Previously, we’ve seen how having quality, well organized content can help you improve or maintain your ranking on search engines. But is there more? Definitely. There are a few things that you need to keep in mind if you are serious about your SEO objectives. Here are some more examples:

• Ensure your content is unique

While this may seem obvious, some webmasters still don’t seem to get it. Using content that is scraped from other sites, or is comprised of PLR articles or is taken from PLR ebooks is not a good idea. Why? Because it is not unique. There are probably thousands of web pages out there with the same exact content that you have. This will obviously penalize you when it comes to SEO.

If you need to use PLR content or other “open source” materials, such as info from Wikipedia, then you will need to rewrite it to make it unique. This has to be done by hand. While there are software programs and scripts which claim they can generate unique articles, usually you will end up with some gibberish that will be hard to understand for users and will also be bad for SEO. So the bottom line is, your stuff needs to be unique.

• Don’t buy backlinks from shady sources

This comes back to the point about not using Black Hat SEO tactics if you want long term growth for your website. While you may find plenty of “quality backlink sellers” on web forums everywhere, you should be aware of the fact that these backlinks are rarely of any good quality. Most of the time, they are included in websites that are simply link dumps, where there are plenty of links to irrelevant web pages. Or, they simply spam forums and blog comments with your website link. Of course, these links will get removed after a few days and this may even get your site blacklisted for link spam. If you have to deal with a backlink seller, then make sure that you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing. The best backlinks will come from places that have a high amount of relevance to your website. For example, niche blogs.

• Remember to keep building quality backlinks

Instead of buying backinks, you can build them yourself. How? This is a lot easier than it sounds. You can start by creating a profile on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Include the URL of your website in your profile. Then, submit some articles to directories which have a good reputation with search engines. If you have a local business, see if you can be linked to on the website of your local chamber of commerce or other community business groups. Include your URL when you advertise on classified ads sites. All of this will get you good quality backlinks which are worth more than hundreds of backlinks from some shady sites which are nothing but a repository of spam posts.

Finally Some Other Ways to Promote Your Membership Site

We have seen that you can use forums, email, social media, as well as your own members to promote your membership site. But there are still a few other ways that you can attract members. Here they are:

• Create an affiliate program

In the online marketing world, many products have affiliate programs which pay a commission to the affiliate for each new sale. If you would like your site to be more successful, you could create an affiliate program for it and pay your affiliates around 50% of the monthly fee that you would make from members. You can promote this affiliate program on online marketing forums, just like you would promote the site itself. It is also possible for you to join an affiliate network. ClickBank is the most popular one out there, as they deal with digital products such as ebooks and membership sites.

• Use offline marketing

Even though your product is based on the internet and deals with internet marketing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use any offline methods to promote it. Some ideas of offline methods include distributing fliers promoting your site or putting up ads in print media like newspapers and magazines. Some membership site owners have even created TV and radio commercials, but obviously these are quite expensive when compared to other advertising methods.

• Use pay per click ads

Pay per click ad networks such as the ones on the Google and Bing search engines are an excellent marketing tool and can be used to promote IM products. However, you would need to carefulyl plan, manage and optimize your campaigns in order to be successful. You would also need to have a decent budget, as the whole internet marketing niche is very competitive.

• Use media buying

Media buying simply means buying advertising space on another site. You can sometimes buy text ads, banner ads or even video ads. The payment model depends on the site where you buy the ad space from and could by a flat rate per week or month, a CPC (cost per click) or a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model. You could deal either with an advertising network or make a private deal with a webmaster to advertise your membership site on their website.

All of these are excellent methods that you can make use of to promote your site and get some new members. However, the best way to generate revenue from your membership site is to keep your existing members, rather than constantly try to sign up new ones. This is actually much easier as you don’t need to do any advertising to retain your current members. All you need to do is to keep them interested in your site by adding new content on a regular basis, as well as listen to any feedback that they may have regarding the content of your site or how it runs.

When it comes to creating their own products, you can see a lot of online entrepreneurs creating an ebook or a more complete course that comes with videos and several bonuses. Of course, these are all good ideas and can be very profitable. The issue, however, is that if you use this business model, you would only make one sale from each customer and will have no residual income from them. Sure, you can get them on your mailing list and try to sell them some of your other products or promote a new product that you have created to them, but this will require additional marketing efforts on your part. Creating a membership site will eliminate these issues. There are several advantages that creating a membership site has:

• Recurring income

Instead of just making a sale once, you will be able to get a monthly fee from your buyers. As long as you update your site on a regular basis and thus provide them with interesting and new content every month, they will stay. In fact, some of them could stay for many years as long as they find your site to be useful for them. This is much better than simply making a “one off” sale.

• Better perceived value from your buyers

Many people have seen a lot of ebooks, especially in the internet marketing niche. Plenty of them have bought these ebooks before and have been disappointed with their content. However, there are a lot of buyers out there who see membership sites as more valuable and useful to them than just a course or a guide. This is because the sites often have a collection of tools, several sections of learning material, a discussion forum, etc.

