There’s a war going on in the blogosphere, and it has nothing to do with bloggers dissing each other on their respective websites. The war is about control of the blogosphere by several great, many good, and tons of terrible blogging platforms. The average newbie now has “too many” options to choose from, and the battle for blogging supremacy is hotter than ever.

At my website and blogs, I’m always asked the question “Is WordPress better than Blogger?”. The answer, of course, is “Yes”. But to really understand why, it’s important to look at both blogging platforms side-by-side and see which one you really need.

You also need to understand that there are different versions of WordPress, the earliest now termed as “WordPress” at WordPress.org, and the hosted version similar to Blogger now termed “WordPress.com” which is of course available WordPress.com. Only the latter comes with free hosting on a sub-domain account. We’ll discuss this in Part 2.

For Part 1 of this article, we look only at the self-hosted version of WordPress. Here’s the comparison scale:

1) Ease of Set-up And Use

Yes, it’s much easier to set-up a blog with Blogspot.com and get your own Bloggger account. You can be done in 10 minutes flat. Once you’re set-up you can start posting immediately. If you want to add a designer’s touch to your blog, there are also tons of blogger templates available for free.

Installing WordPress however can be a major headache if you don’t know what you’re doing. Since you’re going to host it on your own account, you’ll need to download the installation files, upload them to your server, set-up a database, and run the configuration script.

However, if you know which hosting account to get, you can choose one with Cpanel included. With Cpanel, you can do a one-click installation, upgrade and removal of your WordPress platform.

2) Customization & Advanced Use

Blogger doesn’t allow categories. You can’t sort your articles into different focuses, unless you know how to hack the platform. With WordPress, not only can you add categories, you can also display each category differently on your main page. In fact with the correct plugins you can even turn your WordPress into a magazine-like portal.

Publishing with Blogger can extremely furstrating. It can take forever to post articles, especially if you’re making changes to the entire website. With WordPress, publishing is much faster, although if you load your system with all kinds of bells and whistles it can be just as frustrating.

With a Blogger account, you can get additional features like “Shout Boxes” that improve interaction on your site. You can also get pretty themes and nifty little tools that you can add to the core template files. However, that’s as far as you can go with Blogger.

With WordPress however, the sky is the limit. As cliche as that may sound, not only can you get themes, additional “plugins” and advanced tools, you can also extend WordPress to far beyond just a blogging platform.

The talk today is about using WordPress as a complete, user-friendly Content Management System or CMS. Unlike complicated predecessors like PHPPostNuke, B2, Mambo or even Joomla, WordPress is user friendly. Plus, the availability of source codes in this open-source system coupled with a strong community makes it possible to use WordPress as an article management system, classifieds system, direct-selling site and even a paid membership site.

4) Copyrights and Ownership of Content

I started with Blogger and I won’t say that it’s bad. But after a while I started to get frustrated with Blogger, and here’s why: Google Owns Your Content

Google has the authority to shut down your account without warning if they don’t like what you’re blogging about. You don’t have absolute control over your own blog. With WordPress, you own the domain name and the blog is hosted on your own account. You have full control over your content.

With the self-hosted version of WordPress (not WordPress.com), you’re free to write about anything you want, and use the software in any way you want. Yes, Blogger allows you to publish to your own domain, but they still own the database that holds your content! Don’t forget that!

5) Search Engine Optimization and Traffic

There’s this propaganda that since Google owns Blogger, they tend to favor Blogger accounts. I won’t say that this is illogical, but from my experience, there’s no such favoritism.

I’ve heard as many stories of getting indexed fast and ranking high in search engines from both WordPress and Blogger users. As long as the content is good, the spiders will come.

When you post in Blogger, you can only “ping” a limited amount of sites, whereas with WordPress on your own domain you can ping as many blog directories as you want, and start getting more traffic.

As a conclusion, I would say that WordPress is only slightly ahead in terms of optimization for search engines, and building large amounts of traffic.

6) Money-Making Potential

There’s no doubt that it’s easier to get started with Google Adsense if you have a Blogger account. In fact you can now apply for Adsense from within a Blogger account. Not entirely surprising considering the fact that both are owned by the same company.

With WordPress, it can get tricky. The default installation is not enough. You’ll need a couple of plugins and even a better theme to really maximize the Adsense potential. However, this seems to be getting easier and there’s even “Adsense revenue sharing” plugins around that allow you to share ad revenue with other contributors and writers for your blog.

When you start using WordPress to build your Adsense websites, you’ll soon discover what I mean. It’s something you need to experience for yourself. I can tell you one thing though – when you go WordPress, you don’t go back.

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To some investors, ecommerce profitability is directly connected with the quality of the shopping facility. How well and how often the shopping cart is used by visitors on the web site is a true indicator of success for the business person.

Examples of ecommerce application development modes

Resellers have a lot to profit from tools that enable the expansion of a website in manifold directions. Once a seller begins to derive profits from his website, expansion is only a matter of time. A good ecommerce solutions provider understands this and provides an umbrella of tools under various packages.

