http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/feed/ http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/ Daily articles, free tools and industry updates for affiliate marketers. Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:33:14 -0800 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:33:14 -0800 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/product-creation/conduct-online-market-research http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/product-creation/conduct-online-market-research <div>How important is it to conduct online market research? Just like in any project that you want to succeed in, researching about your target markets and knowing what they really need and want are very important. </div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is many internet marketers think that just because they have a product they will have a market. That’s the wrong approach. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it may seem. There are shortcomings when it comes to internet marketing. Many make the mistake of targeting a very large market offering a variety of products to different sets of people. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>As an internet marketer, it is important that we give time to look for profitable niches with less competition. In order to achieve that, you will need to do online market research. Doing so, will help you save time in knowing what your prospective customers really want. The shotgun approach isn’t bad but you have to remember one thing: you’re not the only one who has thought of doing that. Just do Online Market Research and surely you will get yourself some good info on what to pursue.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Another good strategy to use is to focus on niche marketing. What is niche marketing? Basically it’s focusing on a certain segment of the market and targeting the customers there with products that fit that segment. Let me give you some good reasons why you should get into niche marketing?</div><div><br /></div><div>1) You’re not struggling against a myriad of marketers</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Since you have your own little corner, you will only be in competition with those that are in there with you. Instead of going up against hundreds if not thousands of other merchants, you may wind up just going up against 50 or a hundred.</div><div><br /></div><div>2) Focus your resources in one place</div><div><br /></div><div><div>You can maximize your marketing budget so you can sell your product to your potential customers. You can make sure your content fits right into your niche. This will result in your site being optimized for search engines.</div><div><br /></div><div>3) Create products/services that appeal to your specific niche</div><div><br /></div><div><div>You can create products that has appeal to a specific segment. Once you are able to give your customers what they are looking for you are already one jump ahead of the competition in terms of making yourself the</div><div>undisputed authority in your niche.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>One of things you have to remember is that you won’t get a broad range of customers in whatever niche market you go into. Be that as it may, they are probably the more loyal customers you can find anywhere, </div><div>especially if they see that you are offering what they’re looking for.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>It’s all about the online market research. Information is key so you don’t go on aimlessly in search for your profitable niche. Discover where your target customers convene and what they really want to buy.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:49:54 -0800 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/show-up-in-social-search http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/show-up-in-social-search With Google Social Search being launched last October, expect to see some of your social network friends’ blog posts and articles when you do a research on a specific topic that conincides with topics these people (in your social networks) often write about. Contents from social networks can now show up when you do search engine research. Thus, this is another challenge for those who promote their brands or products through Facebook Pages. Going back to my post a few days ago about Facebook page, let’s talk about how we can make Facebook pages show up in social search. <br /><ul><li>Do onpage SEO</li></ul>Well, if you have been doing SEO or at least familiar with it, this can truly work to your advantage. You can actually do your own onpage SEO. By doing onpage SEO, I meant using the right keywords in your posts and updates. Make sure that you have the right keywords evenly spread out in your pages. I find it easy and convenient to have a good number of keywords list so that every time I update my page, the keywords that I need to use come in handy. Of course, if your posts and updates have the right keywords in it, it has a greater possibility of being pulled up by search engines. <br /><br /><ul><li>Be in the Know</li></ul>Don’t just preoccupy yourself with promoting your online business and adding friends. Go out there and LISTEN to people. Take time to know the latest buzz in your network and know what people are interested about these days. You can get hints and ideas for your posts. Your posts and updates must be something or interest to these people so it will gain more readership. And it will have more possibility of becoming viral when people start to pass it around. <br /><br /><ul><li>Make Friends</li></ul>Be active in adding friends to your network. The more people you invite to your Facebook page, the more you extend your reach to a wider scope of the market.You should look forward to viral marketing in this case. It has always been proven to be effective when people pass on positive feed backs to their friends. Viral marketing is one factor that can further boost your business and one way of achieving it is by adding more friends on a regular basis.