10 Ways to Proofread Articles Faster

No matter how much a person enjoys writing, almost everyone has a concern for writing clearly and accurately, without errors in grammar or spelling. Although proofreading can avoid embarrassing and costly mistakes, the pressures of deadlines and fatigue often cause the proofreading process to fail.

Saving time and producing better work are concepts that appeal to most writers. The increased output combined with increased quality represents a surefire approach to building a writing career. To help writers improve their proofreading skills, here are 10 ways to proofread articles faster and more efficiently.

1. Pay attention to your personal weaknesses: Often writers find themselves consistently spelling the same words incorrectly. Although misspellings often derive from a mental block or a lack of familiarity with a word, they can also result from a flaw in typing skills that causes your fingers to hit an incorrect key combination or from a keyboard that is defective. By understanding the cause of typographical errors and to the most frequently misspelled words, writers can discipline themselves to be extra attentive when those words come up.

2. Use time to your advantage: Rather than proofreading a completed piece immediately, many writers will discover that revisiting that piece later, when the familiarity of the work has dissipated, improves their ability to quickly detect errors.

3. Get a second pair of eyes: Spellcheckers can help catch mistakes before they can harm your reputation as a writer, but they do not guarantee perfection, especially when a spelling error takes the form of a different, properly spelled word. For example, if a writer typed too,where but meant two,were the spellchecker probably would not pick that up. Nothing finds errors in text better or faster than another person taking a fresh and objective look at the material.

4. Use text to speech: Some writers may find that hearing their work read back to them can help identify unclear statements and poor grammar. This process can help identify errors that proofreading alone fails to find. Writers may also discover that reading their work aloud has similar effects.

5. Look up rules: Proofreading goes a lot smoother with a handbook of style nearby. If a phrase or punctuation doesn’t seem right, look it up. At first this may seem like it costs more time, but over the long haul will improve the speed and accuracy of writing and proofreading.

6. Focus on one sentence at a time: Some writers fall into the trap of trying to grasp too much material at one time. Writers can pace themselves by evaluating each sentence by itself, deliberately checking for structure, punctuation, and clarity.

7. Create a system: A writer that tries various proofreading methods will eventually find the ones that work best. After developing a routine that effectively catches spelling and grammar errors, writers can then work on proofreading speed.

8. Circle all punctuation: Writers can print out their work and then circle every comma, period, semicolon, colon, etc. so each one can be evaluated for accuracy. Focusing on punctuation often brings out errors in sentence structure that can then be corrected. Those who resist wasting paper and ink can bold punctuation within the word processor to get a similar effect.

9. Read backwards through the text: Filling in nonexistent letters, words, and punctuation seems natural to the human brain. To throw it off balance and make it work better for proofreading, try reading through the text backwards. This breaks up the anticipated rhythm and flow of the writing, allowing the mind to focus on the letters and words found on the page.

10. Give it the double take: Writers should never rely on the quick once-over. Ferret out the errors left undiscovered by reading through a piece two or three times.

Most writers frustrated by spending hours proofing a document only to find an error after publication should patiently work to develop proofreading skills that focus on weaknesses and lead to greater efficiency.

CreAction: A New Formula For Blog Success

Action Trumps Everything is a book about a new principle called CreAction, which is how entrepreneurs balance thought and action in the face of an uncertain future. This principle can be used by anyone, entrepreneur or not, to help guide yourself though the good, the bad, and the unexpected in life.

Through extensive research, we have concluded that entrepreneurs function in a different way than people who do not define themselves as entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs tend to act rather than think their way through almost any situation—a formula we call “CreAction.” Of course, this does not imply that they are impulsive and/or irrational; it does, however, emphasize the importance of action versus thought about the next step or move, or how to handle a situation.

This principle and way of acting can be applied to blog writing.

1. Be timely: Thought and consideration for writing each blog post is necessary, but what is most important is the relevance and timeliness of a blog. Ideally, spend some time researching your next blog topic by looking at what is big in the news that day, what is being searched, and how it can apply to the theme of your blog. Now, write it the same day!

2. Don’t procrastinate: Don’t agonize over every detail, delaying the output of your work. We have seen many bloggers pine over what they are going to write and every word that is in their blog, when what they should be concentrating on is finding a topic that is newsworthy, relevant in that moment. Just get the blog written and posted immediately.

3. Get your readers acting: Concentrate on promoting conversation and interaction between you and your readers, as well as the readers amongst themselves. Getting your readers intrigued and involved in a topic that is sensitive and timely will help attract new visitors to your site as they search for that topic, and keep old visitors engaged. Isn’t that the goal, after all?

4. Promote quickly: Last but not least is getting your blog “out there.” It is key to act immediately after your blog is posted to gain visibility and traction to your site right away. Obviously, you will want to post it on your Facebook page, “tweet” a link to it on Twitter, etc., but don’t forget to use your contacts and networks to help spread the word. Email your friends, colleagues, fellow bloggers, etc. and ask them to help get the word out. Use services like Delicious.com, Stumbleupon.com, Reddit.com, Sharethis.com to get the word out as well. In addition, a great way to promote visibility for your blog is to network with other bloggers and link over to eachother’s sites or make a guest blogging arrangement. This is mutually beneficial and most bloggers are happy to build these types of relationships.

Let us know if you agree with these principals or not in the comment area below.

