Many affiliate marketers may hate me after this but you know what? I am tiered of the dishonest affiliates giving us honest affiliate marketers a bad name.

The truth about affiliate marketing reviews is that most of them are made to simply take your money. If you have ever searched for a review on anything at all chances are it was an affiliate marketing review. That review was designed to get you to buy that product regardless of it being good or bad.

Obviously I myself make a living off affiliate marketing and writing affiliate marketing reviews on several different products. But their is a right and wrong way to write reviews. Most affiliate choose to completely lie and make a product sound good when in reality its crap. On top of that sometimes affiliate marketing reviews are created with no personal use of the product being reviewed!.

Its reviews like that that give honest affiliates like myself a bad name. Let me give you an example. Maybe you have heard of the product called “The Work At Home Millionaire”. This product is in my opinion 100% CRAP. I wrote a review and stated my opinion and you know what? My review is on the 1st page for this highly competitive product name. When someone reads my review they see the product is crap and they don’t click on my link and of course I don’t receive a commission. Most affiliate marketers would have changed the review and said that the product was amazing so people would buy through the link and they could earn their commission.

I refuse to write an affiliate marketing review like that I rather be honest and send you to a product that is much better. Why should my commission come from a crappy product instead of from a great product? Honestly I think those type of affiliate marketers are pretty damn stupid. They are losing credibility and scamming someone out of their money for no reason at all.

I warn you. Don’t trust all of the reviews you read and I don’t only mean in the “Make Money” niche because affiliate marketing reviews are everywhere and are often very dishonest.

If you want to read an honest affiliate marketing review look for any review on this site. I have trashed a number of products and when I say something is good it truly is. I hope to develop a reputation as an honest affiliate marketer and refuse to be like the rest of the scammers out there.

I wanted to let everyone know about a service that I tried out recently and have been very happy with the results and value so far. There are hundreds of sites that offer directory submissions and/or social bookmarking services for webmasters, but many offer poor service and results. I recently came across one service that I found to  be very inexpensive and a truly great value.

Link Popularity is a site that offers social bookmarking, directory submission, and article writing and submission services for very fair prices. I have not used the site’s article writing or submission services, so I cannot make any claims for those. I have used the social bookmarking and directory submission services and have been very happy with the results. The services for both start at only $9.95 and offer great value for this price. There are more comprehensive plans available also, so you can buy according to your budget.

The service is very easy to set up and you provide your link information after making payment through paypal. Unlike many more dubious services, Link  Popularity actually emails you a submission report when the work is completed which shows you exactly where your site was submitted and even which user accounts were used for social bookmarket. This allows you to check and ensure that you are actually getting what you paid for.

The benefits often take a few days to a week to see, but I have found benefits from even the least expensive packages. I highly recommend this service, especially the social bookmarking service. Hopefully you will find it useful also.

Visit Link Popularity

While nobody knows the exact secret formula that Google uses to rank websites in the search engine result pages (SERPS), one widely recognized factor is Keyword Authority. Although many Internet marketers know about keyword authority, I’ve found that very few really understand what goes into it. My goal with this post is to help demystify the idea behind Keywords Authority and how it can be improved.

Read the rest of this entry »

One often overlooked fact in these tough economic times is this: as consumers are feeling the pinch in their wallets and cutting back on spending, the importance of effective marketing multiplies. In the current economic environment, many product markets have just as many advertisers (if not more) as there were two years ago; but these sellers are chasing fewer and fewer consumer dollars.

As consumers cut back, most businesses will see declines in sales and margins. The difference between the company that survives and the one that doesn’t will be the ability to focus in and earn the precious dollars that are being spent. Nearly anyone can make money when things are great, but times like these really seperate the strong performers from the weak. As we have already seen this year with the wave of retail bankruptcies, the companies that were underperformers during the good economic times, are not able to hold on any longer.

