Savy affiliate marketers know that a major key to success is to establish relationships with clients who’ve purchased a product or service from them.  After all, the number one rule of business is to relentlessly follow up with clients!  If you’ve got a list of clients who’ve purchased from your site, then you’re holding a great tool towards generating the kind of profits that most marketers only dream of – and it will only take seconds a day!

That’s right:  I’m talking about an email marketing campaign.  It’s no longer enough to have website that generates loads of one-time sales.  After all, if you focus solely on one-time sales, you’re not effectively using your clients – and your affiliate marketing business is losing serious profit. Remember, if your site or product was compelling enough to turn an online reader into a happy customer, then chances are they are even more likely to become a loyal client, who will regard you as an expert in your marketing field.  An email campaign is a great way to keep in touch with customers in your effort to provide them continual service; it can also be a major key towards promoting more products without breaking a sweat! 

When starting an email marketing campaign, be sure that your clients are happy with their purchase.  If you’ve got a high rate of returns, or the company or entrepreneur that you’re promoting does, it’s probably not in your best interest to launch an email campaign, as your clients will more than likely delete any emails you send.  This shouldn’t present a problem, however, because you took the time to align yourself with a quality product or company, right?

The most important thing about your email campaign is to make sure that you’re providing the best content possible to your customers. Make it worth your client’s time to open that email – stuff the body chock-full of tips and advice that are pertinent to your subject, or have your emails dedicated to expanding how your product or service can be used.  For example, if you sell an e-book on launching a successful internet marketing business, have your emails full of relevant tips on how to overcome any obstacles that a newbie might encounter. 

Part 2 of this post will be posted tomorrow.

Despite the importance of the Robots.txt file in getting your website indexed with the major search engines, many webmasters don’t offer one on their site. What is the robots.txt file you ask? If you don’t know, you are far from alone. The robots.txt file is a simple text file (no html) that is placed in your website’s root directory in order to tell the search engines which pages to index and which to skip.

When a search engine sends its webcrawler to your site, one of the first things the webcrawler will do is search the root directory for the robots.txt file. A correctly formated robots.txt file will consist of several records, each providing instructions for a particular search-bot. A record will generally consist of two components, the first is called the user-agent and is where the name of the search-bot is listed. The second line consits of one or more “disallow” lines. These lines tell the webcrawler which files or folders should not be indexed (ie a cgi-bin folder).

If you currently have a website and do not have a robots.txt file, you can create one easily. As mentioned earlier, the files are plain text, so just open up notepad and save the file at robots.txt. Most webmasters can use one record that will apply to all of the search engine crawlers. Once you have opened notepad enter the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

The “*” applies this rule to all bots. In this example, there is nothing listed in the disallow line. This tells the robot to index the entire site. You can also enter a folder path here such as “/private” if there is a folder that shouldn’t be indexed. This can be very useful if you are still testing a portion of your website or is a section is still under construction.

Now that you know what should go into your robots.txt file, there are several common mistakes people make when creating these files. Never enter notes or comments into the file as these items can cause confusion for the webcrawler. Also, the format should always be the user-agent on the first line, followed by the disallow(s). Do not reverse the order. Another common mistake made involves using the incorrect case. If the disallowed folder is /private, make sure your robots.txt file does not list the folder as /Private. It seems like a very minor issue, but it will cause problems if done incorrectly. Finally, there is no Allow command. You cannot tell the webcrawler what to look at, only what not to look at.

If you are still curious about the robots.txt file you can find many more complex examples online. Just try one of your favorite websites and look for their robots.txt file. For example you can go to http://www.cnn.com/robots.txt. If you need help creating a robots.txt file for your site, there are plenty of places online that will create the file for you for free. One example is http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/robots-generator/. Despite its apparently simplicity, this file can make or break your site’s chances with the search engines. Make sure you have your robots.txt file in place and correctly formatted today.