<br /><br />With social search, contents coming from social networks have become more visible. It is not anymore isolated to these networking sites but are now available in search engine results. Depending on the product or service that you promote. <br /><br /><br /><br /> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:28:34 -0800 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/Create-a-Facebook-Page http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/Create-a-Facebook-Page There are a lot of benefits Facebook brings to entrepreneurs who want to promote their businesses or brands in this most popular social networking site these days. There is the Facebook page where you can create a page (like your own site) named after you or the product that you are promoting. Then, you can invite people to become your fans or followers. With Facebook page, you have to foster better interaction with your fans. You can also add more than 5,000 friends which is quite an advantage compared to creating a group page. But apart from these benefits, viral marketing through Facebook Page is one factor that can truly leverage your business. How? Well, once a person becomes your fan and interacts with you (through comments), you will appear in their news feeds, too. Thus, their friends will be able to see you and even add your page if you get to spark their interest. You have to realize how important it is to make time to interact with people in your network. Don’t just bombard people with updates and promotions, but also make sure that you share with them valuable information. In Facebook, you can share links, photos, and videos. A good profile with useful updates is what you must have if you want to maximize the benefits of Facebook pages. <br /><br />It is easy to set up a Facebook page. Although you can directly register your company or brand, you have to create your own profile using your own identity. This won’t be much of a problem since you can change the page name anyway. <br /><br />There are many ways that you can do in order to maximize Facebook page and use it to the advantage of your business. This I will have to discuss more in my next post. <br /> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:42:40 -0800 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/social-media-marketing http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/social-media-marketing <div>Have you been busy socializing online these days? Who isn’t anyway? The bustling traffic that Social networks like Facebook and Twitter get daily, proves only one thing - almost every person in this planet is in social media. Social media sites are where people all over the globe convene to keep in touch, meet new people, and even do business together.</div><div><div>For internet marketers like us, we do social media marketing to push our brands to our target market. But this is not only about creating accounts and adding/following people. This concept alone will not bring your business to where it’s suppose to be. There are a couple of other things that you ought to do to maximize the benefits of social media to your online business. One of the important things that you need to do is to monitor your performance and measure your failures or successes. How? If you have a Facebook Page for example, you need to the following:</div><div>1) Monitor the growth of your followers</div><div><div>Viral marketing can positively affect your business a lot. If you have many followers, they can be good agents in promoting your product by word of mouth. If you are having a difficulty in increasing your followers, you might need to review you profile and see how you present your business there.</div><div>2) Pay attention to those who frequently comment or like your posts.</div><div><div>You must recognize people who take time to comment on your posts. These people are worth keeping because not everyone (or even not majority of people) in your network mind what you posts in your page. Thus, it’s always best that you maintain a &quot;close circle&quot; friends you know you can count on.</div><div>3) Listen to what people say</div><div><div>Along the way, you might get good or bad comments about you or your business. Don’t get affected too easily but don’t ignore their comments either. They might have a point in giving a comment to you. Always see the bright side of things and continuously improve your business.</div><div>I suppose, the tips I shared above are also applicable to other social media sites and not only to Facebook pages. </div><div><div>Furthermore, there are internet marketing tools that you can avail of to monitor results in social media. One very important thing that you should not forget is to track your links. In my case, I use bit.ly. Everytime I post a link in Twitter or Facebook, I ensure that I had the links tracked. This helps me in identifying what type of posts do my friends or followers like and which ones they don’t click at all. Thus, in my future posts, I avoid topics that will most likely be ignored.</div><div>Marketing on Social Media is fun and easy but also requires some diligence if you seriously want to leverage your business online.