- Global product content, which is user friendly creation of product categories, management of the store, adding and deleting items, accepting payments and managing the dispatch of these items. The way the material on the site is organized is crucial.

- Sales and special offers, which includes ad campaigns, promo material, the ability to send newsletters, setting up of auto responders.

- Additional support, like the extensive use of pictures, video and other applications.

The cost of ecommerce application development

Facilities and software features provided depend on a variable number of options, which is influenced by the kind of web page you are running. This is also the way in which the customer is billed because you need to pay according to the size of the site and the web traffic you attract.

Most often, the largest packages are designed for sites with more than 3,000 visitors per day. Costs decrease if your site ranks lower and you only get around 750 users daily. This is obviously because of the limited number of tools you want.

The number of products you sell also plays an important part in price factor since the complexity of the site increases with the amount of items featured. Thus, it goes without saying that the more complex the site, the more extended the ecommerce application development.

Ecommerce application development and software package structure

In the conditions of an ever-changing market, the solutions providers come up with many applications to allow room for adaptations, upgrades and updates. Therefore, make sure to choose a service which allows the seamless development of the website, as and when you wish.

As an additional feature, many ecommerce hosting plans give first time users free access for a twelve month period. The software included in such a package may be limited in scope simply because it is free. Paid applications are generally very flexible and powerful. The best idea is to check all the details before striking any deal.

Starting with the second year, when the level of implementation and ecommerce application development has reached its peak, consumers are charged on the basis of the contract but the sums are affordable and the investment is worth it if the application provides enough mileage to your website.

The purpose of having backlinks as an element of page rank algorithm is that people will want to link to pages that have quality content. The more the number of backlinks a site has, the better it is. However, practically speaking, you cannot be relying on the fact that your website content is of high quality and therefore people will link to it.

No doubt if your site has the most relevant and high quality content, you can get many quality backlinks including from websites that contain themes similar to yours. Nonetheless, getting such inbound links may not always be easy and require a lot of efforts, therefore, you may want to look out for other ways to get quality backlinks.

Ways to Build Your Backlinks
Even if you manage to get lots of backlinks in a natural way, it is never a bad idea to welcome additional quality inbound links. There are several ways for acquiring backlinks which may be ethical while other ways may be illegitimate and unacceptable and can lead to your site being penalized in the long run. The legitimate ways of getting backlinks include directory submissions, forum posting, linking to other blogs, press releases, etc. Among the unacceptable ways are linking to link farms, buying links in large quantities, getting linked to websites hosting illegal content, linking to other websites that belong to the same person, etc.

To start building backlinks, the first step would be to identify sites from where you can acquire quality backlinks. This can be done with the help of Backlink Builder tool which generates a list of websites on entering keywords. Once you get the list of potential sites where you can post messages, articles, or backlinks to your website, the choice is up to you to visit these sites and start posting your content along with an inbound link to your website in it.

You may have a question about how websites generated by the backink building tool can provide backlinks free of cost. The answer to your question simply lies in the fact that such sites need content for their site. With you posting and feeding them with content without getting paid for it, helps you to get free quality backlinks in return from them. It is like free trading where you offer something required by others for free and get what you want for free. However, this free trading lasts as long as you post your content to sites that are respected and also as long as you do not end up posting fake content.

Below are some of the most successful methods that can be used to build backlinks.

Directory Submission
Getting your site listed in various directories is one of the basic steps that you should start with in your efforts to build backlinks. It may be unlikely to get any significant traffic through directories; however, the idea here is to get backlinks to improve your page ranking.

There are several directories to which your site can be submitted. These can range from general directories, blog directories, SEO friendly directories to non-reciprocal directories (directories that allow you to list your website in their directory even if you do not link back to them). Additionally, it is important that you submit your site to only those directories that have a high page rank.

It is also important to know that listing a site in directories is a time consuming process as it requires you to first find out quality directories to which you want to submit your site. Once this is done, you have to search through the categories and sub categories in these directories to find out the specific category to which your website belongs. Therefore, keeping the time constraint in mind, it is a good idea to hire a professional SEO company that provides directory submission services so that you can save time and concentrate your efforts and resources on your other core business functions.

Forum or Blog Posting and Article Directories
Forum posting and Blog posting is another way of getting quality backlinks to your site because search engines usually index forums as well. Getting backlinks from blogs or forums that are reputed can be very helpful. However, at times there could be a possibility of your post being edited or deleted by the forum administrator if they find that your posting does not adhere to the forum policy. Moreover, there may be times when the administrators may not allow any links in posts until they are totally relevant.

While posting in forums and blogs can be done faster and require lesser efforts, submission of articles to various directories can take a very long time since articles are longer when compared to posts and also involve a though process to write them. However, it would still be worth the time and effort in the long run.

Press Releases and News Announcements
Though this is not a day to day practice to build quality backlinks, it does fetch good results if done the right way. There are several websites out there which publish press releases or news announcements free of cost or may charge a fee. A press release that is well written can boost visitor traffic to your site and also a backlink from a reputed site to your site is a value addition to your entire SEO efforts. However, a press release can be used as a medium only if there is something newsworthy. That is the reason why press releases and news announcements do not factor in as a daily way to build backlinks.