To learn more about how to act like an entrepreneur, as well as to find out more about CreAction to work for your goals, please go towww.actiontrumpseverything.com for a free copy of the Action Trumps Everything online book.

How Focus Can Help You Build a Successful Blog

I recently did a time management course and there was something which I heard the speaker say which really resonated with me. He said that when it comes to time management, you don’t really manage time, but you manage yourself instead. The amount of time available is always the same, sort of like a constantly flowing river, but what is not the same is what you do with the flow of time and how you use it to make your life or online business a success.

So when it comes to blogging or other online businesses, the area which is key to your success is the amount of focus you have when doing your work. Focus determines how effectively you use time, and lack of focus usually leads to wasted time.

There are two main aspects of focus:

1. Quality of focus

This refers to where you are putting your focus on NOW. For instance you could be intensely focused on playing a game on your computer for hours during the day, but if your aim is to build your Internet business, then the quality of this type of focus is considered to be low for the intended goal.

The quality of your focus is also dependent on whether you are able to stick to one thing at a time without getting distracted or trying to do many things simultaneously.

2. Quantity of focus

This is the amount of focus you can apply on one thing at a time. Many successful people are able to focus on a task for a prolonged period of time with no self imposed interruptions. Self imposed interruptions are things like checking your email or aimlessly surfing the net after you’ve spent only 5 or 10 minutes working on an unfinished blog article. Fragmented focus such as this can chew up hours of time and energy with no desirable result.

Psychologists and scientists have found that around 40-50 minutes of focus on a single task or activity is optimal.

People generally aren’t able to focus on one thing long enough to actually achieve or produce anything of great worth. In other words most people’s capacity for focus is low but the good news is that this can be expanded and strengthened just like a muscle.

So our main objective is to hone our skills so that the quality and quantity of our focus will lead to achieving our goals. This means that we are able to focus on one relevant task at a time and that we are able to focus up to 40 to 50 minutes on each individual task without self imposed interruptions.

Below are some steps to help guide you in strengthening your focus muscles:

i) Identify 2 or 3 things which will give you the most leverage to make your Internet business succeed

This will vary from person to person but you should be able to find a couple of really important tasks which you can start on. One example is spending 50 minutes every day building your site’s content by working on articles.

Another example is, educating yourself in a particular technology or subject until you are at the point where you feel confident that you can apply this to help make your website succeed.

ii) For each of the things listed above, write down what your desired outcome is

This is important because it will help you focus on the things that you want to achieve not on the things which you do not want or you are trying to avoid. For instance, before Michelangelo started his masterpiece sculpture of David he knew what he wanted to achieve with the block of marble and he focused on this desired outcome by chipping away at it for more than 2 years until he eventually accomplished his goal.

Knowing your desired outcome will help keep you focused on the right tasks.

iii) Focus daily on the tasks identified in step 1 for periods of 50 minutes without distraction

If you do this daily over a long period of time such as months or years, you will start to see your tasks through to completion, but more importantly, you will rapidly gain momentum with what you are trying to create or achieve. You may choose to repeat these tasks daily by allocating 4 to 8 hours overall, but at the very minimum you should at least perform one block of 40 or 50 minutes for each task per day. Don’t forget to take short breaks between each 50 minute period and take the time to leave your computer and go outside for a short walk or have a drink of water or cup of tea.

All big achievements and successes in life or online business come from building a momentum using focused effort. To use the muscle analogy again,  just like you would be able to eventually lift heavier weights if you trained regularly at the gym, regular sustained focus which is repeated over the long term, will build enough strength and momentum to enable you to take on more load or bigger tasks with respect to your Internet business ventures.

See the How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online page for more articles like this.

6 Tips For Writing Blog Articles Faster

If you are a blogger who wants to make a living from your blog, then the skill of writing is one of the most instrumental assets you can have in terms of the growth and success of your site.

Regularly published quality content is king when it comes to building your blog, so with this in mind you have probably already surmised that writing will be something that you will need to do in some capacity and for an ongoing period of time.

You can of course hire a writer to do your article writing for you, but for most people starting out online or doing it on the side, the best cost-effective option is to get into the habit of writing the articles yourself to begin with.

Apart from not having to pay writers, the other benefits are that your writing skills will improve and you will learn a lot more about the topic you are writing about and you will also hone your research skills.

When you are able to write well and fairly quickly, you will find that this single skill can pave the path to your online success very rapidly. Good and fast writing skills will enable you to consistently churn out many quality articles for your blog but it will also give you the skills to produce numerous eBooks and scripts for video presentations or audio podcasts.

Below are 6 steps which will help you to increase the speed of your writing:

1. Allocate a suitable time during your day which is devoted unconditionally to writing

• Choose a portion of your day where you usually feel most energized and focused and when you will not be interrupted. Set aside this period for your writing.If you’re not sure which time of the day is optimal for you, then try out a few different periods and see which is most effective for you.

2. Put some thoughts or ideas down in a blank text document irrespective of how useful you think they might be

• This will help you to quickly get a rough sense of direction in which you want to go with your article.
• It will also help you to administer a possible final topic category for the article in case you were struggling to settle on what you want to write about.For example, let’s say you think you want to write an article about making money online but you’re still not sure what to write. In your blank document you might start brainstorming whatever pops in your head,eg:making money online
  affiliate marketing
  adsense
  eBooks
  freelancing
  social media
  traffic
  backlinks
  As you brainstorm, you will get your thoughts and ideas out of your head and onto paper (or computer screen), and the reason why this is good is because once you have these thoughts written down you will have negated the possibility that your mind will wander and cause you to either forget them or persuade you that it isn’t a good idea. Remember it doesn’t matter at this stage whether you think something is a good idea or not. Just write it down.
• Now go through the rough list from the above and see if you can link any of the items together or drill down into sub-topics. For example, affiliate marketing may be further broken down into: affiliate marketing -> amazon products, digital products (clickbank). By doing this you will eventually see a topic which stands out that you could write about.

