Url Shorteners Causes Email Marketing Campaigns To Be Blocked!

One of the best ways to promote an affiliate product is through email marketing campaigns.  But if you are using url shorteners, you are taking the risk of everyone on your list not receiving your emails. Affiliate marketers have been using url shorteners for years to take a long ugly link and turn it in to a shorter link. But affiliate and internet marketers are not the only ones that use link shorteners, spammers and scam artists do too.

See scammers and spammers want to remain anonymous and they don’t want people to know who they are so they abuse link shorteners.  They don’t want people to know their actual websites either. This is bad because in affiliate marketing or any business you have to build trust. When you have the bad guys using url shorteners to email people from fake emails addresses, doubt starts to form in everybody’s mind including the people you are sending your email campaigns to.

Email providers are now blocking emails that use these services to shorten the links to prevent scammers from sending unwanted emails. In this attempt, they are also blocking your emails which mean your subscribers are not getting the emails.

I’ve had folks send me junk mail with links in them and the links go to crazy websites which can harm your computer if you’re not careful. People know this and won’t even click on the link if they are not sure what website it goes to anyway.

The best way to solve this problem is to send emails in HTML version instead of plain text only. Or you can just put the link to your site so people will know where it is going. Trust is the key to any business anyway so let people know where the link goes. The best thing you can do for your business is to stop using url shorteners for your email campaigns and better your chances of converting your subscribers to buyers.

31% Of Website Traffic Can Harm Your Business

If you are wondering why your traffic may not be converting into sales it could be because 31% of your website traffic is non-human, which can be dangerous to your business. Incapsula, a cloud based security firm, did a study on 1000 websites to find this out. So what could it be, bots that steal customer information such as credit cards and email addresses.  It can also cause your website to crash.

If you rely on Google analytics, you may be missing the dangerous non human website traffic.

Not only can this be damaging to your business, but it can cause you to have a bad reputation and rank lower in the search engines.

Some of the ways you can prevent this from happening is to avoid buying website traffic. Most sources of website traffic come from bots or automated software to make it appear that you have visitors when in actuality it is fake traffic. If Google sees this, and they will, you will rank lower or even be unindexed. Also if someone was to hack into your website, you could lose trust from your audience or loyal visitors. And if you allow comments, you should always check to make sure people are not spamming your comments box by promoting their products. This can be in the form of humans and bots. Also competition can use software to spam your comments box.

This is truly something you should watch out for if you want a successful affiliate marketing business.     

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Google Over Optimization Penalty: Too Much SEO

Google is more and more serious when it comes to providing relevant search results for grandma. Google is getting ready to penalize websites owners for too much SEO or over optimization. Also if you use too many keywords you will suffer. Matt Cutts was talking about this recently.

Reasons Google is doing this is because they want to give websites with better content and those who can't afford SEO experts a better chance to rank higher in the search results. Bing is a part of the action as well.

How can you avoid being penalized, by focusing more on providing very good quality content. If you already do this, then you shouldn't be affected. But if your primary focus is always on keywords or SEO, you got a chance to make some changes before this takes effect in the next few weeks or so.  

I just said in a previous post you should be giving grandma what she wants and Google will give you what you want. If you are one of the ones who always provides good quality content on your sites and blogs, you should be fine. This is for more targeting people who just focus on their rank rather than providing helpful content for others. And if you exchange a bunch of links this can affect you as well. So you should be less focused on SEO and put your mind in quality mode.

Related News Article # 1

Related News Article # 2

Traffic To Blog: Help Grandma Find Your Blog

Traffic is an important lifeline if you want your internet business to thrive. The question many people want to know is how to get traffic to your blog or website. This is the biggest problem for most people and there is something you can do about it.

Google is always changing; there was recent news that Google changed its search engine again so that it brings more relevant and helpful content to their users. See Google is protecting people from frauds, and scams, and the other junk that people pollute the internet with everyday.

Also another reality we all have to face: Google don’t give a rip what you want or think. You know who Google cares about, grandma. Google wants grandma to be delighted when she visits your blog or website and that is all they care about. If grandma don’t like your blog, Google won't like it either. It is very important you give Google what it wants and what grandma wants and maybe, just maybe you’ll get what you want, which is traffic to your blog.

                                                                         

I say maybe because it is all up to what you put on your blog, so you better make grandma happy if you want traffic to your blog or websites.

These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself if you want traffic to your blog:

• Is your blog providing helpful, interesting, or funny content?
• Does your blog protect grandma from scams?
• Would you feel comfortable using your credit card on a blog like yours?
• Can grandma navigate or get around on your blog pretty easy with no issues?
• Will grandma use her credit card on your blog?

