How To Continually Grow Your Affiliate Checks

The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has enticed a lot of people towards affiliate marketing.  But does affiliate marketing really work this way?

As an affiliate, all that is required of you is to simply place the merchant's ad on your website.  Then after that, you virtually do nothing but wait for anyone to click on the merchant's ad and later collect your profits.  Easy, right?  Well, not quite often.  Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing.  Remember that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing, and you'll definitely need to market your merchant's product for you to earn something.

Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don't sit there and wait for money to come.  Why?  Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting.  If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you've got to do something.  Think of ways on how to promote your merchant's business and products better.  Think of ways on how to induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant.  Think of ways on how to make your affiliate sales increase!

So if you're new in affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky pit that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you're definitely on the wrong track.  But we're not advising you to stop right there.  No.  Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you.  How?  Here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

* Become an expert on your affiliate product.

You can promote your merchant's product better if you know a lot of things about it.  To become an expert, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchant's product yourself.  This way, you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the product.  You can even write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about it.  But if any condition does not permit you to purchase the product, you can at least make a thorough research about it.

* Host your own website.

Or at least have a domain name that is short and easy to remember.  You certainly wouldn't expect a visitor to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL.  And if that's so, you also wouldn't expect him to visit your website any time soon.  That means less traffic for your page and the less chance for your affiliate ads and links to be clicked.

It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads.  Visitors usually get interested with these private websites.  Private websites also gives you a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.

* Write your own affiliate ads.

Many merchants usually wouldn't mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, for as long as you ask permission from them and present them your ad before posting it on your site.  This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who must be advertising the same affiliate products.

* Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.

If you use to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them.  You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product.  You don't have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along.  The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.

* Create a free ezine or newsletter.

Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject.  In your ezines and newsletters, you don't always have to promote your merchant's product for this may greatly annoy your subscribers.  Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter.  Also, don't forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks.  Sure there can be a lot of other tips that out there, and if you think they would work, we won't discourage you from following them.  What's important is that you be able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant's products even outside the boundary of your website.  If you can do these, there's no reason for you to fail in affiliate marketing.

Building Your Business with an Opt-in List

Before revealing the secrets of the trades, here are myths and fallacies that need to be cleared before one indulges into building an opt-in list. These marketing misconceptions could pose so much of an obstacle towards your profitting well from your business.

Not a lot of people use email

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods nowadays simply because virtually almost all people use email. Check on those email fields or blanks required to be filled up on various forms needed in processing different transactions. A person without an email address is tantamount to a person without an online home, which is one big shameful truth for this generation.

Email marketing campaigns can offend a lot of people

The not-so secret way to surmount this dilemma is through permission-based advertising. There's no harm in trying after asking for permission.

It's stupid to send email to all the people

The key to this predicament is to have a very discerning eye on who to email and who to not email. Better look for some metrics on how to know which group of people would give you high ROI or return on investment.

The Real Deal with Building Opt-in List

After clearing the fog regarding email marketing myths, here's how one can benefit from employing the power of email marketing campaigns - building an opt-in list.

However, building an opt-in list is not a piece of cake particularly for the uninitiated. Here is a roundown of tips on how to succeed in this kind of marketing endeavor.

1. Strategic Collection of Data

Know which information from your audiences will help you in lowering expenses and/or make sales flourish. Devise a tactic to make people voluntarily provide you with the information necessary to create higher conversion.

Overload of data is not good. Ask only for opt-in, with their full name and email addresses. Make sure that the profiles that you gather are updated to aid in improving the relevance, timeliness and satisfaction from each deal you make.

2. Good Implementation

Old adage says it all - 'action speaks louder than words'. This easily translates to the difficulty one has to undergo during the execution of his or her email marketing efforts. It's a good thing that various methods, often low-cost, abound to hasten and facilitate the building up of one's opt-in database.