3. Go online and find 3 to 5 articles or pieces of information pertaining to your topic

• This is the research part of the writing process.
  This is also where quick (speed) reading skills come in handy. At this stage what you want to do is not read each article you find in depth but simply scan it quickly with your eyes to determine if it contains portions which will be useful for your article topic.
• After you’ve found a handful of articles, open another blank text document and paste relevant paragraphs or bits of info (verbatim) that you think will be useful for your article into the blank text document.
  This should only take around 10-15 minutes and by the end of this step you should have a notepad document with plenty of snippets of information from your research and a separate notepad document with your own brainstormed notes.

4. Before writing, eliminate any potential distractions

This step includes closing all browser windows including email and chat programs and turning off cell phones (if possible).

You should only have the two documents you created from steps 2 and 3 opened in front of you.

5. Start writing and don’t worry about editing

• Now you are ready to start writing your article’s initial draft.
  In order to maximize your focus on the task at hand use a timer or set some kind of an alarm to ring after 40 to 50 minutes.Spend the 40 to 50 minutes focused only on your article writing and nothing else, ie, no emails, or reading the news or other time-wasting activity.Take a 15 minute break after the timer sounds and resume your focus again for 40-50 minutes.
• Firstly read through each of the snippets of researched information you pasted into one of the text documents and then start to write in your words your interpretation of what you have read for each snippet.Write directly underneath your brainstormed notes and do not fall into the temptation of editing as you go along.At this stage you don’t want to get bogged down into worrying about the order of paragraphs or grammar and spelling because the act of editing so early in the life of your article will slow down your train of thought and creativity. (You will get to edit and re-order your paragraphs and sentences at a later stage)
• As you write, you will find that you will naturally begin to expand on your sentences and words will quite often begin to flow more easily.Keep writing until you feel you have written enough to express what you wanted to say about the whole topic.

6. Edit your final version

• Once you have written enough, spend some time editing your draft with a critical eye. For instance delete your brainstorming notes and if required, chop and change the order of paragraphs or fix up spelling mistakes, or change words and etc.
• If you don’t feel confident about grammar or spelling at least use a spell checker or ask a friend to quickly proof read for you.

Try out the above techniques for the next month and you’ll be rolling out your articles much more quickly and it’s quite likely they’ll be better than ever.

Writing your own articles even on topics which have been very widely covered need not discourage you. As you improve your writing skills and speed up the rate at which you write, you will quickly build the content and authority of your blog, but just as importantly you will stamp your own fresh perspective on the topics which you write about.

Checkout the How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online page for more articles like this.

Done Writing Quality Content – What’s Next?

This is a follow up article for the how do I start a blog and make money online series that we have been publishing on this site to help users get started and create a successful blog.

Indisputably, quality content is what makes any successful blog what it is today. Writing a remarkable article of 500 words is ten times better than investing $500 for your blog. That is because the visitors might fail to notice the investment of $500, but that extraordinary article on the blog will definitely be perceived and cherished as well.

All bloggers are contemplating to have the word “Successful” as a predecessor and for that, they play a ‘game’ on a daily basis. The game is called “Blogging”. The primary mission in this ‘game’ is producing unique, quality, helpful and exceptional content and this mission begins along with the game, and does not have any end.

This article is going to discuss about the things one has to do along and after writing the so-called quality content.

First Things First

Always remember that as mentioned above, there is no end to the ‘mission’ of writing quality content. This means that the title doesn’t ask you to stop writing. It just advises you on what to do after writing it. So basically, it opines you about the activities one should perform after publishing individual posts/pages. Similarly, if you just own a site about something and don’t have a blog on it – this yet applies to you as well.

Following are some ideas you should follow once you’re done with the quality content.

Updating The Former Posts Regularly

If your blog publishes a new post on a regular basis (frequency depends on the blog owner), then always keep an alarm in your mind about updating the earlier posts as well. You’re advised to do so because when new posts are published, information about them might have been mentioned inside the previous posts. To add some hint about the new post, what you should do is known as “Interlinking” inside the old post.

Interlinking the posts is something that search engines love to see. The benefits are also rich. Following are a few –

• Increased Pageviews
• Potential To Increase Average Time Of User On Blog
• Search Engine Friendly

Social Media Presence

Believe it or not, some famous bloggers often used to depend on social media for massive traffic than search engines at some point. Social media has always proven to be an outstanding source of targeted traffic for any site/blog provided that the promotion is done in an effective manner.

A quality post proves itself when it is read.

To let your posts be read by others, you first need to let them know that there is something out there for them to read. Social media is a crucial platform for this activity. There are quite a lot of pages/accounts on social networking sites, which do nothing except posting links. Doing this not only increases the chances of losing the likes/followers etc, but also increases the chance of the account being terminated at some point. Hence, a solution to this isengagement without links. Every now and then, you should try to ‘talk’ about something important within the niche. This keeps the fan base engaged with the page all the time.