See you got to know the answers to these questions before you get even a trickle of traffic to your blog. It is important you see to it that grandma is comfortable with using your blog and you got to make it interesting for her so that she will stay on your blog. See Google knows how long someone stays on your blog and this will either make or break your blog.

There are just some sites that Google loves and some they hate. You want to be the one they love. If you got Google’s love, you got traffic to your blog. It’s a simple as that but still can be difficult if you don’t know how to do it.

Having good quality content is important, but it’s not good enough. And in order to get steady traffic over time, you’ve got to build trust. Trust with people and trust with the search engines, and of course, good ole grandma. How do you build trust, one good way is linking to an authority site, but it has to be relevant to what your blog is all about. And you can’t just do it once; it has to be done several times in several blog posts. This technique can bring in an awesome amount of traffic if you do it right. 

See Google will start to trust you because it will think you have something in common with the sites that have high authority. So if you link to a news story within your post for example, over time you will get some traffic due to a higher ranking of your blog or site.  Problogger gives you 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less and they offer great things you should be doing to get traffic to your blog. You can click on the word Problogger and check it out.  

Another thing that is very important is writing on topics that are interesting and target people who are likely to share your content. If your audience shares your content, this can bring more traffic to your blog. Seomoz talks about this on their blog and they give you 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic and they have incredible information too. 

You may also want to look into sharing more of your blog post with social media sites. Mashable did an article about how Pinterest drives more traffic to blogs than Twitter. Many people are sharing content and liking it on social media sites you should be doing it also. When people share your information Google sees this and they will trust you because everyone will share your url with others which mean traffic to your blogs.

One of the very best ways to insure traffic will come to your blog is to pick the right niche from the beginning.  Lee Odden recommends you find a niche that will solve big problems your business solves for customers. This is very good advice and will better your odds of getting that traffic to your blog.  

Another thing you should consider is getting a listing with Alexa. If you are serious about getting traffic to your blog or websites, you should really put some thought into this one. You will increase your chances for blog traffic because they provide tools to site owners. 

Use Facebook to advertise your business. There are many business that use Facebook to market their brand.   News channels, store chains such as Macy's get traffic through Facebook. Macy's have an awesome fan base and almost 5 million likes! 

Another way to insure you get traffic to your blog or website is to make sure you optimize it. You gotta make sure you use the right keywords on your sites and blogs, money keywords at that. Money keywords are the words that's going to be the bread winner for your blog. 

All of these tips I'm sharing with you will help grandma find your blog; but you still have to make sure you give her what she wants. Remember, whatever she wants, Google also wants and every one of your visitors will want it too. You should aim to be the go to blog, where you are linking to the hot and latest info and everyone will love you for it. This will entice people to share your blog and this will be the way to get traffic to your blog for years to come. You just have to keep updating your blog often so that traffic will come and most importantly people including grandma, will stay on your blog and Google will love you so much. 

The Lies People Tell To Rip You Off In A Biz Opp

Starting a business, whether online or off can be an exciting new venture to anyone who is sick of their 9-5.  Anyone who is new to starting a biz opp needs to beware of the lies people tell in an effort to rip you off and take your money. This can be for affiliate marketing, MLM’s or multi level marketing, buying a course or an ebook to help you make money, or anything that involves you to spend money to make money.  In this post I am going to tell you the lies people tell to rip you off, and most of these are based on my own experiences in trying to pick the right business.

Starting more than ten years ago, I was told lie after lie and lost money in the process. People introduced me to their MLM business opportunities, I got bogus emails about ebooks that will help me to make money online, I also had people tell me they could help me start a business for a fee. Yet when I decided to try some of these biz opps nothing panned out. I was broker after I tried. 

I’m going to share the lies people tell.  Some of them are very crappy, tired, and played out.

Multi Level Marketing (MLM)

I’ve joined a few MLM’s in the past.  One of the biggest lies I was told was the price you pay to join will go up soon and we can’t promise this price will be the same next week, or month.  This is the way MLM reps get you to sign up fast. They are taught to manipulate you to sign up because you may change your mind if you go home to think about it. When I signed up for Pre-Paid Legal, they told me I had to pay before 2pm on a Friday or I may have to pay a higher price. The beginning of the next week, the price was still the same which was $72. I felt like I had been tricked because I was. As a matter of fact, the price was the same for the next several weeks before it went up. When I started to promote this business I learned they actually had a heads up on when the price was going to change and I felt even more fooled. My advice to you is to never join any program under pressure. I don’t recommend joining any MLM programs period.