Tracking your email marketing results can pose great hardship, too. Technology and relevant sources should be employed in making this aspect of your marketing a lot manageable. Your high traffic groups of opt-ins with the greatest result should be taken noted of.

The following are the most widely used methods to leverage channels without overspending:

1. Make use of websites.

It is an excellent tool for data collation and providing you with relevant info regarding your email offers. Use forms that solicit your visitor's email address and consent.

2. Make use of print ads, brochures, TV, radio and direct mail.

These are the more popular ways of marketing aiming to lead traffic to one's site. You may want to ask for signups for email services. Make your website more visible through these media. Offering free electronic newsletters and or rewards program can do well in making it easy to win the nod of your audiences, too.

3. Maximize your sales force.

Customer service associates can help a lot in making you benefit more from your email correspondence. Sales people with proper education on how to aid you in this endeavor can very well contribute to higher ROI. Techniques like offering account updates and special programs through email can easily land you those lists of valuable visitors.

4. Don't make your point of sale pointless.

Forms for signup located at cash registers and other high-traffic and highly visible spots can be very excellent venues for your business to collect email addresses. Notification of upcoming sales through their email addresses and names can coax them to supply you with the information you need.

5. Conferences or trade shows can work, too.

Giveaway offers or entries on sweepstakes are great for opt-in to volunteer their contact details.

These tactics should be applied with adequate caution and should focus on earning the trust of your opt-in list instead of simply collating data for your sole own benefit. Always make sure that the forms that you will use and other methods that you will employ will not necessitate too much fuss to subscribe. This is for people to not be annoyed during the process of data supplication.

With that bunch of information, who can ever go wrong with the feat of building an opt-in list?

A GUIDE ON RSS TOOL

RSS is an abbreviation that has evolved into the following, depending on their versions:

· RDF Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.9; the first version of RSS)

· Rich Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.91; a prototype)

· Really Simple Syndication (also known as RSS 2.0)

Today, RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication', and it has the following 7 existing formats or versions:

· 0.90
· 0.91
· 0.92
· 0.93
· 0.94
· 1.0
· 2.0

RSS tools refer to a group of file formats that are designed to share headlines and other web content (this may be a summary or simply 1 to 2 lines of the article), links to the full versions of the content (the full article or post), and even file attachments such as multimedia files. All of these data is delivered in the form of an XML file (XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language), which has the following common names:

· RSS feed
· Webfeed
· RSS stream
· RSS channel


They are typically shown on web pages as an orange rectangle that usually has the letters XML or RSS in it.

RSS feeds can be used to deliver any kind of information. Some of these 'feeds' include:

· Blogs feed - each blog entry is summarized as a feed item. This makes blog posts easier to scan, enabling 'visitors' to zoom in on their items of interest.

· Article feed - this alerts readers whenever there are new articles and web contents available.

· Forum feed - this allows users to receive forum posts and latest discussion topics.

· Schedule feed - this allows users (such as schools, clubs, and other organizations) to broadcast events and announce schedule changes or meeting agendas.

· Discounts or Special feed - this is used to enable users (such as retail and online stores) to 'deliver' latest specials and discounted offers.

· Ego or News Monitoring - this enables users to receive 'filtered' headlines or news that are based on a specific phrase or keyword.

· Industry-specific feed - used by technical professionals in order to market, promote, or communicate with current (and prospective) customers and clients within their specific industries.

RSS feeds enable people to track numerous blogs and news sources at the same time. To produce an RSS feed, all you need is the content or the article that you want to publicize and a validated RSS text file. Once your text file is registered at various aggregators (or 'news readers'), any external site can then capture and display your RSS feed, automatically updating them whenever you update your RSS file.

RSS tools are useful for sites that add or modify their contents on a regular basis. They are especially used for 'web syndication' or activities that involve regular updates and/or publications, such as the following:

· News websites - as used by major news organizations such as Reuters, CNN, and the BBC.
· Marketing
· Bug reports
· Personal weblogs

There are many benefits to using RSS feeds. Aside from being a great supplemental communication method that streamlines the communication needs of various sectors, RSS tools and feeds can also have tremendous benefits in your business, particularly in the field of internet marketing.