</div><div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Sun, 8 Nov 2009 02:22:00 -0800 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/email-marketing/best-email-marketing-practices http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/email-marketing/best-email-marketing-practices <div>Despite the many alternatives we have in reaching out to our target customers online, email marketing proved to remain a steadfast scheme that allows marketers like us to leverage our online businesses. Email marketing gives us the opportunity not only to sell but more importantly to establish a long term relationship with our target market. I am no hypocrite for I admit that sales and conversion mean a lot to me. But more than just that, being able to establish rapport and long term relationship with customers and potential customers are equally important.</div><div><div>I’m grateful that Email marketing has not lost its spark despite the emergence of other options like social networks. Email marketing was a bit overshadowed by the popularity of social networking sites. And yet, it remained to be one very essential aspect of internet marketing. People may have talked less about email marketing but it doesn’t mean that it has been relegated.</div><div><div>Let me discuss with you some email marketing best practices and the benefits that come with it.</div><div><ul><li>Regularly send free email newsletters</li></ul></div><div><div><div>People love to receive free email newsletters especially when they have a dire need for information or have high interest in a particular topic. Regularly sending updates and free information through mail is very important. </div><div><ul><li>Send updates or highlights of your website</li></ul><div>There must be at least one mail that especially highlights topics from your site. You can feature your most commented posts for the week or for the month. Or you can also feature popular issues tackled in the forum. This style will surely bring more people deeper into your website.</div><div><ul><li>Send product reviews</li></ul><div>If you do affiliate promotions, this is a great opportunity to introduce the product to your subscribers and make sales. However, avoid the hard selling part. Instead, write a product review to emphasize benefits and the downsides(if there are) of this product. This way they don’t only get to read a sales pitch but instead get valuable information despite the fact that you are selling something to them.</div><div><ul><li>Personalize your approach</li></ul><div><div>People reading your mails must feel that they are part of something. Speak to them as if they are part of your community i.e. use WE more than I. Make time to write them personal notes, too. You can do this in the welcome note that you send right after they opt in. And from time to time, do check out on them without having to promote or sell something. Like in Christmas, simply send them a greeting that wishes them and their families well</div><div>I really like the flexibility of email marketing. There are several approaches and styles that we can employ to further spice up communication with our target market and eventually lead to more traffic and sales.</div><div>How about you, what are your best email marketing practices?</div></div></div></div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:42:36 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/improved-search-engine-results http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/search-engine-marketing/improved-search-engine-results With the recent launch of Google Social Search, it was said that this new innovation in search engine results will give a lot more relevant and refined results. Benefits that internet users will really love and appreciate. I’ve been looking forward to this new feature because I want to know what difference it will make to our lives online. I mean, isn’t it interesting to see contents from people we are connected with whenever we look for a particular topic on the net? <br />It’s great that Google Social Search gives us resources or results coming from people we know and/or who are in our social circle. The circle will cover those who are in your contacts in Gmail, Google Reader account, and/or your profile. Google will trace further through our links. For example, you have a friend in Twitter who has a blog site indicated in his Twitter profile. If in case the contents in this friend’s blog coincide to what you are searching for on the net, then Google Social Search might have this site show up in the results pages. <br />Social search is trusted search, they say. I agree with this because I know the people who are in my network and there are reasons why I am connected to them. So, if I get results from people I know, then it must be something worth looking at. Thus, if I type in &quot;best seo tactics&quot; in Google, more likely my friends who often write about SEO will show up in the results. <br />Google Social Search was made live a few days ago and you can go to their experimental labs to get it. Probably in the upcoming weeks or so, we will be reading more comments and reviews about it. Since it’s still under the experimental stage, we cannot expect it to run perfectly. There might be bugs but I don’t think that this will greatly affect the whole service. Google social search is bringing us improved search engine results. I encourage you to take a look at it and even use it because I believe that it will only make internet search results better and more refined. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:49:39 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-campaign1 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-campaign1 These past years, we have seen and experienced the birth of many new ways to advertise online. In addition to Adwords and banner advertisements, we have social media and networking sites where we get to meet people who might be potential customers or business partners in the long run. Despite the addition of these new platforms, email marketing (still) remained as one of the traditional yet very effective ways to promoting a product online. Email marketing may not instantaneously make your subscribers buy but through constant contact, you are able to gain their trust, build rapport, and cement a good reputation in the niche that you are in. However, getting emails right into the inbox of our target readers has always been a tall challenge for most internet marketers. There are several impediments to getting emails to the inbox like the fact that you are competing to a handful of other mails. There’s the chance of getting into the spam folder. And ISPs are keen at monitoring your reputation through the frequency of recipients reporting you as spam. <br /> In running my online businesses, I always give ample attention to my email marketing strategies. I’ve learned my lesson and never again will I take this in stride. I have lost significant email lists due to bad decision makings and not well thought-out contents in the past. This time, I make sure that I do everything right even if it means spending more time in brainstorming on the information I put in my email marketing efforts.<br />Personally, I never really expected that email marketing will die down. What I was sure about was it was bound to evolve. And indeed, it’s evolving. Nowadays, we can add several new features in our emails like allowing the recipients to share the email to their friends in Facebook or Twitter. But wait, it’s not that easy to do. When people receive your mail, there must be something spectacularly outstanding about your content that would make them hit the share button. It’s quite hard to please people these days. You have to invest a lot of efforts and time before you can convince them into doing something. <br />So, let’s scrutinize how we can actually increase reader engagement in our email marketing campaign so people will love what we send them and hope that they will eventually share them to their friends. <br/> The most important step that we have to take is to know our readers’ behavior when they deal with the emails that we send them. The email marketing service that you should employ must have a tracking tool. This will help you identify which emails had the highest open rates.<br /> Thus, you will know the type of subject lines that make your subscribers open the emails and the content that make them click on the links. Feed them with high value information and I’m sure they love you even more. <br /> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:11:37 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/report-a-spammer-in-Twitter http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/report-a-spammer-in-Twitter Have you checked your <a href=’http://tweetblocker.com/’ target=’_blank’>Twitter spam score</a> lately? I did and mine was an A+. aside from the indication that I’ve been around for quite a long time in Twitter, it also means that I’m no spammer. I remember a few weeks ago, my assistant informed me that I have like a thousand direct messages on Twitter account and she asked me how I wanted her to start cleaning up my inbox (again). A thousand, I thought? How do we sort it out? Well, I didn’t want to delete some important messages I got there from friends and colleagues so my assistant had to do it manually. <br /><br />Just like spam emails, Twitter spams are just as equally disgusting and are hardly recognizable. I did not really expect that it would turn out this way in Twitter. Spammers are real geniuses. For the past months, we all know that there has been a security issue between this micro-blogging sensation and its users. Users have become more conscious about their privacy. And perhaps they are also bothered by the sudden influx of unsolicited tweets and overflowing direct messages. Just a few days ago, I read <a href=’http://blog.twitter.com/2009/10/help-us-nail-spammers.html’ target=’_blank’>this press release</a>. A sigh of relief. Now, there’s hope to stop Twitter spam and have a stress free life in the Twitterverse. It’s simple to report a spammer in Twitter. If you are suspicious about a certain account’s credibility, you can go to its profile and look for that button with a drop down menu.When you click on it, you will see &quot;Report ___ for spam&quot;. The Trust and Safety Team will deal with it accordingly.<br /><br />In our own ways, we can also stop spamming or at least minimize it.One cardinal rule that I follow is not to entirely entrust my account expansion and management to automated tools especially those that I don’t trust. Somehow, if we automate too much, we also feed these spammers that leech from automated programs. And of course, I also make sure that I follow real people with real profile photo and post more human-like, less automated tweets. <br /><br /> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Thu, 8 Oct 2009 21:49:49 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/identity-theft-on-the-net http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/identity-theft-on-the-net In one of the recent press releases by the FBI, it brought to the public’s attention (again) the increasing number of people who became victims of identity theft on the internet. This news is not really something new. You must have heard about identity theft on the net a lot. Like hackers acquiring credit card numbers of other individuals and making exorbitant purchases online.<br /><br />For years, internet marketers like us have been battling to eliminate these scumbags because they are a threat to ecommerce sites and many other internet businesses. While we are busy working on how to make money online (clean money that is); they, on the other hand, are busy devising ways on how to make easy money effortlessly. How unfair can that be. Further, because of their illegal activities, many online shoppers and users have become more discriminating in buying online or even just in leaving their email addresses for subscriptions. Despite the internet security measures implemented by website owners and online marketers, identity theft is still a tall challenge to overcome. What amazes me more is how these thieves evolved in their manner of hijacking people’s accounts and ripping off their victims. I’m not saying that I’m impressed because I’m not.