The next lie these people told me was they didn’t make money off of me when I signed up. Actually they do make money. See they are taught to build their downline and you are a part of their downline so they do make money off of you in the long run, not right then and there. You are at the bottom and they want to keep you there. You are taught to build your own downline so you can make you and your sponsor money. So you are mainly building their business and you have no control in how you want to run your biz in any MLM.

The next lie these people will tell you is they want to help you be successful. They only want to help you because it helps them. And in actuality they don’t help you, they leave you hanging. Oh and if you happen to build a downline and some one in your downline surpasses you, you will no longer be able to make money off of them and guess what, you upline will still make money off of the person you brought on the team.  The reason is you have to stay ahead of your downline in order to make money off of them.  This is why I say they keep you at the bottom; they truly don’t want to help you get to their status. It’s the only way to make a lot of money.

The more I learned, the angrier I got so I quit the business. I did not want to be in a business telling people lies just to make money. And if the product/program was so great why lie. All MLM companies are liars and cheaters and you should never want to be apart of it.

The crap they used to tell me made me mad. These are some of their “pick up lines”:

·         If we can do it, you can do it

·         You need this program or product

·         You have to follow the system to be successful, it’s the only way

·         Ask your friends and family to join

·         There's money to be made for everyone

It’s nothing but lies, and you have to find out a great deal of this stuff after you join. Also you pay for every meeting/briefing you attend and bring your prospect to. It’s like a cult. Once again don’t join any network marketing, MLM’s or multi level marketing program. These are the lies people will tell you and you will be disappointed.

Ebooks and Online Courses

The next lies people will tell you are involving eBooks or online courses. Some are legit others are not. You don’t have to buy a book or attend a course to make money in any business. Some courses you definitely don’t have to join because if you look long and hard enough, you will find out how to make money and other helpful info by searching the web. If you want to get a more relevant search, type what you are searching for in the search bar and put it in parenthesis.

Sometimes people don’t have the time to do searches so buying an ebook may be easier for them. This is ok but you do have to beware of the lies people tell to rip you off. Not all books or courses are created equally.

The first lie people tell is they made several hundreds of thousands of dollars in their first month of business.  To me this is to hyped up and it is not likely people will make this kind of money in that short of time. Heck if people have done it, everyone would quit their jobs and do it to. 

The next lie people tell is their product helped a ton of people. Now some folks do have products that do help lots of folks, but it's only a small percentage of people. The majority put out crappy products that don't help no one. These are the ones that tell lies to get a buck and they don't care to help others.  

The best thing to do is to look past the lies people tell. Do research on the author of the program, course, or book and find out what they have done to make money. Also the best indicator the product is good is if they are giving you free advice in the form of a website, blog, or article providing you helpful quality content. If their information truly helped you then consider paying for their books, course, or program.  I recently attended a webinar that I paid for and found it to be very helpful so there are definitely some helpful ebooks and courses out there.

Also if you run across an affiliate who is selling a product, be careful because they can tell lies also. They same applies to the affiliate, if they don’t offer a good blog or website, don’t purchase anything through them. Only do so if you feel they helped you and they have a good site or blog. See through these lies people tell and don’t spend your money unless you want to. Don’t believe the lies these people tell you.

I hope this post help you today. I didn’t talk much about affiliate marketing, but I felt I should create a post about the lies people tell to rip you off in a biz opp because you can be ripped off in affiliate marketing as well as all businesses, and if someone need some help, this post is geared towards helping them see the light and keep their hard earned money. People tell some amazing lies just to make a buck off of people and it doesn’t have to happen. People need to be educated so they can see through the lies people tell.

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Work At Home Schemes

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At Home Work Scams 'On The Rise' 

Well I Guess The Unemployed Don't Need Jobs

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Unemployed Need Not Apply

5 Creative Traffic Building Ideas

Everyone knows that if you are an affiliate marketer or if you own a website, traffic building is so vital. Without it there would be no business, no income period. One important thing we must know is that when you have a website or a blog you have to do more than just put great content on them. Although quality content is very important, it is only half the battle. Big companies often hirer experts to optimize their websites in order for them to bring visitors to websites and this can get very costly. Also free classified advertising may not always be the best way because you will only get the least amount of views.

In this post I am going to go over some creative traffic building ideas that will help you get visitors to your websites.

                                                                       

Using directories to link build to your websites

This is a very effective way to build backlinks to your websites and blogs. When you add your site to one of these directories, you will get a free backlink to your website. In most cases it is a one way link which is very good for you; and in the long run will increase visitors to websites because these directories are used as much as search engines. You can do a search on the internet for free online directories. I will list a couple of them below so check them out:

Dmoz 

Master Moz 

Social Networking & Book Marketing Sites

Social networking sites are a great way to get backlinks. One thing about these types of sites is friends don’t care to be marketed to. In my opinion, I would use these sites mainly for the purpose of building a backlink. I also recommend that you open an account strictly for business purposes and keep your personal account for friends and family.