RSS tools and feeds provide Internet users with a free (or cheap) and easy advertising or online marketing opportunity for their businesses. Below are some of the RSS features that can help make your internet marketing strategies more effective.

1. Ease in content distribution services. With RSS, your business can be captured and displayed by virtually any external site, giving you an easy way to 'spread out' and advertise them.

2. Ease in regular content updates. With RSS, web contents concerning your business can now be automatically updated on a daily (and even hourly) basis. Internet users will be able to experience 'real time' updates as information in your own file (such as new products and other business-related releases) is changed and modified simultaneously with that of the RSS feeds that people are subscribed to.

3. Custom-made content services. With RSS, visitors can have personalized content services, allowing them total control of the flow and type of information that they receive. Depending on their interests and needs, visitors can subscribe to only those contents that they are looking for (such as real estate or job listings).

4. Increase in (and targeted) traffic. With RSS, traffic will be directed to your site as readers of your content summary (or 1 to 2 lines of your article) who find them interesting are 'forced' to click on a link back to your site.

These are just several of the many things that you can do with RSS. The possibilities are endless, and they are all aimed at providing you with an effective internet marketing strategy for your business.

Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

A Guide to RSS Aggregators,

One of the most popular features of Internet portals, websites, pages and even emails is a frame that features an organized list of news headlines and periodic updates from other web sources.  Really Simple Syndication, formerly “Rich Site Summary” or simply, RSS makes this possible.

Most users visit a lot of websites whose content continually change, such as news sites, community organization or professional association information pages, medical websites, product support pages, and blogs.  As Internet surfing became an intrinsic part of business and leisure, it became important to get rid of the very tedious task of repeatedly returning to each website to see updated content.

RSS easily distributes information from different websites to a wider number of Internet users.  RSS aggregators are programs that use RSS to source these updates, and then organize those lists of headlines, content and notices for easy reading.  It allows computers to automatically retrieve and read the content that users want, then track changes and personalize lists of headlines that interests them.

The specially made computer programs called “RSS aggregators” were created to automatically find and retrieve the RSS feeds of pre-selected internet sites on behalf of the user and organize the results accordingly. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes referred to as "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".)

The RSS aggregator is like a web browser for RSS content.  HTML presents information directly to users, and RSS automatically lets computers communicate with one another.  While users use browsers to surf the web then load and view each page of interest, RSS aggregators keeps track of changes to many websites.  The titles or descriptions are links themselves and can be used to load the web page the user wants.

RSS starts with an original Web site that has content made available by the administrator.  The website creates an RSS document and registers this content with an RSS publisher that will allow other websites to syndicate the documents.  The Web site also produces an RSS feed, or channel, which is available together with all other resources or documents on the particular Web server.  The website will register the feed as an RSS document, with a listed directory of appropriate RSS publishers.

An RSS feed is composed of website content listed from newest to oldest.  Each item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description and a link to a web page with the actual content being described.  In some instances, the short description or title line is the all the updated information that a user wants to read (for example, final games scores in sports, weblogs post, or stock updates).   Therefore, it is not even necessary to have a web page associated with the content or update items listed -- sometimes all the needed information that users need would be in the titles and short summaries themselves.

The RSS content is located in a single file on a webpage in a manner not very different from typical web pages.  The difference is that the information is written in the XML computer code for use by an RSS aggregator and not by a web user like a normal HTML page.

There are 2 main parts that are involved in RSS syndication, namely:  the source end and the client end.

The client end of RSS publishing makes up part of the system that gathers and uses the RSS feed.  For example, Mozilla FireFox browser is typically at the client end of the RSS transaction.  A user’s desktop RSS aggregator program also belongs to the client end.