<br /><br />Since these people keep on increasing in numbers, we (internet users and marketers), should know how not to be fooled by their modus operandi. Nowadays, these &quot;geniuses&quot; have been using spam emails to hijack and infect a person’s computer. Spam emails come in different shapes. Some mails pretend to have come from people you know or from some popular site you wouldn’t have an iota they are fake. And when you click on them, it’s like you’ve given hijackers an instant access to all your files stored in the computer. Now, they can siphon off passwords and access all your accounts online. Once they are able to access a person’s social network account, they send out emails to friends asking for financial aid. They pretend to be in distress and so their concerned friends would come running to help them out without knowing that their REAL friend has been a victim of identity theft. <br /><br />We need to be more mindful of our ways while surfing the net and communicating to people. There are several ways to do in order to protect ourselves from identity theft. When in social networking sites, make sure that you familiarize yourself with the security and privacy features of the site. In addition, you can practice the following precautionary measures:<br /><br /><ul><li>Be selective in adding friends</li><li>Choose specific individuals who can access your personal profile, contacts, and photos. Don’t give everyone an access to view your personal photos and profile.</li><li>Be careful in clicking on links or downloading applications. There are many instances where computers got infected after these. <br /></li></ul>Generally, we are still safe in these networking websites. But vigilance and careful choices can even make our social lives on the net much better and safer.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Fri, 2 Oct 2009 20:05:18 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/benefits-of-social-media-websites http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/web-2-0/benefits-of-social-media-websites For us who are blogging for business, social media sites particularly Twitter and Facebook have been giving a good boost to our online network expansion efforts. In social media platforms, we are able to promote our expertise and/or our products. <br /><br />Today, I stumbled upon <a href=’http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/09/80-of-social-media-is-about-me.html’ target=’_blank’>this post</a> that tackled a recent study by a group of researchers from Rutgers University. The study was on Twitter, the sensational microblogging service that took the net by storm when it was first introduced. My hunch on the type of users that breed in media sites or networks have been proven all true. The result of the study showed that “80 percent of regular users are “meformers”. They actually coined a new term to refer to those individuals whose status updates are endless rants and raves on their whereabouts or who they are with, their pent up emotions about love and the universe, and god knows what else. I must admit I really get annoyed reading shared messages like these but what can I do, it ‘s a social network. The remaining 20% of users were informers. These are people who use social media to share information. I say these kind of users are worth following and befriending. <br /><br />I think that social media is a gift. Not because we are able to make money online thru it, but mainly because it has given us the opportunity to create communities that defy cultural, geographical, and language barriers. That being said, I believe that we must reciprocate by adding value to it. And how do we do that? We can start with sharing and posting relevant posts. But of course, I don’t’ mean that we all lose that personal touch. Balance. For those who are doing social media marketing, don’t overdo it either. Let’s create a balance in the types of posts that we have and <a href=’http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/social-media/best-social-media-sites’ target=’_blank’>maximize the benefits of social media websites</a>. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:42:29 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/how-to-make-money-fast http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/how-to-make-money-fast When I entered the internet marketing scene back in 2005, I started out selling affiliate products both from Clickbank and Amazon. I was so new in the business so I didn’t have my own product to sell right away. I must say that between the two, Clickbank gave a better offer (Oh well, of course) I recall being asked by a few buddies in the business why I stuck it out as an Amazon associate when in fact there were a lot of good reasons why I should not waste my time selling products from that site. My answer was simple, one of the blog sites I maintain perfectly matched Amazon’s wide variety of products. Instead of creating my own products from scratch, I could simply sell existing goods from this most trusted online shopping site. So, what the heck? The commission may not be that big but when you are selling in high volumes, it is amazing to find out that your one dollar commission per product can actually become a thousand in the long run. With the income I have been earning from Amazon, I believe that it’s still one of the best affiliate programs. I have been told to redirect my focus on high paying programs, or sell my own products. Yes,I do sell my own products already but I’m still selling Amazon products in one of my sites. They have a wide range