Content Exchange
Content exchange can also be very helpful in getting you quality backlinks. For example, you can provide free RSS feeds to websites that are interested in them. When your RSS feed gets published by the other site, you will get an inbound link to your website. This will also drive a lot of visitor traffic that will visit your website to get more details on the headlines and abstract they read on this other site.

Creating Quality Content
Creating professional and quality content is also very important to get more backlinks to your site. This is because content that is well written is always noticeable and there would be more number of people who would want to link to it.

Leaving Comments
To create awareness and get visibility for your site, you can also leave comments on others blogs. Leaving comments that are appealing to read will always have a good chance of drawing the attention of more people to your site.

Practices to Avoid While Building Backlinks
There are several ways in which links can be built, however, it is important to realize that certain link building ways can ruin your SEO efforts. One such practice to avoid is link exchange, wherein, when you place a link on another website, that website in return will place a backlink to your website. There are a few things to be considered with this concept of link exchanging. First is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Having more outbound links than inbound links is not good. Second, there could be a possibility of your link partner being a link farm. In this case, your site can get penalized or banned by search engines as link farms are considered as unethical SEO practice.

Additionally, you must also be careful about linking to sites that are suspicious or host illegal content. Though search engines will not penalize you for having backlinks from such websites, since you do not have control over what they link to, linking with such sites can ruin your SEO efforts.

In today’s world Webhosting has become a part of the informational revolution brought by the Internet and it has become compulsory for both business and also individuals.

Here we are just going to point on few things related to choosing an adequate web host for a web site as there is no need explaining why a website is a must on World Wide Web. This business might seem very complicated but once one knows what to look for it is easy to find out. Stick to ones requirements after analyzing it properly.

Many inexperienced web owners often buy more than required while evaluating their needs in terms of space and bandwidth. Thus many web-hosting providers size their web servers taking this into account as this is exceptionally common and in fact over sell the space and bandwidth assuming that customers will never make full use of it.

Ask ones web host provider per server ration to avoid web hosts that result to just that or crowed their web servers to get an extra profit per customer. To become a clever buyer one should do this with all the other companies one finds interesting to do business with and are eligible to host web site. Never buy a web-hosting plan that fits just perfectly instead always leave some space as website is like a living creature which always grows so buy a little extra space so that when website is expanded one have resources available. Always leave margin for error too as supposing the initial bandwidth evaluation proves itself insufficient then one might not be able to use its website because of exceeded bandwidth. For both knowledgeable and less knowledgeable web owners most web hosting plans come packed with features and some even offer pre-installed scripts and programs that might come handy.

Do not forget things actually required like the OS (Operating System) or the PHP support, as one could consider any extra feature a plus. Do not allow the provider to tell something not required or is less than expected so one should decide of its own what is needed.

Importance of Support: – One might overlook Support facility when one finds an offer which is suitable both in terms of space, bandwidth and has all other facilities which one needs but remember all the good features will go in vein if one does not have good support. If the web-hosting provider is too careless then any technical problem, which arises, will take long hours to be solved even after making many support help calls thus curtailing the work.

If one wants to test the quality and how responsive the support personnel is then one should fire many pre-sales questions through email. Check if the response fact is enough. Now supposing that a conference has to be attended and the site is down and many clicks are expected, check if the website is online to get them and also whether the response one is getting from the support is thorough or is just scratching the surface and is the response understandable.

Look for these qualities when looking for good support: -

-Online support staff, help desk, message boards etc.

-Try to find on forums or discussion boards Information on the reputation of a web-

hosting provider.

-Would one like to be among one those discontented customers there?

Another aspect of the problem is reliability. Company’s web server’s uptime should be asked. Usually 99.9% of uptime is guaranteed by Most of the hosts, as 100% is not a realistic figure in the computer world. This guarantee means that, the money will be refunded for that month or free webhosting will be given for a month as compensation for web site being unavailable if the web site was not available 99.9% of the time.

Our sincere advice to everyone looking for web host provider is don’t try too hard to find the cheapest possible web host though it is true that one has to pay for paid web hosting. Still if one goes for cheaper one then within two weeks from the date of purchase one will stumble upon a better deal and thus will most likely end-up wasting an incredible amount of time. On the other hand paying extra amount to get what one could have got for less is also not a good deal. Getting 200 MB of space with 2 GB of bandwidth for one is getting cheated and at the same time getting same service for or can be a good deal. A thin line between Nightmare of getting slow server response, unreachable support and irritating server downtime and Profitable and enjoyable web presence is drawn by individuals’ themselves.

So we conclude saying one should always choose ones web-hosting provider vigilantly who can live up the promises and can deliver good quality web hosting!

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Home Page > Internet > SEM > Search Engine Success: What is Link Popularity?

Search Engine Success: What is Link Popularity?

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Search Engine Success: What is Link Popularity?

