Making Money with Affiliate Programs
December 26, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under Domain Registrations
If we are all honest, most of us would do anything to live a life where we work from home, decide what hours we will work, when we will get up in the morning to how much we earn, right?
Wouldn’t it be great to get paid based on how well you perform? Imagine going in to work and because you chose to give more than 100% that day, your boss decided to pay you more money!
Let’s face it as well, life is very short and you only get one chance to live it out the way you want to live it out. Doing a 9-5 job or pulling grueling 12hr shifts doesn’t add to your life it takes away from it.
That is why so many people today are turning to affiliate marketing for extra income. This billion dollar industry over the past year has soared in leaps and bounds with more people spending money around the holiday shopping season. So how you benefit from being an affiliate marketer?
It all begins with Getting Started!
Sometimes the hardest step is the first one we take.
That’s no joke, and being an affiliate marketer is no exception. When you set out to start your online career as a successful affiliate marketer, there are going to be many ups and downs that are going to make you want to give up. Let’s face it being your own boss, being strict with how you spend your time and balancing your home and work life is going to be a challenge at time.
Don’t be put off by that as their will be times when you are making money while you sleep and waking up in the morning to find you have made an extra hundred dollars or two is always thrilling. Keep in mind all the days you have made more than you expected as those times will help you through any rough patches. Believe you can do it, surround yourself with positive people and learn from those who are doing well at it, and do it on a regular basis.
One of the things you are going to want to do right at the start is get good information from an affiliate marketer who is working from home and managing to consistently earn a living from affiliate programs.
Also you will want to set aside time each day even if it is only 1hr to spend learning the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do. It is very easy to rush head first into something and end up on the other side out of pocket and frustrated.
Realize you will need to invest in your business
The phrase ” It takes money to make money” is without a doubt the truth, but that is not to say you can’t make money online without spending hundreds of dollars. There are numerous ways going about it, but the hard fast rules of advertising have always been the same throughout the ages.
If you don’t have enough money to buy software like a website creator, there are many free software packages out their though places like download.com which allow you to make a website. Heck even Netscape the free browser comes with a website creator.
So what things will you need to get started?
Well there are no hard fast rules but having a
Website editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver
Domain name through namecheap.com
Hosting through hostgator.com or one of the
various hosting companies out there.
Internet connection are really some of the main things, I mean you can use someone else’s computer if you really need to.
Realize that Affiliate Marketing is a booming industry that continues to grow everyday. A few resources you might want to check out when your first starting out is.
If we are all honest, most of us would do anything to live a life where we work from home, decide what hours we will work, when we will get up in the morning to how much we earn, right?
Wouldn’t it be great to get paid based on how well you perform? Imagine going in to work and because you chose to give more than 100% that day, your boss decided to pay you more money!
Let’s face it as well, life is very short and you only get one chance to live it out the way you want to live it out. Doing a 9-5 job or pulling grueling 12hr shifts doesn’t add to your life it takes away from it.
That is why so many people today are turning to affiliate marketing for extra income. This billion dollar industry over the past year has soared in leaps and bounds with more people spending money around the holiday shopping season. So how you benefit from being an affiliate marketer?
It all begins with Getting Started!
Sometimes the hardest step is the first one we take.
That’s no joke, and being an affiliate marketer is no exception. When you set out to start your online career as a successful affiliate marketer, there are going to be many ups and downs that are going to make you want to give up. Let’s face it being your own boss, being strict with how you spend your time and balancing your home and work life is going to be a challenge at time.
Don’t be put off by that as their will be times when you are making money while you sleep and waking up in the morning to find you have made an extra hundred dollars or two is always thrilling. Keep in mind all the days you have made more than you expected as those times will help you through any rough patches. Believe you can do it, surround yourself with positive people and learn from those who are doing well at it, and do it on a regular basis.
One of the things you are going to want to do right at the start is get good information from an affiliate marketer who is working from home and managing to consistently earn a living from affiliate programs.
Also you will want to set aside time each day even if it is only 1hr to spend learning the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do. It is very easy to rush head first into something and end up on the other side out of pocket and frustrated.
Realize you will need to invest in your business
The phrase ” It takes money to make money” is without a doubt the truth, but that is not to say you can’t make money online without spending hundreds of dollars. There are numerous ways going about it, but the hard fast rules of advertising have always been the same throughout the ages.
If you don’t have enough money to buy software like a website creator, there are many free software packages out their though places like download.com which allow you to make a website. Heck even Netscape the free browser comes with a website creator.
So what things will you need to get started?
Well there are no hard fast rules but having a
Website editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver
Domain name through namecheap.com
Hosting through hostgator.com or one of the
various hosting companies out there.
Internet connection are really some of the main things, I mean you can use someone else’s computer if you really need to.
Realize that Affiliate Marketing is a booming industry that continues to grow everyday. A few resources you might want to check out when your first starting out is.
How to Become an Affiliate Blogger Using Wordpress Websites
November 21, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under cPanel
If you want to become an affiliate or you already are an affiliate marketer then you can now also easily become an Affiliate Blogger! All you need is Wordpress to build your web sites and you are all set.
Wordpress is the de facto standard and ultimate software for bloggers and has been for some time. If you want a blog to become any sort of blogger then Wordpress is the blogging platform you should use.
If you are not an affiliate and you aren’t too interested in making money online then you can get free blogs at Wordpress.com. These are really easy to sign-up for and you will get started posting your content in no time at all. The learning curve is short even for the technically challenged. Using Wordpress is easy!
However, if you do want to make money online as an affiliate marketer then do not use the free blogs at Wordpress.com to do this. The reason is that affiliate links in these free blogs are frowned upon and if you are caught using them in these free blogs your blog will be deleted and your account terminated.