Once the URL of an RSS feed is known, a user can give that address to an RSS aggregator program and have the aggregator monitor the RSS feed for changes.  Numerous RSS aggregators are already preconfigured with a ready list of RSS feed URLs for popular news or information websites that a user can simply choose from.

There are many RSS aggregators that can be used by all Internet users.  Some can be accessed through the Internet, some are already incorporated into email applications, and others run as a standalone program inside the personal computer.

RSS feeds have evolved into many uses.  Some uses gaining popularity are:

·For online store or retail establishments:  Notification of new product arrivals
·For organization or association newsletters:  title listings and notification of new issues, including email newsletters
·Weather Updates and other alerts of changing geographic conditions
·Database management:  Notification of new items added, or new registered members to a club or interest group.

The uses of feeds will continue to grow, because RSS aggregators make access to any information that individual users like more convenient and fun.

A Guide to RSS Aggregators

One of the most popular features of Internet portals, websites, pages and even emails is a frame that features an organized list of news headlines and periodic updates from other web sources.  Really Simple Syndication, formerly “Rich Site Summary” or simply, RSS makes this possible.

Most users visit a lot of websites whose content continually change, such as news sites, community organization or professional association information pages, medical websites, product support pages, and blogs.  As Internet surfing became an intrinsic part of business and leisure, it became important to get rid of the very tedious task of repeatedly returning to each website to see updated content.

RSS easily distributes information from different websites to a wider number of Internet users.  RSS aggregators are programs that use RSS to source these updates, and then organize those lists of headlines, content and notices for easy reading.  It allows computers to automatically retrieve and read the content that users want, then track changes and personalize lists of headlines that interests them.

The specially made computer programs called “RSS aggregators” were created to automatically find and retrieve the RSS feeds of pre-selected internet sites on behalf of the user and organize the results accordingly. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes referred to as "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".)

The RSS aggregator is like a web browser for RSS content.  HTML presents information directly to users, and RSS automatically lets computers communicate with one another.  While users use browsers to surf the web then load and view each page of interest, RSS aggregators keeps track of changes to many websites.  The titles or descriptions are links themselves and can be used to load the web page the user wants.

RSS starts with an original Web site that has content made available by the administrator.  The website creates an RSS document and registers this content with an RSS publisher that will allow other websites to syndicate the documents.  The Web site also produces an RSS feed, or channel, which is available together with all other resources or documents on the particular Web server.  The website will register the feed as an RSS document, with a listed directory of appropriate RSS publishers.

An RSS feed is composed of website content listed from newest to oldest.  Each item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description and a link to a web page with the actual content being described.  In some instances, the short description or title line is the all the updated information that a user wants to read (for example, final games scores in sports, weblogs post, or stock updates).   Therefore, it is not even necessary to have a web page associated with the content or update items listed -- sometimes all the needed information that users need would be in the titles and short summaries themselves.

The RSS content is located in a single file on a webpage in a manner not very different from typical web pages.  The difference is that the information is written in the XML computer code for use by an RSS aggregator and not by a web user like a normal HTML page.

There are 2 main parts that are involved in RSS syndication, namely:  the source end and the client end.

The client end of RSS publishing makes up part of the system that gathers and uses the RSS feed.  For example, Mozilla FireFox browser is typically at the client end of the RSS transaction.  A user’s desktop RSS aggregator program also belongs to the client end.

Once the URL of an RSS feed is known, a user can give that address to an RSS aggregator program and have the aggregator monitor the RSS feed for changes.  Numerous RSS aggregators are already preconfigured with a ready list of RSS feed URLs for popular news or information websites that a user can simply choose from.

There are many RSS aggregators that can be used by all Internet users.  Some can be accessed through the Internet, some are already incorporated into email applications, and others run as a standalone program inside the personal computer.

RSS feeds have evolved into many uses.  Some uses gaining popularity are:

·For online store or retail establishments:  Notification of new product arrivals
·For organization or association newsletters:  title listings and notification of new issues, including email newsletters
·Weather Updates and other alerts of changing geographic conditions
·Database management:  Notification of new items added, or new registered members to a club or interest group.