of products per market that can make online shoppers come back to buy new stuff. I’ve been earning well from repeat customers myself. But I must say this , I think that this idea does not work to all blog sites or niches. I mean, there are niches where Amazon items just won’t complement well. So, if it worked for my site, I don’t conclude that it will work for yours too. First you have to really know your niche and your target customers. One factor you need to consider is the content of your blogs because the product that you will pick out must be relevant to your topic. If the topic allows you to naturally link your posts to a product that you choose to promote, then you can once in awhile include a link in your posts and redirect your readers to the item you are promoting. And of course, you can have banners, too. Some bloggers write book reviews on their sites and so it allows them to promote books as an affiliate. You often hear tips on how to make money fast on the internet, I say this is not entirely a myth if the word FAST does not necessarily mean OVERNIGHT. It doesn’t really matter how much commission you earn per item, you got to look at the bigger picture. Like they say, small payments add up. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:01:08 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/seo/free-keyword-suggestion-tool http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/seo/free-keyword-suggestion-tool Keywords. A very important thing to every internet marketer. We use a keyword tool to find the right words to scatter and sprinkle over a website page. With keywords, we are able to pull in traffic to our sites. And the same thing is true when you do Google Adwords. With the need to track the words that can bring in the cash to our coffers, we have a good number of tools for keyword discovery. Keywordindex is a new keyword suggestion tool that I recently found to be as equally useful as the other tools that a majority of us have been using. But let me share with you what unique points and features I have discovered about this keyword tool that makes it NOT another chip off the block. Surely it has some new and different features that we won’t find in other tools of its kind. For one, it boasts its unique database of keywords that other tools online don’t utilize. This can be pretty interesting, don’t you think? This site can give us a fresh and new perspective in finding highly valuable words for our content and Adwords. Just beside the number of searches figures, you can instantly click on Google Trends, Google Insights, and Bing xRank. This keyword tool is so convenient because you can analyze the search trends and gather data to further improve your search engine rankings without h. This free keyword suggestion tool is a great new addition to the many tools that we already have. Despite rubbing elbows with more established and already popular tools online, Keyword Index is really a worth a try. You might even like it you’ll keep coming back. The more data we can gather, the better perspective we will have on search engine optimization. What do you think? If you have a personal experience on this new tool, I like to hear it, too. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Wed, 9 Sep 2009 18:27:24 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/ppc-advertising/success-in-ppc-advertising http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/ppc-advertising/success-in-ppc-advertising There are several important things that we need to remember in doing ppc advertising. We all know that pay per click ads are still one of the widely-trusted and used advertising method on the net. Without it, it can be quite difficult for internet marketers to peddle goods on the net. However, we can’t simply leave it up solely on ppc advertising to generate money for our business. How we write the copy on our advertisements, use keywords, and set up the entire campaign are the most prominent factors that eventually lead to the success or failure of our ppc advertising ventures. There are means to do in order to achieve the success that we aim for. I, personally, find ppc advertising to be very challenging. Not to mention that it can be a bit costly especially when you are not able to make the sales that are supposed to cover your expenses. What I find more challenging is the fact that you are only given very limited space to pitch your product or services. With such limitation, it can really be very rewarding to know that hundreds or thousands of people are clicking on your advertisement. Then again, success in ppc advertising is not only measured by the number of clicks that you get. It’s still the conversion. Clicks must be converted to sales. Otherwise, all your money and efforts will just go down the drain. Going back to writing ad copy in ppc advertising, it’s very effective that you put emphasis on the benefits of your product. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers in order to have a clearer perspective of their needs. Remember, you need to tell your target customers about your product within a very limited space. Be brief and straight to the point. Let them know what they will experience after they use your product. And more importantly, be TRUTHFUL. Don’t make false promises just so you can make them click on your advertisement. Now that you’ve made them click, let’s go to your landing page. This is where you either MAKE it or BREAK it. All the promises that you have mentioned in your advertisement must be fulfilled here. If you had a great Adwords copy, they will try to check if you’re for real in your landing page. So, make it real. I’ve heard marketers blabber about using advanced ppc strategies etc. There’s nothing wrong in being “advanced” but for me, what matters most is we have mastered the basics. To conclude, we need to