Twitter and Linkedin to me are one of the best to use for business purposes. Twitter is becoming more popular everyday and almost all people are using it. When you tweet a message, everyone in your network will receive it instantly. And it has the chance of being indexed in Google.

Visit these sites below and start building links and get visitors to websites.

Digg

Stumbleupon

Facebook

Myspace

Video sharing websites

Now this is a good one. Lots of folks are visual and like to have either pictures or videos to watch. Big companies use commercials to capture our attention. You should do the same, but with video sharing sites. When you post a video, it tends to get indexed quicker than an article or content on a site. Videos also receive traffic quicker for a more enhanced chance for your website to get seen.

Youtube, one of the most popular sites around, is a great place to start. You can fill out the profile with information about your site or blog, and in the description of your video you can use keywords with a well written description and add your url.  Others will write comments to your videos and my type in keywords in their comments that can make your video skyrocket in search engines, thus bringing more visitors to websites. The best part about sharing a video is that it’s free.

Youtube

DailyMotion 

Metacafe

Link To High Ranking Dominating Websites 

Here is a very brilliant idea most people don't think about to get visitors to websites and increase rankings; put high power website links in your websites and blogs that dominate the web. What do I mean, sites that have authority. When you do this, you get traffic, and your site is seen by search engines as trustworthy or important. Make sure the link is relevant to the content or that it links to a story on the site your viewers would be interested in. This is what you want and this is how you get your web site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I will give you a few examples of sites below:

Usa.gov

Alexa 

Amazon 

Military

MSNBC 

Use A Thesaurus To Aid In Creating Unique Valuable Content 

Lastly you want to be unique and add value. You do this by offering very high quality content to your viewers. I said this before and will say it again; high quality content will help you get visitors to websites. This is so important, and as I said in the beginning of this post it’s only half the battle, but it is important because duplicate content will not get indexed by Google or any other search engines. If you are saying the same thing as everyone else, you won’t get found. When you don’t take the time and find something new to say, website visitors want stay on your page. There is no short cut to this.

I am going to give you a very useful strategy that will help you create unique content that will get visitors to websites. Use a thesaurus. This is the most effective way to use words that others may not use. I sometimes do this myself. If you always use simple words, which is the same thing other people use, it will not really be unique. You need to talk in your own words, but a thesaurus will greatly help you. Most people are lazy and will not use a thesaurus, so this will be to your advantage.  At the end of the day, you get picked up by search engines, visitors to websites, important high ranking sites linking to you, and more affiliate income or sale increases.  You don’t need an expensive, high priced expert to accomplish these simple tasks. You need patience, time, and the will to put in some work to increase visitors to websites. 

How "Popular" Techniques Can Stall Your Affiliate Sales

Make Money The Right Way In Affiliate Marketing

If you are a beginner in affiliate marketing or if you are struggling, maybe it’s time to change how you run your affiliate business and change the way you are thinking. There’s much competition and saturation in affiliate marketing and to make money as an affiliate can be quite a difficult task. If you want to make it in this business you are going to have to do things a little different to separate yourself from other affiliate who’s been in the game for many years.  You can study what your competition does and learn from their mistakes and also see what you’re up against in your chosen niche.

                                                                               

One thing you must understand in affiliate marketing is everyone is trying to make the same accomplishments as you are.  You will read everywhere on the net about the best or most popular techniques you should use. If you want to even have an inch of a chance at beating your competition, why use the same exact “popular” techniques other affiliates use. Thousands of other affiliates have already used these “popular” techniques many moons before you knew anything about the affiliate marketing business, and those same techniques are probably stale by now. By the time you use finish trying these techniques, your competition will have moved on the bigger newer strategies and possibly more money.  You certainly don’t want to end up fishing from the pond that all the other fishers fished in before you, there won’t be any fish left for you to catch.  Also with search engines changing their algorithm constantly to provide searchers with the best relevant results, some of these techniques are either outdated or they are becoming outdated.

So why use not be creative and brainstorm for some of your own ideas. It is best that you step out and do something other folks haven’t done yet.  It’s just like school, you enter kindergarten, other students are in the 4th grade, and by the time you get to grade 4 they are in the 8th.  With this being said, you need to really do your research and try to come up with something new. Pick out a niche that many people are not promoting in or try to create and/or do something that no one else has done. Find a need that hasn’t been filled and fill it. Also remember that copy cats usually end up with not so good results as the original, so be unique. This will provide you the best chances to make money in affiliate marketing or any business.