While times will be tough for most business owners, online or otherwise, the desire to survive the tough economic situation will help many businesses cut the fat and learn to really focus efforts and money on what counts. If your business is struggling, hang in there. Rather than worry and fear for your business, sieze the opportunity to become the best businessperson you can be and grow through the adversity. Good luck!

There is a free ebook that I came across a while back that I wanted to share with everyone. It is called the Authority Black Book. The ebook is completely free and has a lot of very good information in it. The main focuses of the book are social marketing and blogging.

This is honestly one of the best free informational products that I’ve found. The author does promote his other (not free) products inside, but it is kept to a minimum and there really is a lot of quality information. Click the link below to download the Authority Black Book for free.

Download The Authority Black Book

Be professional. Except for the summit or convention here and there, most of your exposure to other affiliate marketers will be done online.  Therefore, it’s absolutely essential to conduct yourself in the most professional manner possible.  What does this include?  First of all, avoid online and text speak at all costs! Although it may save you a few extra seconds, text speak is extremely unprofessional, and will make you look as though you’re still in high school.  Most importantly, do not type in all caps!  Typing in all caps is the online equivalent to yelling – and business bigwigs do not conduct their meetings through shouts and screeches. Just hold yourself to this rule: if you can’t see a Fortune 500 CEO doing it (for instance, would Bill Gates insert smiley faces all over his emails?) then you shouldn’t do it.

Follow up.  Networking with other affiliate marketers is a lot like how your affiliate establishes important relationships with other clients: through relentless follow-up.  That explains why email campaigns are such a vital part of the overall internet marketing process.  So be sure to treat your fellow affiliate marketer like a client.  Send emails with marketing tips, ask questions or just simply share an anecdote that is relevant to the affiliate marketing business.  If you put in the time and effort to solidify the connections you’ve made through networking, then you’re setting your business up for great success – and lots of profit! 

Don’t be afraid.  If you’re on the shy side, then networking probably seems like a terrifying idea to you.  Yet you have a distinct advantage over those in the 9-5 world because you don’t have to network face-to-face.  Summon up the courage to ask a marketer a particular question, or don’t be afraid to be the first post on an affiliate marketing blog.  You’ll be regarded as a leader – and will hopefully learn a few new things in the process!

Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean that you should readily let go of the experiences and lessons that you’ve learned through working in the 9-5 world.  After all, networking is an essential part of the growth of any business, whether it’s conducted in the “real world” or not – so take advantage of your valuable connections and apply your new knowledge to your affiliate marketing business.  It could just be the catalyst you need to turn your business into a profit-generating machine!

Let’s face it – one of the greatest advantages to affiliate marketing is that you get to break away from the daily grind of the typical 9-5 job and work from home.  No more cubicles, no more insane traffic jams and best of all, no more unfulfilling jobs that suck away at your valuable time!  Instead, the only major choice you’ll have to face is whether you want to work for only a couple of hours or a normal workday – what pressure!  Yes, being an affiliate marketer definitely has its rewarding perks.

Yet to become a really successful affiliate marketer – and we’re talking the kind who sees a six figure income year after year – there are some important rules to take away from your previous office job.  Sure, you may have pursued affiliate marketing in order to have some freedom in your workday, but it’s absolutely vital to note that there is one particular lesson that you should take away from the 9-5 world: the importance of networking.

You may be surprised at how essential networking is to the success of an affiliate marketer, as it can be all too easy to remain anonymous thanks to the internet.  That’s exactly why you need to reach out to your fellow marketers – some key contacts that you make today could really escalate your business in the future.  Think of each fellow affiliate marketer as a means of reaching out to more clients, or learning of different tools and methods that can help you market your affiliate products or services more effectively. 

Read on for more tips and tricks on how to network like the business pros in the 9-5 world!