keep google adwords quality and stay persistent in doing Adwords. After all, who said that success in Adwords is a long shot? About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Tue, 1 Sep 2009 00:26:40 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/how-to-make-money http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/how-to-make-money Had I not become an internet marketer, what could have become of me? This question visits me every once in awhile. Not to say that I am not happy with my current state. Actually, I am very happy. It’s only that, sometimes I get pleasure in imagining things. I figured that I get to do some more brain exercises if I do so (grin). Going back to the question, I remember I answered that I would probably still work and make money on the net. I don’t know what exactly that work would be but it must be internet related still. Looks like I can’t picture life not being an internet marketer, right? Now, let me ask you this question: If you don’t have the job that you have now, what could you be doing instead? I’ll leave that for you to answer because now I would like to explore the different and interesting ways on how to make money online. These work from home internet jobs could just give you an idea about how to make money or even make you realize that the best is yet to come. In case you are geek who is an expert in solving operating system and applications problems, you might want to offer freelance technical support online. There are many websites that offer similar services. If you believe in your expertise and skills, then I don’t see any point why you should not market yourself on the internet. With the skills you have, you can definitely make money on the net. You may start by knowing more about how this business and its market. It will also be a big help if you join online forums that are related to this business. Not only will you learn about this job, but you will also gain possible clients. Another interesting way to make money is website flipping. This is ideal for people who want to earn easy money because in this, you won’t need to invest so much in launching a whole new website from scratch. What you do is to look for niche websites that are not earning well and buy it. There are many people who have been doing this in the past few years and they’ve been earning a lot, too. Next to flipping, how about you make money out of your hobby? If you are into photography, you can actually sell your outputs to several websites that sell stock photos. Wouldn’t it be nice being paid for what you love to do? With your creativity and skills, there’s always a way to put food on the table (and more!). Earning money from the net is like an abyss. Endless. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online. Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:28:29 -0700 http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/making-real-money-online http://www.affiliatedistrict.com/internet-marketing/making-real-money-online The other day, I read from somewhere (must be in one of the online discussion sites that I frequent) a statement of an internet marketer stating that he had been struggling to find a profitable niche that he can venture into. Further, he said that internet marketing has left very little space for uniqueness and novelty. Like all ideas for an online business have already been exhausted and overused. He have been struggling to find a niche that is different from what is already existing. I don’t mean to discourage you, but boy, it’s quite like an urban myth. Yes, there could still be some untapped markets or about-to-be-discovered online business ideas, but are you serious about spending “forever” searching for it? I don’t mean to say that businesses on the net nowadays are copycats of another. These days, you can just expect thousands of similar sites competing in one arena. It’s a cutthroat competition out there but certainly, there is enough room for any one who is willing to take the plunge and face the challenges in store. I remember that in the past, I used to think that I have to come up with an idea that is uniquely mine. However, every time I do my research, I was most often confronted by a hundred other websites in the same niche. It was frustrating but I realized I was looking a bit too far. There are actually popular niches that I can get into. Never mind the competition and the competitors. You just need to be uber creative and innovative with your ideas. Newbies sometimes tend to have this set of ideals on how an internet business should be or how internet marketing should be done. But who are they kidding? The solution to making real money online is just within reach. It is here. Take a look at the popular niche markets. I understand where that guy was coming from but I just shun so much negativity. Internet marketers like him needs to be enlightened and be made to realize that popular niche markets are not saturated even if they appear to be overcrowded. If there are too many sites on a particular niche, then, there must be more than enough customers who keep on buying. What to do in a competitive market? Prepare to stand out in the crowd. From the already existing concept, come up with your own unique edge against your competitors. Try to reinvent and innovate products, packaging, and marketing strategies. Don’t simply copy from others. In the long run, you will realize that there is nothing wrong about joining the bandwagon. If that’s where the money is, then jump in. About the author. Menno Spijkstra is a successful underground Internet Marketer who has been online for many years, selling his own products in many niches. Menno now decided to share his knowledge and experience through this site, AffiliateDistrict.com. You can sign up for his free weekly newsletter and learn how to make real money online.