Regular SEO Checks

This might sound somewhat useless for now, but it is really important. Regular SEO checks are not so much necessary, but doing so will help you optimize all your posts perfectly, hence making the most of what search engines can provide you with. Usually, posts are optimized at the time of writing them and before publishing them. But SEO checks are mandatory because you might want to change the keywords, alternate texts in images etc. Following are some key things that should be included within the SEO checks –

• New interlinks (as mentioned in the first point)
• New outbound links – If you find out that there is a part in the post which is explained in a detailed manner elsewhere, you might want to link there.
• Keyword changes – if your post isn’t getting ranked well for the current keywords, you might want to change the same and probably keep a long tail keyword or even change it completely.

Regular SEO checks are highly recommended if you’re not getting as much organic traffic as you expected. Doing so not only helps you increase your organic traffic, but also makes you a strong SEO enthusiast!

Add Value To Other Blogs

There is one simple fact of engagement in blogging. If you are expecting others to comment on your blog posts, so are they. It’s not a must that you need to comment on every article on other’s blog, but at least one or two so that the blog owner knows that you’ve been through their blog and their content. There are several benefits of commenting on other blogs. Mentioned below are just two (there are others that are not mentioned here) –

• Building relationships – If you want to make a name and get an identity that is known by many in your blog’s niche, you need to build relationships with as many fellow niche members as you can. Blog commenting has proven to be an ultimate way of doing this. Here’s an example – If you leave your words on a post in someone’s blog for the first time, the author/blog owner is likely to visit your blog and add value to it as well provided that the comment you left was worth reading. Hence, the cycle often leads to a short chat on Twitter and then the engagement continues.
• Backlinks – If you’re not an SEO enthusiast, you might not have any tool to check whether the blog you’re commenting is do-follow or no-follow. But if you’re really looking to build backlinks, you can find out if it is a do-follow blog and hence leave a comment there. However, this is not at all recommended because comments are not exchanged, they’re made.

Follow the above mentioned points and over time you should start to see more readers to your blog.

Leveraging Content Creation by Repurposing with Value

Creating content on the Internet is what brings people to your web site, your affiliate ad, your sales funnels, or whatever it is you want to achieve. Content is generally the start of that process.

Many marketers have figured out ways to re-purpose their content and convert one piece of content into different multimedia types, each one having stand alone value in and of itself. Certainly you can find re-purposed content across the web that has no extra, and sometimes even lesser, value than the original, as is the case with spun content, or auto-transcription in a lot of cases, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

In this article I’d like to discuss leveraging written content, let’s start with a blog post, and then converting that content into different multimedia types, first a simple PDF with free tools, then a video, then audio. You can spread the content across the web on the appropriate sharing sites for the given media type, and optionally embed them into your original blog content giving your audience more options to take in your message.

Write a blog post first

Starting with a blog post isn’t necessary, it’s just the approach I want to take here. Bloggers often write about topics from the tops of their heads and lots of words can be put to text in a short amount of time when done that way.

As you know, for a blog post you write the body, between 300 and 1500+ words is common, and the title. You can also include tags, some say to use very short words as tags, others use several long tail keywords. I have seen some high ranking posts that use long tails for tags. To me, it seems spammy and in general the tag will just link to an archive page with one page, but it is effective, so I will leave the decision how to handle tags to you.

Creating a lot of white space throughout the content, rather than just a sea of text looks more appealing to the would-be reader. Embedding images and other media throughout, as well as adding ordered and unordered lists, makes the content even more attractive to the reader. Using headlines, usually with H3 or H2 tags, and including long tail key-phrases that you pull from Google Suggest might not be a bad idea. Also floating your images left or right, or using large images the full width of the content area make for an attractive post.

Convert to PDF for free

A great strategy is to convert the post to a PDF, and then share the PDF on one or more PDF sharing sites. The bulk of the work is done, it just requires copying and pasting the content and exporting to PDF, then publishing. However, I would put a little more into it than that to create value.

First off, for getting a free tool to convert to PDF people often just search Google for “free software to create PDF” or something similar. A lot of times what they end up with is a lite version of software that will not retain hyperlinks and often times will be stamped with the product name or site. That may be fine in some cases but there is a better way. Download the free open source tool from OpenOffice.org. Launch the “Write” program and paste your content in there.

Adding intros, images, copyrights, and calls to action and perhaps an ad or two won’t hurt. You can’t do much with multimedia but that’s OK. You can make it attractive with fonts and pictures. You can set some meta data in the properties then just click File then Export as PDF and you’re done.

When publishing I would take care to create a unique 150+ (even up to 300 or 500) word description for each site you’re publishing to. Include a link to your site in the profile and perhaps to the URL of the blog post if there is an option to do so. PDF sharing sites include Scribd.com, Slideshare.net, DocStoc.com. There are a few others, just Google “PDF sharing sites” to find a list.

Creating a video

There are a few different ways to skin this cat. You can first create a presentation with points from your original post as the slides. This presentation can be shared as its own media as well on sites like SlideShare.net. Then you can create a free screencast using Screenr.com, providing you can get through the presentation in the 5 minutes that is allotted to free users. You can then download the video to be used on YouTube and optionally other video sharing sites.

Be sure to do a quick intro, and an outro with a call to action. Now, if doing the presentation (you can use free software from OpenOffice.org for this as well by the way, the presentation software is called Impress) seems more work than you would like to do, simply flipping on the web cam and reading the post into an attached mic in a conversational way is fine as well. There are ways to put your face in a smaller window and still have control over the screen that is being captured. Or you can just do a screen capture video demonstrating what is discussed in the post. This obviously works best for “how-to” type posts.

