his email software and send. Don’t forget to tell him that he’ll see money within the hour of doing this. It’s a lot easier to send out an email campaign that has already been written for you than go through the process of writing them and then sending them. So you simply need to find a site owner who is smart enough to provide the promotional material to sell his products.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

In fact, this is your first priority as the success of your JV brokering depends on this. What if the marketer doesn’t sign up right away through your link? There is every chance of them signing up even a couple of months later. How do you keep track? More importantly, how do you ensure your commission on the sales generated by them?

Here’s where you need to ensure that your site owner has a cookie tracking system in place. Sign up with sites that offer you a two tier program as well as track everything through cookies valid for several months. No matter when your marketer signs up through your link you will get a commission on the sales they make.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Do you Blog? If you don’t, you are making a costly marketing mistake and literally blocking people from reaching you.

Blogging started as a single-sentence commentary in the 1990s. It was a way for visitors and readers to voice their opinions. Then it slowly evolved into pages of personal take on almost anything under the sun.

Soon, blogs became the ‘in’ thing. A web persona - any web persona- had to have a blog where they talked, argued and ’sold’ gently. Moreover - and this where its power was really unleashed - the blog became the source of ever-increasing traffic between related sites. So, any web marketer with a niche made it a point to host his own blog, all the while visiting blogs of related products and leaving comments, which again earned him or her multiple streams of focused traffic.

Here are 5 reasons why you simply should participate in communities:

1. It is simple: Think of it as a virtual notepad, where you jot down your thoughts, ideas and comments. A PC and Internet connection are all that you need to become a big player in communities that relate to your niche.
2. It is authentic: Blogs, your own and others’, allow you to voice your philosophies. They are also a platform where users can voice their true opinions, fears and needs. In short, this is the place where you get to meet real people with real-life experience, unscathed by paid adverts.
3. It is free: You can set up your blogs for free, if you want, though this is not the recommended route for those looking for huge profits. To build proper traffic using Web 2.0, you will need a blogging system that is far more extensive and ‘accommodative’. Using a blogging service like Wordpress allows you to plug into the latest in building traffic to your website. But we’re not talking about Wordpress.com here. That is just another hosted website. You can get the correct version of Wordpress from Web 2.0 Submitter.
4. It builds your credibility: As you offer more and more intelligent opinions, people begin to realize that they can depend on you for the truth. You become an expert and the rest, as they say, is history!
5. Blogging helps you sell: There is a simple formula for making money over the internet: expertise=attention=making money. Before you become THE expert in your field, chances are that your mom and older sister were the only ones to read your posts. But post recognition, you can build traffic through emails, subscriptions, joining a blog network and using an RSS.

Thus, you can see how easy it is to drive traffic to your service and boost your business by participating in communities. You can also see why not participating in communities is the #1 mistake you could make if you are trying to sell a product.

Before you get too excited and start downloading Wordpress with single-minded determination, let me tell you that there are other, equally powerful Web 2.0 marketing resources that can skyrocket your sales figures. We’ll be looking at them tomorrow.

Of course, if you’d rather grab all the information in one go, all you need to do is follow this link: Web 2.0 Submitter.

Popularity: 23% [?]

In this article, I’m going to discuss the importance of AdWords when working with ClickBank. I’m also going to be looking at some popular strategies affiliate marketers use to sell their products. But perhaps most importantly, I’m going to take a look at why some of these strategies work and some don’t.

Let’s start with the basics- first of all, why is AdWords so important to your marketing strategy on ClickBank? Affiliates use AdWords in two very important ways. One, they are used to find out what people are looking for on the Internet. In that way, you can choose to promote a product that people actually want to buy. Secondly, affiliates use these same AdWords to market and promote their products. If your Adwords match the ones people tend to use in the search engines, you can drive a lot of traffic your way.

It used to be pretty easy to use AdWords in affiliate marketing- all you had to do was set up a direct link campaign, put your feet up and cash the checks when they came in. Today, the search engines have made things more difficult. In fact, Google now won’t allow more than one affiliate on the same page. This has simply meant that different strategies are needed to make AdWords and ClickBank work better together.

Choose A Strategy

One of the popular ways to make AdWords work for you is to bid on a specific product name. This approach can be very competitive, especially when you are bidding for a very attractive name that drives enormous amounts of traffic- you could end up in a very aggressive bidding war. The benefit of this kind of strategy is that, it gives you a direct link to traffic that is interested in making a purchase. However, the cost per click for these words could also be high.