By: Jennifer Neel

About the Author

Jennifer Neel is an Internet entrepreneur and the owner and operator of www.jnpowermall.com.

(ArticlesBase SC #164766)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Search Engine Success: What is Link Popularity?

If you are like most Internet marketers, the biggest problem you face is bringing potential customers to your site. It does not really matter how great your Web site is, if no one sees it, your online business will not be successful.

Perhaps you have tried many different marketing techniques, but have not seen an appreciable increase in traffic. You probably also submitted your site to the various search engines, but have you considered how the search engines truly work and how their users would actually find you?

This is a rather complex topic. The top search engines use complicated algorithms and criteria to rank Web sites in their searches. However, one such measure used by the leading search engines is link popularity.

So, what exactly is link popularity? Put quite simply, link popularity describes the quantity and quality of other Web sites that link back to your Web site. It serves as a basic measure of a given site’s popularity. Generally speaking, the higher your Web site’s link popularity, the higher its ranking among the search engines. In addition, they usually assign higher scores to higher quality links.

Before getting into exactly how to increase your site’s link popularity, first I need to talk about how search engines work. To locate information stored on the millions of Web pages, search engines employ software robots, called spiders, to build lists of key words and phrases found on the Internet. The process spiders use to build these lists is called web crawling. Each search engine works a little differently, but the initial process is generally the same. They usually start with the most heavily trafficked servers and most popular Web pages. The spider then follows every link found on the sites. The information is then indexed so that search engine users may retrieve it later.

What can I do to increase my Web site’s link popularity?

1. Reciprocal links

One way to increase the number of links to your site is to develop relationships with other Web masters and make arrangements to simply “trade” links with them. Contact the owners of businesses that compliment your own and offer to put their link on your site if they will put your link on theirs. Be sure and explain how a link to your site will benefit their customers. You should send the link to them as HTML code and never send your link as an image unless they will also include a text description with it. Not every Web master you contact will agree to link to your site and you may have to approach many Web masters before you see any significant results.

2. Link exchange services

Another way to generate links is to register with a link exchange service. When you register with a link exchange service, they add your link to the links page that other members place on their Web sites. Most of the link exchange services are free, but you should be careful that the links are relevant to your own site content. Otherwise, you may find your site being dropped by the big search engines, since they have been known to ban sites using “link farms” because they artificially increase a link’s popularity.

3. Classified ads

You can also increase link popularity with online classifieds ads. There are countless free classifieds on the Web, though these are not usually considered the highest quality links. You may also submit paid ads, but stick to the more highly trafficked sites, if you can afford it.

4. Write a testimonial

Find Web sites that will allow you to submit a positive testimonial for their product or service. Include a link back to your own site with your signature.

5. Submit your site to directories

There are multiple directories on the Web that will allow you to add your URL for free. Before adding your site to the directory, make sure the links are direct links and not redirecting links. This will make it more search engine friendly. Also, be sure you submit your site to the proper search categories, to increase your link popularity further.

6. Blogs and forums

Each time you post an entry on a blog or chat forum, include a hyperlink to your Web site in your signature. However, avoid posting blatant advertisements, or you will risk being banned.

7. Writing articles

Another means of increasing your link popularity is by writing articles and publishing them on the Web. Many reputable sites welcome new authors. An Internet search for “free articles” will reveal several such directories. All you need to do is register with the site and complete a profile. Once you have written your article, you just submit it to the site for approval and publication. You will also include a brief bio of yourself, along with a hyperlink back to your Web site. Not only does this increase your link popularity, if a reader is particularly impressed by your article, they may just click on your link, increasing your site visitors.

If ranking high in the major search engines is the goal, link popularity should be an important concern for any Web site. The disadvantage of link popularity as a ranking device is that it punishes new Web sites, since it takes time for a new site to accumulate links. Therefore, the process requires patience, since it can take considerable time to see a significant change in your rankings with the search engines. In the meanwhile, you can track your Web site’s traffic ranking on www.Alexa.com. There may be no data at first, but over time, if you employ the techniques described above, you should see an increase in your rank over time.

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Jennifer Neel -
About the Author:

Jennifer Neel is an Internet entrepreneur and the owner and operator of www.jnpowermall.com.

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Home Page > Advertising > 13 Steps to Successful Blogging

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

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13 Steps to Successful Blogging

By: Anthony Onaf

About the Author

I am a experienced and seasoned SEO consultant. I specialize in search engine optimization, search marketing, and pay per click management.

(ArticlesBase SC #3920)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – 13 Steps to Successful Blogging

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don’t say that because I’m the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”.  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche…you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don’t come to work for days or weeks…you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here…if you don’t update your blog for days or weeks you’ll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It’s no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated”.

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You’re a Professional

You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a “move” announcement. The title should be “Moved” and the blog entry should state something like “I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.yournewblogdomainname.com/”. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

To learn more about successful blogging subscribe to the Journal Home Newsletter

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I am a experienced and seasoned SEO consultant. I specialize in search engine optimization, search marketing, and pay per click management.