Technorati Profile

I was reading on the wealthy affiliates member’s board and came across a link to a web site that allows you to create free logos. You aren’t able to create anything incredible with the free tool, but if you are on a tight budget and need a logo, you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. If you are in the  market for a logo for your product or site, check it out. The web site is http://logoease.com/. Check it out!

I just heard that US Federal Regulators have seized two more national banks, First National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank. This will bring the total number of fallen banks this year to seven. While neither of these failures are anywhere near the size of the recent IndyMac Bank collapse, it is still scary as the US banking system seems to still be struggling to find its footing.

I talk to people all the time who say that they are interested in trying to earn extra income online, but don’t think that it is really possible to do so. Well, that is absolutely false! There are hundreds of companies including your typical “brick and mortar” retailers (think Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Target) that are willing to pay great commissions if you send customers their way. I will be the among the first to admit that there is no way to make money online WITHOUT EFFORT, but there are thousands of people who earn their living serving as marketers for other people’s products.

One of the reason’s that I love affiliate marketing is that it is truly an opportunity to provide real value to your customers (visitors) and earn money, all without having to create your own product. The goal for any quality affiliate marketer (most of the good one’s are.) is to provide valuable information that helps the customer find the right product or even find out if any of the products are right for him or her. This honest approach to marketing is nothing close to a get-rich-quick scheme, but will absolutely pay off in the long run. That is, assuming you stick with it and put in the work.

Although there is a lot of work involved in being successful in this business, I find that it is truly enjoyable work. I get to test products (increasing my knowledge) and share the true benefits (or lack thereof) with my web visitors. It is much easier to work hard and stick with a business that you enjoy. Thankfully, there are such a wide variety of companies and products with affiliate programs, you will absolutely find something that you enjoy that can be marketed.

The other obvious benefit to most people is that affiliate marketing allows you to work from just about anywhere that you have an internet connection. By no means am I saying that the only way you can advertise and earn is on the internet, but this will typically be where most of your work is done. I have to admit that working from the comfort of my own home is VERY nice. I only do affiliate marketing part-time, but I enjoy having the ability to go to the beach and still keep track of what is going on with my business.

If you think that affiliate marketing might be something that you are interested in, I highly recommend purchasing Rosalind Gardner’s book, The Super Affiliate Handbook. It costs less than $50 and I have found it to be the most informative and easy to understand guide out there. You can read my review of the product at http://tinyurl.com/5cv8d5. If you are seriously considering starting out in the affiliate marketing business, this guide will give you a great feel for the type of work that will be involved in order to be successful. After reading it, you will certainly know whether affiliate marketing is right for you. If you decide that it is, you will already have the best handbook available to get you going in the right direction.

Good luck!
-Justin

Tomorrow will be the last day of our free CoffeeCup HTML Editor offer with the purchase of Traffic Secrets 2.0. For details on the offer and Traffic Secrets 2.0, read our review.

What is the purpose of optimizing blogs for search engines? Many bloggers overlook the importance of optimizing blogs for search engines. The point of blogging is usually to gain readers and have others read your opinions on various issues on life. Some bloggers who blog to make money or promote their business main goal is to gain more traffic. Both of these blogging needs requires the optimizing of their blog for search engines. Some call this process SEO or search engine optimization. This process is the same that you normally go through with a business or personal website only it is a blog that you are now attempting to optimize. The whole process of optimization is vital to bring in new traffic to your blog and present you in major search engines. This makes it easy for users or readers to search and find your blog. If you want to gain a large group of readers and customers than you must optimize your blog for search engines the same way you would a personal or business website. Optimization is the key to a successful online website and the traffic you need. Without the optimizing of blogs for search engines your blog will never be seen or read. What is the purpose of a blog with no one to read it.