The uses of feeds will continue to grow, because RSS aggregators make access to any information that individual users like more convenient and fun.

YAHOO! SITE MAP: A USEFUL INTERNET MARKETING TOOL

A website refers to a compilation of Web pages that can be typically accessed through a software package, commonly known as  a Web browser (one example is the HTTP on the Internet). These pages, which are essentially documents that are in the HTML or XHTML format (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language), are accessed from a 'common root URL' - or the website's homepage (as most people know it). From this homepage, the visitor/Internet user can browse or look through the entire website either with the use of the hyperlinks or the URLs of the different web pages.

Viewed on computers and other devices that are capable of connecting with the Internet (such as PDAs and cellular phones), websites can be grouped into numerous types, depending on their use or the services that they offer. Some of them include the following:

· Archive site - maintains and protects electronic contents that are valuable to the point of extinction.

· Business site - promotes a business or a service.

· Commerce or eCommerce site - offers goods for sale.

· Community site - allows people with related and similar interests to communicate with each other (either through chat or message boards).

· Database site - searches and displays a particular database's content.

· Development site - provides data and sources that are related to software development and web design, among others.

· Directory site - contains wide-ranging contents that are usually divided into categories and subcategories.

· Download site - allows users to download electronic contents, such as game demos and software.

· Game site - provides a 'playground' where people meet and play.

· Information site - contains data or content that have the sole purpose of informing visitors (not for commercial purposes).

· News site - dispenses or distributes news and commentaries (similar to an information site).

· Pornography site - shows pornographic videos and images.

· Search engine site - provides general information and serves as a 'gateway' for other sites and resources (can also be a web portal site).

· Shock site - shows images and other materials that aim to offend viewers.

· Vanity site - a personal site that is run or maintained by an individual or a small group, the contents of which can be of any information that the site owner wishes to include.

· Blog site or blogs - registers online readings and posts online diaries or discussion forums.

· Wiki site - allows users to collaboratively edit the contents.

Yahoo! is perhaps the most famous example of a very large website. The most popular and widely-used website, Yahoo! is a mixture of the different types of sites - it is a directory site and a search engine site, among others.

Because of the enormous (and diverse) amount of information that it contains, the Yahoo! site map is an extremely useful feature in the Yahoo! website.

A site map is a web page that lists the entire pages on a web site. Organized in a hierarchical fashion, site maps can be in textual or visual form (a diagram or an image).

The Yahoo! site map serves as a blueprint for the Yahoo! website. Similar to a book's Table of Contents, the Yahoo! sitemap makes it easier for visitors or users to find specific information or pages on the Yahoo! web site without having to browse many pages, because the site map gives an overview or a visual outline of the Yahoo! web site, with each location provided with active links to enable the user to directly move to a specific location.

In addition, the Yahoo! site map allows web developers to put out links from across their sites, making it easier for search engine robots (or engine spiders) to find these pages.

Because the Yahoo! site map improves the search engine optimization of a site, this feature can be considered a valuable tool for online marketers, whose aim is to stimulate and direct traffic to their web sites.

Note, however, that the Yahoo! site map can only give you the 'basics'. Because it is important for web marketers to 'rank high' on main search engines, an effective web marketing strategy that promotes your web site is also very much needed. Listed below are some search engine strategies to consider:

1. Write a descriptive page title at the top of your webpage that avoids 'filler' words like "the" or "and".

2. Incorporate descriptive keywords on your home page, along with your business name. This is  called "keyword prominence".

3. Include a Description Meta Tag at the top of the web page. This refers to the sentences (1 or 2 lines, with a maximum of around 255 characters) that describe the content of your web page.

These are just some of the many techniques that you can employ to get more users to visit your website. The important thing is to focus on keywords - and let Yahoo! site map do the rest.