Archive for August, 2008

Article Marketing Continued…

In my earlier post I talked about the basics of article marketing, the concept of using articles you write to spread links to your site or affiliate link around the article directories. The purpose being to draw surfers from the article directories to your link and to spread some links around so that the search engines will notice them and take them into account when working out when to list your site in search engine results.

You may also see a third benefit if your articles are well written. This happens when other site owners looking for content take your article and use it on their own sites. I’ve even had an article picked up by a Read more…

Affiliate Traffic Sources – Article Marketing

One excellent way to get traffic to your website or affiliate links is the totally free method of writing articles related to your offer and submitting them to article directories.

So how does that get you traffic? Simple, include your links in the body of the article (where that is allowed) or in the resource box, which is the bit that allows you to tell the world about who you are.

Article directory sites get lots of traffic themselves because of the sheer amount of content they hold, your goal is to attract the attention of that directory traffic and write an article that makes their surfers want to click your links. So if you’re marketing a ‘sausage making for money’ type site you can write an article based around a key phrase like “sausage making for profit” and attract the attention of potential sausage makers!

One way to do that is to offer Read more…

Affiliate Marketing as a Work at Home Idea

Lots of people, myself included, make money through affiliate marketing. Its an extremely popular home business for that bit of extra money or even for lots of it. There are endless opportunities with seemingly more and more products becoming available to affiliates constantly.

Its actually not that complicated either, in fact I’d go so far as to say just about anyone can do it. There are offline programs as well as online ones but for the purposes of this post lets just think about the online ones that are genuinely ‘work at home’ opportunities.

To pick an example lets look at say good old Amazon. Now Amazon has huge brand power and is generally trusted so its easy to get people to buy from it, the downside is that as they keep their prices low there is not a lot of room for large affiliate commission margins. Still depending on what type of website traffic you might have Amazon can be a good way to earn some commissions.

Amazon even allows you to integrate their store info into your own sites, take a look at BinocularChoice.com for an example, look around the site and you’ll see it is powered by Amazon and also has some contextual ads. A site like that makes sales on autopilot but takes a little know-how to put together.

Looking to a completely different end of the spectrum there are huge commissions paid on Read more…

Candle Making – Another Work at Home Idea

I’ve just added candle making to the list of work at home ideas after seeing prices for candles at a homewares store! My dad used to make candles as a hobby interest once and no kidding the kind of stuff he produced at home surpassed the stuff I’ve seen selling at insane prices.

If you are looking for a simple work at home idea with an arts and crafts feel to it then this might be worth considering. Get a copy of Jean Ann Herley’s ebook for people who already know how to make candles but are looking to turn it to a business:

Stop Burning Time and Money in Your Candle Business

If on the other hand you don’t know the first thing about making candles but would like to learn you could try:

Make Candles Today

Easy Ways to Make Soy Candles

Gel Candle Recipes 101

This is a great opportunity for someone largely tied to the home while the candles can be sold via mail order, local craft shops, homewares stores, markets and of course online with eBay and the like.

Secret Google Tactics by Dylan Loh – Oh Dear…

You might find some emails in your inbox saying get this ebook before the price goes up – its the best thing since sliced bread and shows you everything you need to master Google Adwords and Adsense etc. Take my advice and avoid it like you would the plague!

I got a copy and can tell you its extremely basic, in fact a badly written ebook that is more likely to get you into trouble than it is likely to help you. The offer is really just to get you into a heavy upsell for other products, I can only hope there is some value in those.

The book tells you to grab some articles from an article site because “they are all optimized for for high Google rankings”, so by using them yourself you will get high rankings too. No mention at all of the fact that Google hates listing the same content twice! Read more…