What exactly is the process of optimizing blogs for search engines? The process of optimizing blogs for search engines involves the magic word keywords. The proper keywords must be placed or embedded into the blog. Majority of blogs have this handy option called tags sometimes keywords at the bottom of each blog post or entry. The key words or key phrases that you place into this box is vital. It must be the best possible keywords for optimization of the blog. You can start this process by searching online for a free keyword search engine optimization tool. This tool will generate free keywords that will properly optimize your keyword search box aiding in the process of optimizing your blog for search engines. Keywords are the key factors to get your blog crawled by the spiders to obtain the proper rank in most of the major search engines. Without the proper keywords it is nearly impossible to have optimization for your blog. Once you have the proper keywords they should be embedded into your blog and into your title. This is very important. The title and keywords in your blog should all be the best possible phrases to obtain optimization. The next step in the process of optimizing blogs for search engines is to clean up your blog or blog page. There should not be a lot of html graphics or clutter. Your blog should be clear and easy to understand. Clutter filled blogs are often overlooked when it comes time for spiders to crawl. You should ensure that your blog has nothing but quality content and nothing is confusing in your blog. It will give you better chances of total optimization. Once that is completed simply add your blog to as many search engines as possible.

When you start a business, a cheap and effective way is to run it from home. However if you decide to do it from home, there are several factors you need to bear in mind. Running a business from home is easy but it isn’t for everybody. Though it can provide greater flexibility than an external office based business basing your company in the same place as where you live can also gravely impact your family social life and lead to feelings of isolation.

Advantages

There are obviously many advantages that cannot be discounted when running a business from home. Among other things are you can earn an income on top of a full time job, it involves low risk and low cost, no shop front required, you can do business round the clock and work at your own pace without normal workplace distractions.

Individuals considering establishing a home-based business would do well to sit back and consider several key questions to work out if the project is suitable for them.

Hobbies into Careers

Entrepreneurs opting to turn their hobbies into a career are good to start a work at home business. These includes arts and crafts services such as painting and pottery, childcare, teaching and tutoring, pet grooming, dog walking and language translation. It is service business that works particularly well to run from home because these businesses do not receive customers on the doorstep. The range is varied and even involves large scale importers, wholesalers and distributors as well as office based business like consultancy and professional services such as communications, public relations, accountancy and human resources administration. It also includes telesales and marketing, writing and editing, customer service and web based business

Some Vital Questions

Jumping into a home business without first thinking whether it is for you would be unwise. There are questions you nee to ask to ensure that you will not be caught on the wrong foot. Among them,

Question One: Will I have the support of my partner and children if any?

Support from family members is important as you may need to allocate some personal space for your work area.  These areas cannot simply be trodden upon by some naught kids or even your friend’s kids when they come around.

Question Two:  Am I good at setting priorities?

There are a zillion distractions when you work form home.  To be successful running a business from home, you need to know if you good at setting priorities and if you are able to get yourself away from what is exciting to what is important?

Question Three: Will I have the discipline to work hard every day without a boss always looking to see that that work is done?

Procrastination is the umber one killer of productivity.  When you are running a business from home, beware not to fall into this trap.

John Reese has decided to give anyone who purchases Traffic Secrets 2.0 access to all the material from his original $997 program. That’s a pretty nice bonus for those who didn’t purchase the program initially. Read our review of the new Traffic Secrets 2.0 here.

The second section of the software is “Promote your site”. Web CEO will allow you to automatically submit your site to well over 100 search engines. The program also helps you build link popularity by analyzing the search engines for potential link partners. You can even use the software to send emails and track your link relationships. Finally, Web CEO will let you import your PPC site information and manage all your campaigns in one place.

The “Analyze your site” section is where you can find out where your site ranks in the search engines. You can input your targeted keywords and the program will find where you rank for that search term. You can also easily see which of your pages are indexed on the major search engines and even view a history of your rankings to see how your SEO adjustments are paying off. Web CEO also can analyze your link popularity by searching for other sites that are currently linking to you. This can help you see how others are linking to your site and in what manner. There is also a traffic reports section of the program, but that costs extra no matter which version of Web CEO you have.

The final section of the software is “Maintain your site”. The most useful tool  in this section is the Control Site Quality tool. It can scan your site and report any potential issues including broken links, slow pages, and orphaned files. I have found it very useful at finding mistakes that I missed.

Click here for the free Web CEO Download