Another option is to use keyword lists- this means, consolidate as many keyword phrases as possible and track the sales of each one. This is a very thorough strategy and will put you right on the pulse of what’s hot and what’s not. However, this can be a time-consuming job as well. You’ll probably have to invest in some keyword software to help you along.

Some affiliate marketers create campaigns, which are targeted towards sites that are AdWords enriched. This is probably one of the most difficult strategies of all, since it tells Google which web pages should hold your ads. Another drawback of this method is the click through ratio- this means that if you don’t generate enough sales, you’ll end up paying for the impressions, even though they didn’t translate into clicks.

An effective and relatively easy method to work your way around affiliate bidding wars is to write a review for your product, then offer visitors a gift or bonus if they buy using your link. It’s even better if you can harvest names and email ids, so you can do direct follow-up sales later on.

If these methods still seem too time consuming for you, you can visit CB Affiliate Revenue for a quicker way to start attracting traffic for high-profile products.

Popularity: 28% [?]

There has been a lot of controversy about how well safe lists work, but you’ll find that they are very effective in bringing traffic.

What are safe lists?

Basically safe lists are groups of people who agree to receive messages from one another. Similar to optin lists but more advanced, safe lists are operated from a website. So lets say you want to send a message to other members on the list. You will need to go to the website and post your message, after which it is personally sent to the members to ensure there is no junk being sent indiscriminately. Those managing the safe list take adequate care to ensure that bouncing emails and overfull inboxes are dealt with appropriately. Since the members on the safe list are double opt in, all the email ids are authentic.

You can join as many safe lists as you like and there are both free and paid ones. So what is the best way to use safe lists so that you don’t devote more time and effort than is necessary? Here are some tips:

• You must be wary about safe lists whose site is not professionally designed. Beware of websites that have too many ads, banners, overloaded with graphics and dollar signs. You must have enough information about the safe list. If no contact information or support link is forthcoming, forget it. If the safe list has no affiliate program or does not disclose the number of members on the list, don’t even consider it.
• Safe list users tend to look at ads when they clear out their safe list email folders. Often a catchy subject line appears tempting them to click and read the ad, resulting in making them sign up for a newsletter, an ebook, a bonus or even buy something. The point of the matter is - you must make sure your subject line is catchy.
• It is also worthwhile to write appealing ads. Your safe list advertising must be excellent to ensure that your affiliate marketing business is a success.
• Make sure you track your safe list ads. You will find a majority of the better safe lists have built in tracking tools.

There is a reason why safe list users don’t feel very comfortable using safe lists to bring traffic and in list building. This is simply because they lack the tools to deal with the huge email volume being received. One of the first things to do is get a large capacity mailbox. If you are looking for a paid email account, ensure that you get email filtering, web based email, POP3 and free affiliate programs. You can also get automatic email deletion.

To get more tips and strategies on how to use safe lists, and get access to several other effective ways to profit from affiliate marketing, get your complete list-building blueprint to success at 15Kin7days right now.

Popularity: 29% [?]

What’s the one thing that can make or break your business? You probably have every ingredient in place to make your business a roaring success - you have the product, your website is up and your marketing strategies are in place. But are you equipped to deal with your customers? You see - it is not enough to generate hordes of traffic to buy your products. It goes far beyond that.

Every business aims at repeat sales. This means you want your customer to come back often. Now, what is it that will tempt them to return to you for more of what you have to offer? Great customer service. When you have a strong customer support system, it leads to customer loyalty. Not only will these happy customers keep buying from you, but also recommend you to others because they have a positive experience with you and want to share it with everyone they know. Does that sound good to you?

We cannot over-emphasize how vital it is for your business to have an efficient and effective customer service system in place. Just some of the benefits you can expect through keeping our customers happy are:

• Save time
• Increase sales
• Increase profits
• Better exposure
• Brand building for your business
• Happy customers

When your customers have quick access to support from you, they feel more confident about buying from you. We’ve all experienced lousy service at some point or other in our lives - can you remember how you felt? Interestingly, we all tend to have a long memory when it comes to bad experiences and we probably thought to warn our friends by telling them about it.