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The other problem is that a good proportion of the people who make money blogging do it by selling crappy advice to the other 999,999 failures. I am not going to do that. I am not selling a damn thing, although if you take my advice and sign up for the tools I use, I will make a couple of dollars in commissions. All I need is 999,999 people to take my advice and I will be set for life, in which case – anyone want to buy a few blogs?

Just kidding, I would never part with them . But let’s go back to the question most people really want to ask – “Can I make money blogging ? and if so – how?”

The answer is yes. I am a professional blogger and have been for several years. I do it with a combination of freelance writing, several niche blogs, article writing and, for the last 18 months, writing a business blog for a luxury property portal. This last one – if you are considering blogging for business – requires you to have already developed a reputation in a particular industry, and being able to demonstrate the necessary skills to make it work. Which includes generating traffic, building relationships and incoming links and actually being a successful blogger.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and for the purposes of this article I am going to show you the steps needed to create your own money making blogs. I say blogs rather than blog because the chances are that you – like me – are going to fail in some instances and be successful in others. This will probably mean more than one domain and/or niche. The trick is to then capitalize on the successful ones. For ease of use, all the links in this article will open in a new window. This is how to go about it:

Step One – Choose a niche and domain name

Kittens at playYes – this is the first step. Not, “Oh, I have a blogger blog called michelle and johns cats favorite toys.blogspot.com, how do I go about making money from it?” Forget that – you need to identify a niche or subject that could potentially be a profitable one, choose a domain name based on the research you have done, buy it , host it and set up the blog. This is where it gets boring, because you will have to research this. Sorry – now the work begins. You didn’t think it was going to be that easy making money from a blog did you? Don’t worry if buying a domain and hosting it means nothing to you – we will get to that. Of course, having said all that, some one is bound to stop by and tell me that selling toys for cats was the best thing they ever got into and they are now living a life of luxury in the Bahamas off the proceeds. michelleandjohnsscatsfavoritetoys.blogspot.com,

Researching a potential money making niche or subject.

This is where the work begins. I can promise you from personal experience, that if you are setting up a blog with the sole intention of making money, you need to find a profitable niche. As an example, let us say you have done some research, and settled on hair care products as a potentially profitable niche and decided to make money from your blog by selling hair care products. A possible search term that some one might use to search for a hair care product would be “hair care shampoo,” so an appropriate domain name would be haircareshampoo.com. Whereas you are unlikely to sell many hair care products through, dogtraining.com. The other things to take into consideration are the amount of people searching for a particular term, the amount of money advertisers are paying to advertise using that particular phrase, and how competitive that term is.

This is where the research comes in. Now, this subject is huge, and I do not plan to go into great detail, because there are other people specializing in this area, some of which are excellent. As far as I am concerned, this is by far the most technically demanding part of making money with a blog, and I personally hate doing it – but, it is a necessary step in the process. This is my first recommendation

To learn how to do effective keyword research, go to this site – The Keyword Academy

Sign up and follow their video lessons. Membership is not expensive, ( for the first month, then a month afterward) and I guarantee you will recoup the money you have spent if you follow their instructions. Once you have a list of possible search terms that you wish to target, the next step is to go and buy a suitable domain name.

Advanced Keyword Research

Once you have grasped the basics of keyword research, there are a number of automatic systems available that will seek and return potentially profitable niches. I DO NOT recommend using these until you understand the basics. This is vital – do not use this until you have worked your way through the keyword academy lessons and understand the information you are being given. This one is fantastic – Niche Horde.

Basically, what this does is – every user who is using this service can enter keywpords and the software searches for and finds related keywords and niches – plus the competition level for that keyword or niche. And it literally returns millions of potential keywords. And this information is available to all members. But – you must have a clear understanding of the information you are being given. It will also search for an exact match domain name once you have identified a potential keyword. Absolutely worth the a year. That is less than a month. Pay them a visit and watch the video – Niche Horde

Step two – Buying a domain name (your website) and hosting it

Let’s stick with haircareshampoo.com. We have decided that this would be a good name to sell haircare products. Whether we are going to actually sell our own product, use google advertising, sell affiliate products or sell banner ads really makes no difference here. Go to Bluehost or Host Gator and use their search facility to see if that name is available by clicking on the button that says “start domain search” and filling in the word “haircareshampoo,” and seeing if it is available. If it is (which this one is not) you then need to open an account, and buy both the domain and hosting from them. I prefer their unlimited hosting packages, but of you are on a tight budget, get whichever is affordable for you.

Step Three – Setting up your blog and installing it

sem-theme-pro-ad-2This is one of the reasons why I like both Bluehost and Host Gator. To do this step – phone their customer service department, tell them you want to install a WordPress blog and ask them to talk you through the process, which they will do. In ten minutes flat, you will have your own WordPress blog set up and ready to storm the blogosphere with. What I will say is – if you have chosen a different hosting company, make sure they have one click installations for WordPress.