Be aggressive. Don’t wait for other affiliate marketers to find you; rather, get out there in the online world and join some groups or forums with like-minded people.  There are a ton of blogs out there for affiliate marketers, and each member is like an untapped source full of affiliate marketing secrets that you might not have even heard of or thought of before.  If you really want to network like the pros, consider attending a national conference for affiliate marketers, where you can easily meet the best in the business.  There was a recent summit in Boston for affiliate marketers with some big name speakers, so it’s definitely worth the time and extra money to get yourself to a local convention; after all, just think of all the great connections you’ll make just by speaking to some of the bigwigs of the affiliate marketing world!

To be continued…

The number and quality of backlinks to your site has a huge impact on search engines’ view of your site quality. Thus, building quality backlinks should be an integral part of any SEO campaign. The search engines analyze all the links that they find pointing to your site. The quality of the site linking to you is considered, as is the relevancy of the site and the anchor text of the link.

Many webmasters make the mistake of trying to get as many sites as possible to link to their web page. When it comes to backlinks, more is better, but only if the links are from high quality and/or relevant sites. Links from well respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory will increase the status of your site in the eyes of the search engines. If the search engine finds sites with similar content and theme linking to you, that is also a positive. These  links show the search engines that your site is respected enough to be linked to by others in your  industry/field.

In addition to watching which sites are linking back to you, it is also important to pay attention to the anchor text of the links. If you have a site about electronics reviews, a link on a site with the text Find HDTV Reviews Herewill be considered more favorably than a simple Click Here. Often times you have little to no control over the anchor text of links, but when you do (as in many directory submissions), be sure to make the most of it. Try to include your targeted keywords in the anchor text whenever possible.

If you work to build many high quality and relevant backlinks to your site, you will see your placement in the search results increase. Search engines work on algorithms and technology. Analyzing links to your site is one of the primary ways that they can determine what your site is about and for which visitors your content would be useful.

Stay tuned for a three-part series on methods and strategies of building backlinks to your site.

I want to thank all of you that follow our blog and website here at Profit Program Reviews. While we have not been posting new reviews as often as I would like to be, rest assured that they are coming. We have been working very hard behind the scenes on several site improvements that will hopefully be implemented in the next couple of weeks.

Some of these planned improvements include:

Better organization of the Affiliate Program Reviews section of the site

Improved affiliate links section including an extensive list of free and paid directories for you to submit your websites

Implementation of a user feedback method to allow for users to also submit their reviews and thoughts on products

In addition to these upgrades, we will be posting several new reviews over the next several days. If you have any requests or suggestions, please feel free to let us know.

Many people that I talk to will tell me, “I would start an online business, but I don’t know how to create a web page”. While I can certainly understand one’s concern with creating and owning a website without programming knowledge, today it really isn’t necessary to create your presence online.

In today’s information based world, there are many options for creating your own website without ANY programming knowledge at all. If you have a good idea of what you are looking to do with your website, it is very easy to go to sites like guru, elance, or ecoder to hire someone to design the site for you. It is now possible to have your entire site professionally designed for a few hundred dollars. If you do choose to go this route, it is important to read reviews of the companies that bid on your work, and always weight the price of the bid versus the quality of the bidder.

Another great way to have your own website today is to purchase a site that is already online. Many people actually make their living buying and selling websites in the many online marketplaces. I have found good deals on websites on ebay, but Sitepoint also has a GREAT marketplace section for websites. Going this route will allow you to purchase a fully designed site, or you can even buy an established site that already generates traffic and revenue. If you do decide to purchase an established website, make sure you ask for evidence to back-up any traffic or revenue claims. Unfortunately, the marketplace still has many sellers looking to take advantage or others.

A final way to get your website up and running quickly is to use a content management system (CMS) like Joombla. There are several free CMS’ available and although they offer less flexibility than programming the site yourself, a quality CMS can make updating and running your site a piece of cake.

There are several other ways to get a site up and running, but these are a few of my favorites. If you have been afraid to take the plunge and try an online business, GO FOR IT! It is easier to do today than ever before. Do beware though… running a successful website is not easy work, so make sure your site is something you enjoy working with. If not, success will be very hard to come by.