I think YouTube is an obvious choice for uploading the video to, but there are certainly a lot more options out there for video sharing. Again, I would recommend a unique, longer than average, description used for each site. I realize this is a little more work but if it’s content that originally came from the top of your head it should be rather easy, and is well worth the extra effort. Perhaps you can span this whole process across an entire week and sink real value into each step to really make it worthwhile.

One last thing, for YoutTube, if you include a plain link at the top of the description (with the http) it will turn into a hyperlink. That can be used for your site URL or post URL or both. Multiple links can be included. Something that I noticed some SEO experts doing that I have been experimenting with as well is linking to the YouTube video itself at the bottom of the video description.

They were just dropping the link in, I decided to use it with a call to action by saying something like — if you liked this video you can embed it into your site using the embed code below in the “share” section, or else link to it directly using this link — then I paste the YouTube video URL immediately after, which it then hyperlinks back to itself after publishing. I don’t know the value that really serves for users so use with caution.

Extracting audio from the video for a podcast

Now, the simplest way to get audio from this is by simply extracting the audio track from the video. Be sure that when creating the video you keep in mind that it will also be used for your podcast so it might be wise not to say “in this video…” or anything similar. You can extract sound from your video using free software called Audacity.

There’s not a great deal to say about creating the audio except that when publishing it, keep the same ideas in mind about writing a unique description. Also sharing it on multiple audio-sharing or podcast sites might be a good idea. Sharing podcasts is different in that you generally just share a podcast feed rather than upload the individual file everywhere. You start with one source, either your own blog, or a hosted site and get the podcast-friendly (and perhaps iTunes friendly) feed, and share that. There are free and paid services out there for this. I have no personal recommendations, except that if you intend to upload to just one place, SoundCloud.com is a popular choice amongst marketers and podcasters.

Extending your social reach with images

If you are using your own personal images within your original post, you can upload them to places like Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest and others, and then embed them into the post. Then you can link back to the post in the images description on the social site.

Taking it a day at a time

Now, if you are committed to providing real value, I don’t suggest you try to handle all these steps in just one day, unless you have a team behind you. If going at it alone…

Day 1 - Put your content into the blog post. Go out and capture images and unqiue video perhaps. Break the article or blog post up into sections, sections that can be discussed in a stand alone way. Publish the images and the post. Social share the post (FB, Twitter, G+, etc.)

Day 2 - Create and publish the PDF. Today is an easy day, but it may encourage you to get creative with the descriptions and to share on multiple sites. Social share. Embed in original post if desired.

Day 3 - Create the video and publish it, and/or publish any video captured on the first day. Spend time on decriptions. Share on multiple sites. Social share. Embed in original post if desired.

Day 4 - Extract the audio, publish and share it.

Tying it all together with article marketing

Day 5 - Take one of the concepts or sections from the original post and write a quick 500 word unique article about just that. Link to the post, the images, the videos, and/or the audio (or even embed some) and publish it to a high authority, high Alexa, or niche site or blog.

Check Alexa to see the top sites and find out how you can publish on them. Learn the publishing rules and always provide the same value as if publishing to your own site.

Now, take the weekend off, or perform the steps from Day 5 again. If you find that the main post becomes popular, highly shared, highly commented on, etc. consider setting up auto-tweets of the URL and short description at set intervals to keep giving the post social juice as you move onto the next killer content to share with your audience.

Can You Make Money from Affiliate Marketing? If so How?

This is a follow up article for the “How do I Start a Blog and Make Money Online” series that we have been publishing on this blog to help the newbie’s get started with a blog.

Before I start, I would like to make one thing clear:

I do not believe in easy money and there are no magical tips in this article that will help you get rich overnight. So if you are after easy money then this article is not for you.

This article mainly covers the following topics:

• What affiliate marketing is and the different types of affiliate marketing
• The advantages of being an affiliate marketer
• Some tips and good practices to become a successful affiliate marketer

So, can you really make money from affiliate programs? Well yes and no; there is money in affiliate marketing but if YOU can make money from it or not depends on a lot of other factors such as your commitment, experience, site traffic etc.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Wikipedia

“Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts”

Basically, you as a publisher will be rewarded when you help a business by promoting their products or services. So for example, if you sign up for Tips and Ticks HQ’s affiliate program and promote it’s products then you will get a commission when the visitor you send from your site makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the quickest and cheapest (not the easiest) ways to start making money online as you don’t have to create any products yourself. You simply link up a buyer and a seller, and you take a commission on the sale that has been referred by you.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

When you join an Affiliate program and choose the products that you want to sell, sellers provide you with a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to the target site. Most affiliate programs will offer ready made text links, banners and other forms of creative copies whereby you only have to copy the code and place it on your website to start referring traffic. When interested visitors click on these links from your site they get redirected to the product site and if they purchase a product or subscribe to a service you as the referrer make a commission.

The sellers can track your performance through your affiliate ID and the affiliate softwares (eg. WP Affiliate Platform) that they use. You also have complete, real time access to all sales and commissions stats.

You don’t need to sell products all the time to make a commission. Different affiliate programs can use different payment terms such as:

• Pay per Sale: In this program a merchant pays you a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed.
• Pay per Click: In this program you get paid based on the number of visitors you redirect to the Merchant’s website from your affiliate site, whether or not a sale is made.
• Pay per Lead: You get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the target site by filling out a simple contact form.