There are dozens of other platforms out there, but I heartily recommend WordPress and would not use anything else. Next part is to optimize your WordPress installation, and the easiest, most time effective way of doing so is to go to Semiologic, buy their software and ask them to install it for you. One issue facing a first time blogger is the massive amount of options available to you. Semiologic will take care of most of these – all within one piece of software.

I have wasted countless hours of my time trying to find the perfect look and/or position for one stupid little piece of text or ad placement. With this software – the instructions are simple, easy to follow and they have a pretty good customer service response. I say “pretty good” because this is a three-man band, not a great big corporation. Also – this comes with a fantastic piece of software that allows you to “clone ” a setup. So, once you have one blog that is working well for you – you can buy another domain and clone that one in a few minutes with all the ads in place. This is hands down the best blogging software on the planet.

This is also a brilliant piece of software for setting up a static website rather than a blog. It gets found by the search engines, is very flexible and inexpensive. Once you have it, you can use it on as many websites as you wish and update it with one click as the software evolves. This blog and all my other blogs are semiologic wordpress blogs, and have more than enough custom options to satisfy just about anyone – and you can take it from me that you are far better off spending your time researching, writing and promoting your work than you are pissing around trying to make the “perfect” look.

Buy semiologic wordpress setup here

So, now you have a domain name, software installed and ready to go, and are looking at the metaphorical blank piece of paper that is in your blog – the post editing page.

Step Four- writing something

writingBack to keyword research again. Now – this next part will, to an extent, depend on your writing abilities. Me? I can turn out witty, informative content at the drop of a hat, and base it around my chosen keywords. But – I know plenty of people who cannot and still manage to make money from it. So – you need to go back to the keyword academy, do some research on search terms surrounding your chosen domain name and start writing. Depending on your writing skills – you may need to farm this out, buy content and edit to suit your requirements.

Either way, you will need some content for your blog and well researched, witty, informative content that does not quite answer the question your search engine traffic asked is the best type of content for contextual advertising click throughs and well researched witty informative product reviews that do fully answer the question and recommend a product you have advertised is the best type of content for affiliate sales. So – yes, you will need to do some more work here. Assuming you have followed the first three steps, you now have a well-researched domain name, search engine optimized software and good quality content. The keywords you have determined you are going to use will need to go in the content of the article, the tags on the post, and be used as anchor text to create incoming links. If you do not know what a tag or anchor text is – don’t worry – you will do by the time you have set up a blog and started. Now the next, and perhaps the most crucial step:

Step Five – promoting your site

This is another one that requires work or money. Or both. Much as I would love to say that if you write informatively, it will automatically get found and picked up by the search engines – this is not always true. Sadly, some of the best content I have ever written has never been read because I failed to research the subject properly or discovered later that the subject was so competitive I could never rank well for it.

Think of the search engines as an “online popularity contest,” and you will be thinking correctly. And the way many of them measure it is incoming links from other web sites. So – you need to get out there and find some incoming links. If your content is good, some of these will grow “organically,” but by far your best approach is to make some of that happen. I use a couple of pieces of software for some basic link building, but I also manually generate links as well.. So – you need to go pay these people for incoming links. Which sux – and I hate it – but, I am a realist also. No incoming links means no winning the popularity contest which means no money….. Link building is vital. I will say that again and in bold – no incoming links from other websites equals no traffic equals no money.

Ways to generate some incoming links automatically:

* One way links
* Linkvana
* Unique Article Wizard

I will not go into details about how these work as that is an entirely different article. One Way Links involves you writing a blog post with links embedded in it, which will then be posted to as many other blogs as are in the network, Linkvana involves you posting small articles with a link that will be sent out to their blog network and Unique Article Wizard needs 3 versions of the same article which it will then “randomize” out to hundreds of article directories and blogs. I discuss these programs in more detail here – Generating incoming links. This will not work on it’s own. You must also generate some incoming links from other sources.

Generating links from other sources

Making them yourself

There are several blogging and article sites that allow you to set up a free blog or account a post articles with links in to your own sites. These include WordPress.com, Blogger.com, hubpages, ezine articles and numerous others. This is a basic starting list, and if you use just these you will be getting a good start:

* Hubpages. Hubpages is an article posting site/social networking venue. It is not a blogging platform. This site has high visiblity with the search engines and I use it extensively.You can also make money here on the articles you post, as they offer a revenue sharing advertising model.
* WordPress.com. You can set up as many free blogs as you wish here. I have dozens and use them to write brief articles with links to my paying sites. The software looks very like the software you will be running your blogs on and is therefore extremely easy to use.
* Blogger. Once again – as many free blogs as you like and I have several which I use solely to generate incoming links.
* Ezine articles. This is an article directory that ranks well with the search engines also and allows you to link back to your own site. Free to join and use.

There are many other places to do this, but this is an excellent beginning. If you use all of these, combined with the automatic links, you will be well under way to making money blogging.