And if you have several blogs they will use your IP address to find and delete any other free blogs or accounts you may have too! This is definitely not the way to become and affiliate blogger.
If you want to do affiliate marketing with Wordpress web sites then you have to use a self-hosted Wordpress site. This means you have to install the free Wordpress software onto your own domain name website at your web host. In most cases, especially if your web hosts uses cPanel and Fantastico, this is very easy to do.
Once you have done this you have a very powerful affiliate marketing tool at your disposal. Google and the other search engines too, love blogs and Wordpress in particular. Being an affiliate blogger can have great advantages over traditional HTML websites.
Even though you will not be using the software just for blogging, as you will probably want to set up individual landing pages or review pages for the product you want to promote, the blogging part of the software (ie the posts) means it is very easy to add fresh content to your site whenever you want.
Wordpress is great also for site promotion as it has in-built RSS feeds, which are automatically pinged to let many important web sites and aggregators know that you have fresh content, so that a new post can often be indexed in Google in just a few minutes! Any affiliate blogger will recognize this as being a major benefit.
With each post you can also tag your content and categorize it, which again is great for search engine optimization. There are also many plugins which you can use to really make a big improvement to on-page and on-site SEO. Using such plugins correctly can significantly enhance your site’s rankings in the search engines.
One of the fun parts of any Wordpress site is that you can easily completely change the look and feel of your website simply by using a single click of your mouse to select a new theme. And of course if you are into programming you can customize your theme even more to make it just the way you want.
There are also now a lot of plugins that you can get, some for free, which allow you to create online stores or embedded product listings within your site using affiliate datafeed from top sites, such as Amazon or Ebay, and using datafeeds from merchants at the top affiliate networks like Commission Junction and ClickBank.
So whatever your needs as an affiliate then become a blogger with Wordpress and make some real money online!
Domain Parking Vs Domain Development
June 6, 2009 by Web Hosting Watch
Filed under Domain Registrations
The “Should I park my domain name and monetize it that way or should I develop a website?” is a pretty old debate among domainers. And I believe it’s proof that laziness will always win over sensibility.
There are a variety of ways to monetize a domain name. Most domainers who deal with a lot of domain names like to park their domains at Sedo, GoDaddy, or other services that help them monetize the name.
Others build made-for-adsense websites that have little real value, intending to get visitors to click the adsense ads. This is not much different from parking the domain names.
Very few domain name sellers or speculators develop real websites or blogs on their domain names. Why?
Even though they intend to sell their domain names, they know that this usually takes a lot of time. Finding a buyer isn’t an overnight process in most cases. Most domains that are finally sold have been owned by the speculator for years.
Parking those domain names is the way they try to cover their costs of registering the names year after year. Most of their domain names will never sell because they want way more than they are worth. Most domain speculators are hoping for that one big sale, kind of like playing the lottery.
During all that time they are holding onto their domain names, they could be building websites, doing affiliate marketing, blogging, and more. The problem is that those things require work. And we all know how much people like work.
Most people who join MLM programs, get involved in domain speculation, or fall for get rich quick schemes do not want to work. They are hoping to fall into thousands of dollars without having to do any real work.
This article won’t win me any popularity contests among domainers. But if the truth hurts, too bad. It is not ALL domainers who are lazy. There are many who work very hard at their profession. They learn to master the traffic their domain name brings in and make a business out of it.
This article is more about those who just go out and register a bunch of domain names they believe are creative, hoping that someone is going to come along someday and give them a bunch of money for what they consider to be creativity.
For some it is their second job or hobby. For others it is a habit. I’ve known domainers who mortgaged their house to buy a lot of domain names they will likely never sell for enough to cover the loan.
In my opinion, the smart move is to develop those domain names into real online businesses. If you own one-word generic domain names that have type-in traffic, this doesn’t apply to you. But if you are like most domainers and you own a bunch of made up domain names, two and three word domain names, etc., then you should think about developing those domain names into a business.
A domain name’s real value is in the traffic it generates and what that traffic may or may not buy based on the keywords that helped them find that domain or website in the first place.
Let me rephrase it again. Your domain name is not worth anything more than you registered it for when you first register the name. Once you analyze the traffic that domain gets, it may or may not increase in value.
If just parking the domain name gets very few clickthrus for the ads placed on it, then your domain name is not worth but a few pennies over the price of registration.
All it proves is that a few people who end up on that domain name will click an adsense ad. To a business, that means nothing. It doesn’t even prove that any of the traffic generated by that domain name will actually buy something.
However, if you create a business plan that matches the domain name, and you develop a website based on that business plan, and people do actually buy products, services, subscribe, join, or click through to your affiliates, you show that the domain name you own has business potential.
A business owner is much more likely to buy your domain name if it has a proven profit potential than if they just think you have a cute catchy short domain name.
It can be as easy as installing free wordpress software and picking a free theme for your blog and writing to it daily with original content.
The bonus is that it may also rank well for your keywords if you do it right and know a little about seo and social bookmarking.
If you develop a business model that is just moderately successful and you add that it has a good ranking for some key phrases, the value of your domain name is quantifiable and much more appealing to anyone that may consider buying it from you.
My opinion is based on having developed hundreds of websites and blogs and having bought and sold over 500 domain names.
There are a few people around who have bought and sold more than I have.
There are domainers who have made a lot more money than I have by monetizing their domain names or by directing the traffic from their domain names directly to websites that are owned by businesses.
But, again, they have the right domains and tools to do that with. Making up domain names or owning a bunch of 2-3 word domain names does not mean you will be one of these. You won’t be. Those I referred to in this article should begin thinking about developing their domain names if they want them to have any actual value.