Now you still should write articles with awesome content and provide quality to your audience. You should also get to know your audience. But you should not try to take the shortcut ways to earning money in affiliate marketing, it won’t work.

In your journey to success in affiliate marketing you will have some mountains you have to move but with the right attitude, motivation, and most importantly knowledge, you will end up becoming the money making affiliate you strive to be in this business. Read this article below about Me Too Marketing, you will learn additional information on how to be different from your competition.

No More "Me Too" Marketing

Get To Know Your Customer In Order To Build Your Affiliate Income

Most of the time in affiliate marketing we want to attract new customers. While this is all good, you should focus on keeping your existing customers.  It is your existing customers who will make you money over and over. If you take care of them and make sure they are satisfied, they will be loyal to you and will continue to purchase products through you. When you take your mind off of them this is where you will fail.

                                                           

Big companies always get repeat customers because they maintain a relationship and keep in contact with them by getting their email or other contact information and send them coupons and catalogs. You should do the same in your affiliate marketing business. As I said before in previous post, continue to offer them value, be there to assist them in any questions they may have, and most importantly, keep in touch.  You do this through emails, your blog, your articles, or through social network marketing. Your customers will more than likely need more of what you have to offer, especially if you have similar products in the same niche from which they purchased.

In the long run you will save more money by making money off of your repeat customers.

As far as getting new customers, you need to give something in order to get them in the first place. This takes time and effort. Provide them with credibility and loyalty. You can’t just get customers to stay interested in what you have to offer if you’re not giving them your best. The relationship with your prospects starts in the beginning. You have to show them you care for them. It’s just like an actual relationship. You don’t just make friends and keep them by offering nothing of value to them. Even when you’re looking for a spouse you have to have something of value to offer them or it will not work out.

You also have to nurture your relationship with your prospects to make them grow. Just like a seed you have to water it. This one of the most important things you have to do to get customers and keep them.

If you want customers to recommend you to others, just follow all of my advice. People talk about the bad and negative more than they’ll talk about the good or the positive. If you are not doing the best for your customers, the negative will spread like wildfire and this will be the end of you and your business. So start on the right foot in the beginning by not only getting customers but also keeping them.

Dynamic Strategies That Will Boost Affiliate Cash Profits

The biggest secret to boosting affiliate cash profits is there is no secret. Many folks believe that if you want to earn affiliate cash that you have to be in the “in” on the so called secrets.  I will give you the real truth towards boosting affiliate profits, and that’s being committed to your business as an affiliate marketer. Regardless how good tips are or how good of strategies you use, being committed in this business is the most important factor.

When most beginner affiliates start in this business, they tend to not know which kind of affiliate programs they should join. The best approach is join programs that pay commissions greater than 25%. If the commissions are less than 25%, you are just wasting your time in most cases. It will take the same amount of work to promote products at 50% that it will at 5%. Which sounds better to you?

Do your research; find a need and fill it. People have needs and want solutions. They search daily. Just take a look at what people are searching for. Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool and you’ll see that millions need solutions to their problems. Present them with a solution, and you’ll do more than increase your affiliate profits.

Another important strategy that is vital and will boost affiliate cash profits is to pay close attention to the structure of the product website. Does it look appealing? Would you buy from a site that looks like this? How are the colors? All of this plays a part and will determine weather people will purchase a product or not. Color scheme on the website is more important than most affiliate think.

What about news of the companies top affiliate? I don’t know about you but I want to know how others are doing at selling the product and if it is selling at all.  You most likely won’t make affiliate cash profits if the product isn’t selling very well.

Also you should look for tutorials and tips from the vendor of the products on high you should promote them. They know better than anyone because it’s their product. Usually this comes in the form of updates in some sort of newsletter through email.

Great customer support is also a must from the vendor as well. Why, so you can ask questions when you need to.

Become a customer of the product you plan on promoting and find out if it really offers what is promised by the creators. Becoming a customer will build your credibility and showing proof you’ve actually used the product shows even more and will encourage more sales which means more affiliate cash profits for you.

Follow these important strategies and you will certainly increase affiliate cash profits. You got to do your research in this business and the tips I mentioned above are just some of them. You’ve got to be alert at all times for changes in this industry, and do constant research on the basic and important needs of people. Choose a topic, narrow it down to a specific niche so you can be in a position to be the expert and target a specific audience. Put your self in you customers’ shoes and decide if you would buy a product before you promote it.

All of these tips are very important and will push you on your way to becoming a great affiliate, and earning cash profits.