Other ways of generating links:

1. Write really fantastic content that people enjoy reading. They will like it so much, they will link to it. This is actually my preferred way of generating incoming links. But – you need a basis in the first place for people to find you.
2. Ask people for a link. You can email other people, tell them you have a great site and ask for links. This is less practical if you do not have great content, or are completely new with no ranking at all. But – it never hurts to ask. If you go this route – ask related sites to link to you. At places like hubpages and the keyword academy, which both have forums, you are going to bump into people who also need links and arrange exchanges.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs. Do not make stupid spammy comments like “thx for the article.” If you go this route, make respectful comments that contribute something to the discussion.
4. Buy links. I have never done this myself because when I started blogging there was so much stuff in the internet about sites being blocked or punished by google for doing so, that I was unsure whether it works or not. Try this at your own peril. I did try a link exchange program which generated link on one of my outgoing pages in exchange for a bunch of incoming links from other sites. It did not work.

Step Six – Making money from your blog

bloggingWith this model of blogging (and there are plenty of others) you are going to need to have advertising – which can be of a variety of types. Contextual google ads (or some other provider), which pay based on visitors to your blog clicking on advertising, products for sale which pay a commission based on a percentage of the sale value, or banner ads that pay on the amount of impressions shown. Google adsense is probably the most widely used, and you may well end up using a comination of these.

This is a basic list, but you must open an account (if you do not already have one) with at least one of these type of advertising providers unless you are planning to sell banner advertising directly to a potential advertiser. You may,of course, choose to use a combination of these.

* Google adsense. Contextual ads based on the content of your pages using a pay per click/impression model.
* Clickbank. Affiliate sales model paying a commision based on the value of the sale. Wide range of products and a good reputation.
* DoubleClick. This is google’s affiliate program.
* Commission junction. Affiliate commissions.
* Amazon. Affiliate commisions.

Google adsense is by far the most popular advertising model, but depending on your audience, you may want to combine it with one of more of these others. Other possible options include, but are not limited to:

1. selling a product. If you are selling a product, then I have to assume that you already know the product you are going to sell. Whether you are making the product yourself or a reseller, you must then determine what search terms are being used by people interested in that product and buy a domain name that is appropriate.
2. selling advertising space using banner ads. Same story here.

So to recap, these are the steps needed:

1. Research domain name using The Keyword Academy and Niche Horde
2. Arrange hosting and buy domain – Bluehost is here and Host Gator is here
3. Install basic WordPress and then buy Semiologic WordPress blogging software and have it installed for you
4. Research and write content
5. Generate incoming links using 1waylinks, Linkvana, Unique Article Wizard and sites like hubpages.
6. Monetize your blog
7. Spend the money you are now making on whatever you want to spend your money on. More domains if you are anything like the rest of us.

Next question – What will this cost me to setup?

* Keyword research lessons – plus per month afterward
* Domain name and hosting – .69 for the domain, and around per month to host as many domains as you wish
* WordPress – Free
* Semiologic software to optimize wordpress – 5 (the best 5 I ever spent)
* Incoming links – One way links – for the first month then per month after
* Joining affiliates – Free

Total cost for one year (one domain only) – ,278

This will not need to be paid out all in one go – with the exception of the domain name and semiologic, these are available as a monthly payment, but these are the basic running costs of setting up money making blogs and of course, if you set up more than one (as you are likely to do) the running costs are split between several blogs. The only extra you will pay is for more domains. I suggest adding Unique Article Wizard and Linkvana to your strategy after you have several domains and/or are making some income. UAW costs per month and Linkvana costs 7 per month.

Next logical question – How much money will I make?

How long is a piece of string? To a certain extent, this depends on how much work you are willing to put in, how well you learn the keyword lessons and that indefinable element – luck. What I have given here is the basics of how to make money blogging. There are other ways of monetizing a blog, and there are other approaches that can be just as profitable. But this is a tried and tested method, and I can promise that if you follow these instructions, you will make a profit.

Do not, unless Lady Luck steps in and gives you a hand, expect to become rich overnight. And do not make the mistake of thinking that there is no work involved. Certainly the tools I have recommended will get you started faster and more profitably than just by setting up a blog and going for it with your eyes closed. It took me three years to learn what I could have learned at the Keyword academy in three months. And I spent more hours than I care to remember trying to get WordPress to do the things that Semiologic can make it do.

I also wasted hundreds of hours link building manually instead of paying to outsource some of them. Sure – you can do it cheaper, but you will be profitable much, much slower – assuming you have enough money not t0 be earning while you wait for things to work (or not). Realistically, if you do your research properly, and if you make good content, and generate incoming links in the ways I have suggested, the correct niche blog can return you hundreds of dollars a month with very little work on your part once the groundwork is laid. My most successful blog makes around ,500 per month, and my least successful around a month – discounting the disasters that I don’t want to talk about

Good luck

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The purpose of having backlinks as an element of page rank algorithm is that people will want to link to pages that have quality content. The more the number of backlinks a site has, the better it is. However, practically speaking, you cannot be relying on the fact that your website content is of high quality and therefore people will link to it.

No doubt if your site has the most relevant and high quality content, you can get many quality backlinks including from websites that contain themes similar to yours. Nonetheless, getting such inbound links may not always be easy and require a lot of efforts, therefore, you may want to look out for other ways to get quality backlinks.