Thus, to keep your business going great, you have absolutely no option but to provide world-class customer service - all the time. Think about this - for every satisfied customer, you’ll have created an advertisement for your business, and a very powerful one. As a first step, look at the following questions and see if you can answer with an enthusiastic ‘Yes’

• Are you easy to find?
• Are you easy to contact?
• Can you customer understand exactly what you deal with or sell?
• Is it easy to select your product?
• Do you have a simple to use payment system?
• Do you have an easy product return policy?
• Is it easy to get prompt answers to queries from you?

If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you’ll probably come with a lot more questions to deal with. It is easy to turn any ‘no’s that you may have answered to the above questions. And here are some tips that will help you improve your customer satisfaction program:

• Have a customer feedback system to show you care
• Provide a lifetime refund guarantee where feasible
• Be easy to contact - in fact, put your email address and phone numbers on each web page of your website. You’ll be surprised at how many people actually pick up the phone and call.
• Ensure that you have an FAQ page - answers to frequently asked questions. This is a quick way to minimize queries

Exceptional customer service is the one thing that can make or break your business - and you can easily ensure that you have a great support system in place.

Popularity: 16% [?]

There are two important concepts you must understand to start enjoying success on the Internet. The first one is affiliate marketing. You’ve probably heard and seen a lot of information about affiliate programs. Possibly, you’ve also wondered how a handful of well-known affiliate marketers have made millions by just selling other people’s products.

Well, affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. All you have to do is select the right products you want to promote, sign up with the program, direct visitors to your affiliate link, and earn commissions on each sale you make. It’s as simple as that and does not require any specialized knowledge to be successful. You could be earning as much as 75% commission on each sale depending on the product.

But here’s what you should know - just don’t sign up for random programs that look good. There’s a big secret you should know when it comes to choosing the affiliate program. Only look for ‘two tier” affiliate programs. In these, you earn a first tier commission on your sale. Then you earn the second tier commission on sales generated by people you refer to the program. Easy, isn’t it?

Now lets look at the next concept - Joint venture brokering. You locate different site owners who are already well established and receive a lot of traffic. If they are related to the site whose affiliate program you have signed up for, you introduce them to ‘your’ site, and give them the idea of making money by signing up through your affiliate link. This means you are brokering a deal for your site. For every sale they make after signing up through you, you will earn the ’second-tier’ commission.

The marketers you identify to sign up through you can promote the site either by adding banner ads to their site. This will enable you earn a commission each time someone clicks the ad to buy the product from the site you are brokering for. If the marketer has a huge email list that’s interested in the product you are promoting, all the better. You can earn a commission for every sale resulting from the list.

Can you see how you can practically earn a fortune as a joint venture broker from a little research? All you need to do is identify a site owner who wants to sell his products and a marketer who can sell that product. You act as the middleman, coordinating the deal - and earn your profits in the process. Legitimate. Easy. In upcoming articles, I’ll show you exactly how to find the products, the markets and several advanced techniques you can use to set up your automated cash formula.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Much of your marketing efforts rely on email marketing. So you want to make sure that the emails you send your subscribers reach their inbox and are read by them. To be successful with your email marketing efforts, you need to develop your own lists. Why? Because if you rent a list and email them, no matter how legit, its very short term. With your own list, you can build a customer relationship and communicate with them again and again. You build your list as a result of your subscribers opting in to receive your messages and avoid the risk of being reported as spam.

In spite of a well-planned marketing strategy and designing an effective series of emails, sometimes these emails end up in cyberspace, thanks to automatic spam-filters. To avoid this happening, you will need to be conversant with the words, phrases and characters that can kill your email before it reaches your recipient.

There are a lot of unscrupulous marketers out there who send unsolicited messages and give the legitimate ones a bad name, causing people to be doubly wary about which websites they subscribe to and which emails they receive.

The first step, then, is to do some quick research on the kind of words and phrases that can activate these filters and avoid using them completely. Filters especially look for certain symbols and words and by knowing what they are you can avoid them. So make sure your emails comply with the CAN SPAM Act.

You must put specific information in the title and from fields of your emails. Include your name and state your purpose. Don’t write so much in your email that your recipient has to keep scrolling till eternity to get to the point of the message. Rather than use superlative words, present the topic and content of your email so that your recipient is keen to know what it contains and how it will benefit them. Sign off with a call to action.

Many affiliate marketers invest in a reliable email service provider who also makes sure about email deliverability, hosting, customizing content and compliance with the CAN SPAM Act.

Popularity: 18% [?]