Why be an Affiliate Marketer?

Affiliate marketing is considered to be one of the world’s fastest growing and best internet marketing techniques to earn money online and I will explain why:

• Cost effective: Marketing on the internet is cheap and you don’t have to worry about the production cost as the product is already developed by the seller. You don’t need a physical business location or hire employees either.
• Global Market: Online marketing gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world easily.
• No Fees: You don’t need to pay anything to join affiliate programs.
• No Storage No Shipping: You don’t need to worry about storage, packing or shipment of the product. They are all taken care of by the seller.
• No customer support: You don’t need to provide any customer support or deal with consumer complaints as the Seller does that for you.
• Passive income: A regular job can give you a fixed income as long as you continue to work. Depending on your marketing skill Affiliate marketing can create a steady flow of income even when you are not in front of your computer.
• Work from home: If you make enough money then you don’t have to worry about going to work at the same time every day or getting stuck in traffic. You can work in the comfort of your own home.

Tips on Becoming a Successful Affiliate Marketer

After reading all the benefits of affiliate marketing if you think you will be rich over night by selling affiliate products online then you are wrong. Affiliate marketing is definitely an excellent way to make money online but it’s highly competitive too. In order to be successful in Affiliate marketing you need to know the market needs, learn how to promote products, what works and what doesn’t. The following are a few tricks on becoming successful in affiliate marketing that I have learnt over time.

1. Only Choose a Handful of Good Products

The first mistake a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they register with too many different affiliate programs and try to promote everything. Pursuing affiliate marketing down this path can become very overwhelming and you won’t be able to promote any product properly. All you need in order to be successful is a handful of good products to promote. Try to understand the market needs and look for products that align correctly with the topic of your site.

2. Use Several Traffic Sources to Promote Products

Most affiliate marketers put up the ads only on their sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach but know that there are many other traffic sources that you can tap into and promote the products simultaneously. The more targeted traffic you can send to the sales page the more your chances are of making money.

Google Adwords can be used to drive targeted traffic to a sales page. You simply make an ad in your adwords account then use your affiliate link in the target page URL of the ad. Obviously, you will have to continuously measure the conversions and see if the campaign cost is less than the campaign profit in order to keep the campaign running but I am sure you get the idea.

3. Test, Measure and Track Your Affiliate Campaign

It is a very good idea to use different product promotion strategies so you can figure out what is working and what is not. Try to do split testing and measure the performance of each campaign then take actions accordingly. Changing a few things here and there can increase your profit dramatically. Make sure to place the banner ads on different areas of your site’s pages. Some positions will make the ads more noticeable than others.

Most affiliate programs will give you basic stats that you may need but there is nothing stopping you from using your own conversion tracking software too. There are many conversions tracking sofware out there that you can use to track your affiliate campaign.

4. Research the Demand of the Product

If you try to sell a product that is in low demand then chances are that you are not going to get many sales no matter how hard you try. So it is a good idea to spend a bit of time researching and finding out if a product that you are thinking of promoting is a product that your audience needs. If your site gets decent traffic then you can conduct an online survey and easily get input from your visitors.

5. Stay Current with New Methods and Techniques

Affiliate marketing is a very competitive field and people are always coming up with new techniques. Try to stay current with these new techniques and market trends otherwise you will fall behind.

6. Choose the Right Merchant

When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely. You don’t want your visitors to go and buy a product following your advice then come back unhappy. Do you think that this visitor will come back to your site and take your advice again? Most likely no; this can hurt your credibility in the long run. Usually, websites/company that offer good customer service will have better customer satisfaction so try to stick with promoting their products.

7. Use Helpful Tools

If you are serious about affiliate marketing then try to find tools that will help you be more efficient. There are many helpful tools out there. If you are using a WordPress powered site then consider getting a plugin similar to the Affiliate Link Manager.

Don’t just hope and pray that visitors will buy; setup everything correctly and make it happen! If you think that visitors will click on your affiliate links and buy just because you placed dozens of affiliate links on your website then you are wrong! You need to have a structured plan in place. Affiliate marketing is a business so you will have a much better chance of succeeding if you treat it like one.

I am sure I haven’t covered everything so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

The affiliate marketing FAQ is also a good read for you.

3 Keywords Important to Affiliate Marketing: Responsibility, Transparency, Leverage

I have been in the affiliate marketing business for a very long time. It’s initial appeal is still just as appealing to me today. Mainly that involves the idea of “limited (or no) responsibility.” Let’s face it. There are more exciting things to do than to sit in front of a computer all day, or than just working in general.

You see, I have been in the position of sourcing products, buying (and getting delivery of) stock, storing, finding customers, fulfilling orders, etc. and it’s more involved than I want to be day to day. I am in a large part a one man show, and the less parts that I have to be in control of, the happier and more efficient I can be.

Affiliate marketing has changed and evolved over the years… significantly in fact. There is an increasing need to be more transparent (both for legal and ethical reasons), and as a result, more responsibility became important. Is that a bad thing? Depends how you look at it. To me, that extra bit (it’s not a lot) of responsibility meant the opportunity for more leverage.

Read the rest of this article for a full explanation of the above.