Ways to Build Your Backlinks
Even if you manage to get lots of backlinks in a natural way, it is never a bad idea to welcome additional quality inbound links. There are several ways for acquiring backlinks which may be ethical while other ways may be illegitimate and unacceptable and can lead to your site being penalized in the long run. The legitimate ways of getting backlinks include directory submissions, forum posting, linking to other blogs, press releases, etc. Among the unacceptable ways are linking to link farms, buying links in large quantities, getting linked to websites hosting illegal content, linking to other websites that belong to the same person, etc.

To start building backlinks, the first step would be to identify sites from where you can acquire quality backlinks. This can be done with the help of Backlink Builder tool which generates a list of websites on entering keywords. Once you get the list of potential sites where you can post messages, articles, or backlinks to your website, the choice is up to you to visit these sites and start posting your content along with an inbound link to your website in it.

You may have a question about how websites generated by the backink building tool can provide backlinks free of cost. The answer to your question simply lies in the fact that such sites need content for their site. With you posting and feeding them with content without getting paid for it, helps you to get free quality backlinks in return from them. It is like free trading where you offer something required by others for free and get what you want for free. However, this free trading lasts as long as you post your content to sites that are respected and also as long as you do not end up posting fake content.

Below are some of the most successful methods that can be used to build backlinks.

Directory Submission
Getting your site listed in various directories is one of the basic steps that you should start with in your efforts to build backlinks. It may be unlikely to get any significant traffic through directories; however, the idea here is to get backlinks to improve your page ranking.

There are several directories to which your site can be submitted. These can range from general directories, blog directories, SEO friendly directories to non-reciprocal directories (directories that allow you to list your website in their directory even if you do not link back to them). Additionally, it is important that you submit your site to only those directories that have a high page rank.

It is also important to know that listing a site in directories is a time consuming process as it requires you to first find out quality directories to which you want to submit your site. Once this is done, you have to search through the categories and sub categories in these directories to find out the specific category to which your website belongs. Therefore, keeping the time constraint in mind, it is a good idea to hire a professional SEO company that provides directory submission services so that you can save time and concentrate your efforts and resources on your other core business functions.

Forum or Blog Posting and Article Directories
Forum posting and Blog posting is another way of getting quality backlinks to your site because search engines usually index forums as well. Getting backlinks from blogs or forums that are reputed can be very helpful. However, at times there could be a possibility of your post being edited or deleted by the forum administrator if they find that your posting does not adhere to the forum policy. Moreover, there may be times when the administrators may not allow any links in posts until they are totally relevant.

While posting in forums and blogs can be done faster and require lesser efforts, submission of articles to various directories can take a very long time since articles are longer when compared to posts and also involve a though process to write them. However, it would still be worth the time and effort in the long run.

Press Releases and News Announcements
Though this is not a day to day practice to build quality backlinks, it does fetch good results if done the right way. There are several websites out there which publish press releases or news announcements free of cost or may charge a fee. A press release that is well written can boost visitor traffic to your site and also a backlink from a reputed site to your site is a value addition to your entire SEO efforts. However, a press release can be used as a medium only if there is something newsworthy. That is the reason why press releases and news announcements do not factor in as a daily way to build backlinks.

Content Exchange
Content exchange can also be very helpful in getting you quality backlinks. For example, you can provide free RSS feeds to websites that are interested in them. When your RSS feed gets published by the other site, you will get an inbound link to your website. This will also drive a lot of visitor traffic that will visit your website to get more details on the headlines and abstract they read on this other site.

Creating Quality Content
Creating professional and quality content is also very important to get more backlinks to your site. This is because content that is well written is always noticeable and there would be more number of people who would want to link to it.

Leaving Comments
To create awareness and get visibility for your site, you can also leave comments on others blogs. Leaving comments that are appealing to read will always have a good chance of drawing the attention of more people to your site.

Practices to Avoid While Building Backlinks
There are several ways in which links can be built, however, it is important to realize that certain link building ways can ruin your SEO efforts. One such practice to avoid is link exchange, wherein, when you place a link on another website, that website in return will place a backlink to your website. There are a few things to be considered with this concept of link exchanging. First is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Having more outbound links than inbound links is not good. Second, there could be a possibility of your link partner being a link farm. In this case, your site can get penalized or banned by search engines as link farms are considered as unethical SEO practice.

Additionally, you must also be careful about linking to sites that are suspicious or host illegal content. Though search engines will not penalize you for having backlinks from such websites, since you do not have control over what they link to, linking with such sites can ruin your SEO efforts.

Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship established between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant’s website. If that traffic is converted into some kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant’s website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant’s affiliate program.

Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?

Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant’s website. Commissions for this kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the merchant’s site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through, usually not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.

Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant’s site. This commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?

We can’t tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program. But we can definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still vague, then let’s make them a bit clearer with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program that pays only for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as is definitely a lot larger than . But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you’ll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have initiated. But with the second merchant, you’ll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service. That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant’s service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.

So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate programs work best for you? Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.