Let’s Take a Deeper Look at Responsibility

I’m going to deviate slightly from affiliate marketing for a minute and discuss drop-shopping because many people I talk to think they are exactly the same thing. But as you will see, getting into drop-shopping is slightly more involved than affiliate marketing. This should put into perspective how little responsibility affiliate marketers do in fact have.

I really love the idea of drop-shipping. It eliminates the need to buy stock and store it in a warehouse. You can “sell other people’s products” and they will ship it for you… just like with affiliate marketing… but there is some added responsibility. There is a key advantage in some cases over affiliate marketing which many may not have thought of, and I will discuss that in a second, but let’s talk about the added responsibility first.

In some cases with drop-shipping you may have to manually enter orders into a system that the vendor provides. Many will have digital automation for that process but in the case where you are selling products from multiple vendors, it’s less likely.

The big thing here though is you will need a secure system to collect payment and credit card information, and also handle customer support. And you will also have to analyze activities like cart abandonment and make attempts to improve on that process. This may be considered a step up from affiliate marketing, but I feel it’s a pretty big step. Your job/life can be easier than all that.

However I will say this… with this scenario you may be able to tap into niches that you might not otherwise be able to get into with standard affiliate marketing. You see, there are a lot of products still not easily available for purchase online. The vendors may be short-sighted and feel that only “in-person physical purchases” are reasonable for the given product. Or even if they are available online, it may be that only bulk purchases are available or even that they are in a marketplace that hasn’t opened the doors to affiliates.

These scenarios are ideal for those that want to get into the drop-shipping business, albeit with a little added responsibility over affiliate marketing. Sure the barrier of entry is slightly higher but this could mean a lot LESS competition. Let me give you an example.

I have a friend who runs a successful web site using the drop-shipping model promoting products that were once only available in retail stores. The products are very specific pet accessories. In the “offline” scenario, pet shop owners would become resellers and would have a catalog of products and a few samples in the store. The customer would make the purchase through the store and the owner would order the customized accessory through a digital interface and get a commission. The product would then be shipped directly to the customer.

Can you see how a digital version of the catalog could make for a great opportunity for an online marketer who is comfortable with the extra responsibility that comes with drop-shipping?

At any rate… let’s get back to affiliate marketing shall we?

What’s Your Responsibility to the Customer as an Affiliate Marketer?

Now, with affiliate marketing, you can essentially provide a link to someone and “refer” them to a product. The link is unique to you, as you probably know. The rest (sales process, order fulfillment, customer service) becomes the responsibility of the merchant or vendor.

However… with the need for more transparency initiates a need for more responsibility, even if just a little.

A very simple, completely hands off approach to affiliate marketing could be accomplished in the following scenario:

You write an article that discusses a problem that someone has. This article could just be black text on a white background. At the bottom you can describe a solution. Add in a blue link (an affiliate link) to get the solution. The link may be tagged in such a way that it auto-adds the product to the merchant’s cart and the sale is credited to you as an affiliate.

After they left the page that had your blue affiliate hyperlink, the customers were no longer your responsibility. This practice still works and is still in effect to a large degree. The customer was not aware of any middle-person in the transaction. Well, truthfully, we as consumers know that there are always many many people that “profit” from a single transaction. There’s usually always a middleman or two, then there are the employees involved with design, creation, delivery, and on an on… but there are laws online that require some added transparency requiring you to let the potential customer know that you will profit from any sales made after clicking your link.

With that transparency my friend, comes some added responsibility. So now the scenario changes. Somewhere near the hyperlink it must be stated that you may profit from the sales. And this may bring up some questions or concerns for the potential customer. Here are a few:

1) If you are getting a commission, am I paying more?

2) Who the heck are you?

3) Why should I let you profit from my purchase?

How to Become a Responsible Affiliate Marketer

Ok… so now you are letting potential customers know that you may profit from their purchases if they click your link. Now what?

A practice that I am seeing more and more of, something I feel I may have initiated… is letting the customer know right away that “you are NOT paying extra if you buy through my link… I simply get a ‘cut’ because I referred you to the product.” Say something like that… but more eloquently.

Does this distract the “flow” you had going. Certainly, but it has to be done. I can’t speak on legal compliance, but it is more ethical to be transparent don’t ya think?

Now… a lot of times people want to know who you are and why they should be listening to you in the first place. Yet, many others don’t care. If what they read resonates with them, they may not care who delivered the message. However, for those that want to know, link to a profile.

Beyond that, if discussing the problem and referring them to a solution isn’t enough, give the person even more value (or someone else will). How can you do that?

Offer the customer some complementary products (in the form of bonuses perhaps) or information that is pertinent post-sale. But wait, once they click that link, they are gonzo, right? Yeah usually… but here is where leverage comes in 

Use Leverage With Your Affiliate Marketing Business

At this stage we are discussing a problem, describing a solution and telling the kind folks that this is a business, and although we care about you, we also want to earn a living… but before handing them off to the “other person’s” cart or sales funnel or what have you… let’s first get some info so that we can stay in touch.

Now we want to say… “hey, before you buy, give me your email so I can stay in touch with you. I have a really cool product that goes well with the one you are about to buy that I’d like to give you for free. No strings. I want to earn my referral commission and intend to over-deliver. I will also send you a series of emails every few days that will help you make the most of your new purchase. I will send how-to videos and articles, and send some inspiration messages. Oh, and I might suggest more stuff later down the road when it’s relevant.”

You might even want to add in extras like what other people thought of your bonuses or complementary content (the social proof aspect for YOUR “product”).

From there, you grab their email, and redirect them to the product. Then let the auto-responder (automated email delivery system) work it’s magic.

In Conclusion

You have to be more transparent in your marketing. With that though comes added responsibility. But before you think that takes the allure out of affiliate marketing, please understand that this added responsibility offers the opportunity for more leverage (in the form of repeat sales… er commissions… from the happy customers).

Affiliate marketing is a value added business. Do it right and you will be rewarded. And you *may* become extremely wealthy from your efforts (no guarantees of course). Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and decide how they should best be treated. Decide what would give them the most value from their current position, then deliver it (in an automated and leveraged way).

Leaving product creation and order fulfillment, and for a large part, customer service, to someone else is what makes affiliate marketing so attractive.

How to Find a Profitable Niche for Affiliate Marketing

Everybody know that affiliate marketing is the most successful and effective way to earn money online. However, not all the products that you want to promote are guaranteed to make you money ad succeed,  and the reason is simple, there are lots of competitions these days and you should think about a niche with fewer competitors and with good revenue if your promote its products. It’s not easy to find the right niche to promote in the right website, but things can be easy if you follow my tips and how to pick the right nice for income.

There are some rules when it comes to find a profitable niche for affiliate marketing and I’ll explain them one by one, but please make sure to understand that the exact domain name is no linger working these days at it was before, so, if you want to pick a long domain name and you think it will rank  higher, that will waste your time. Make things professional and use your actual blog or simply pick a domain with fewer characters.

Search for niche that people search for it on Google

Of course, you don’t need to create lots of content and work hard and then nobody will search for your products or reviews. The first thing to do when it comes to affiliate marketing is typing your general topic in Google keyword planner tool and see how many estimated monthly searches for that topic. If you find something popular with more than 30.000 searches per month forget that and find another one, simply because  the more the term is popular, the more thousands of competitors you will find and already people have created lots of content about it and it’s not easy at all to rank for the same content now. At the same time, you don’t need search results less than 500 search per month. These are just tips to stay away from the competition and focus on a sub niche that a few people are creating content for it and you will be lucky if you find a niche with no results in Google search.

Don’t wast your time with paid keywords searching tools, they are just selling nothing and you will understand why. Google is not only the biggest search engine, but it dominates 80% of the global search engine market. That means no other website on earth know what people are searching for and how many time they are searching for this or that keyword. If you really want to succeed, forget what the other says simply because they are earning commissions when you sign up for those useless tools and simply your need to use the biggest and the original Google tool.

The profitable niche

Now, you have an idea about what niches you can use for your website and you need to find if they are making money or not. This is the most important part and it’s the easiest part at the same time. You don’t need to create lots of informational content that will never make you money. When people wants to buy something, they search for review about a niche’s products and the needs screenshot for example or videos about how using the products and they wants to see it in actions. These people are interested in buying the product and not only learning about it.

To find if our niche will really make you money, type some words in Google and see if people search them, for example “health products” and see if there are some good number of results that’s not too popular and not less than 500 per mont at the same time. If you find some, then you have the people who wants to buy the “health” products and you need to create content for them and add your affiliate links. In other words, find niches that buyers search for it.

So, make sure that the term or the keyword that you’re using are brings traffic from buyers and not people who just search for information and then leave your site forever. You can help these people in other website and not with affiliate marketing one. In general use review model and add videos.

Find a niche with products to promote

The niche will not make you money if there are no products for it to promote, so, when you have a niche and some good search from the Google keyword planner tool, you can browse your best affiliate network and find the best product for that niche, ClickBank for example is one of the biggest digital affiliate network that you can find thousands of products from it. Just browse by category and type some keywords to find the best products to promote.

Remember that you need to recommend good products and you have to try them before promoting any one of them, ClickBank especially includes lots of scammers and you should be careful about that, if you make money, that’s good foe you, but make sure that you recommend really good products and investigate on them.

Best niche for affiliate marketing

You cannot limit affiliate niches in an exact number, simply because there are thousands of sub niches and things are complicated. But the best niches to promote are, Games and other software and products related to the gaming market in general. Lots of marketer make thousands of dollar per day promoting specific games. The dating is also one of the best successful niches to promote, but only for hight traffic sites with topics related to relationships, that makes things easy to get conversations and not only put banner for nothing.

The web hosting is also very profitable niche and you can select a specific niche for WordPress and the best service to promote is always WP Engine, they pay $150 for every new hosting account and a few companies have that hight commissions and the best part is that program is a premium hosting service that you can promote and be proud of it.

The computer and PC world is another good niche to promote, but make sure to pick a specific niche such as “Toshiba” Apple” and so on, that give you better results than creating content about general hardware and softwares that all the world promote.Money making can also bring you good results but again investigate on every product you want to promote and avoid new programmes than can be scammer later and that’s what you don’t need. The are also some other niches to promote but remember that the real secret is traffic and that’s what brings results and sales . So focus on the traffic sources and you only need the Google organic traffic or traffic from your advertising campaign if you have money invest.

Conclusion

To find a profitable niche to promote and create content for it, you need to make sure that people are searching for it on Google,and that you can get lots of buyers who search for that niche products and not just for fun. At the same time make sure that the niche has good products to promote and the most important part, pick niches with few competitors and never promote general niches that popular blogs and marketer are promoting, you will not be able the find your place with them. So focus on specific niches and you will succeed.