• Increased marketing and money making opportunities

With a membership site, as opposed to a stand alone product, you have more opportunities to sell to people, especially once they become members. Sure, having a mailing list can be very good and can make you successful. But the issue here is that plenty of ebook buyers are already on the mailing list of every guru (real or wannabe) in town. They get so many of these emails each day that they might read one or two and ignore the rest. But if they become a member, they will pay a lot more attention to what you have to say.

So if you are promoting another product, whether it is an affiliate offer or one that you created, they are a lot more likely to take interest in it. Also, if your methods involve the use of services, like web hosting or online phone services, you can become an affiliate of these and include your affiliate link in the relevant section of your membership site content. This gives you an even greater opportunity to make some money from your buyers.

Of course, setting up and managing a membership site will require a bit more work than just selling an ebook. But it is not impossible to do and remember that in terms of profits, it can be a very beneficial activity for you.

In the internet marketing world, creating your own digital product and selling it is seen as a profitable venture to take part in. In fact, there are millions of ebooks and guides on different topics that are being sold each year. Many online entrepreneurs have seen this and want a share of the action. Many of them simply create an ebook which explains either various methods of making money on the internet or focuses on a specific topic, such as Adsense, CPA, site flipping, etc. While this is a good way to start, there are some additional things that you can do to give more value to your products in the eyes of your buyers and thus make them more likely to be interested in buying them. Remember, the buyers can’t really see what’s inside your product when they are on the sales page, so they will base their buying decision mainly on the perceived value that they see in your product overall.

Now how do you increase the value of a product? Here are some good ideas:

• Add bonuses

This can be an additional, smaller ebook on a related topic that will be useful to the buyer.

If the method that your guide is teaching involves building a website, you can include things such as PLR website templates or graphics as part of the whole package. You can also include various other web building tools too.

The bonus doesn’t have to be in the form of a “product” either. Another thing that you can include is a service. It could be in the form of a free one on one coaching session with you. Or it could be something like a few months of free hosting or a free domain name. Basically, anything that will make the buyer see added value in your item.

• Separate your ebook into several parts

This will give the impression that your guide is bigger and contains more content, while previously these were all chapters in one big ebook. You can present these as separate, smaller guides that inform the reader about something specific. The buyer will feel as if they are getting many ebooks for the price of one and might see your offer as more valuable to them.

• Create a video course

You can convert your ebook completely into a video or add a few videos that explain something specific that is taught in your guide. There are some buyers who prefer watching a video over reading an ebook. Others will see the inclusion of a video part in your product as an assurance that it is more detailed and gives easy to follow, step by step instructions. While creating a video takes more time and requires more effort than simply writing, it can be very well worth it in the end, as it can have a very positive impact on the amount of sales that you make from the product you are selling.

There are a lot of people who want to earn some money on the internet. There are also plenty of guides, some free, some paid, which describe various ways to do so. The problem with these is that they often tend to take a “one size fits all” approach and make no difference between someone who just wants a few extra dollars to pay their bills or someone who wants to make a six figure income by building a complete online business.

Also, the issue is that these guides, courses and ebooks, while useful and interesting, tend to focus exclusively on one online money making activity, such as affiliate marketing, digital product creation or eBay selling. This, in itself, is not entirely a bad thing. After all, if someone wants to learn how to be a Power Seller on eBay and make thousands of dollars in sales each day, it would be much better for them to have a complete guide on the topic, rather than just reading a few pages in a more general money making ideas guide.

However, for those who do not yet know which specialty, or specialties of online money making they want to get into, this may not be the best choice. In that case, it would be much better for these people to read something that describes various ways to make money on the internet, so that they can choose which activities they would want to perform to earn.

Even though many individuals with no knowledge of online business wouldn’t know much about different money making activities, they typically know what their objectives are in terms of income. Some people only want to make a hundred or so dollars each month, while others want to make a thousand dollars each day.

There are basically three different categories of objectives in terms of income:

Micro online business: $0 to $500 a month.

This is for those who only want a few extra bucks at the end of the month, to do things like pay some bills, buy a few extra things that they want, etc. These people typically do not want to invest much time or money in their business and just want methods that will bring them a bit of cash without being too complex.

Part time online business: $500 to $2500 a month.

This is often used by people who want to supplement an existing income or those that are willing to put in a bit more effort in their online activities and spend about 15 to 30 hours a week on it. Some investments might be required, but they will usually be relatively small sums of money.

Full time online business: $2500 a month +

Here, things start getting serious. Those who have this objective need to know that they will essentially be building a complete online business and they must be willing to put in 30 or more hours per week into it, as well as make the necessary financial investments to get their business off the ground and to keep it growing.

We will keep exploring some money making ideas for each of these categories tomorrow.

Now that you know how to find a virtual staff, it is time to go forward and to actually set up your business in an efficient way to take full advantage of the opportunities that having a staff to help you will provide.

There are basically two things that they can be helpful for. Either by helping you with your own internet marketing efforts or by providing services to other internet marketers.

Let’s say that you are an affiliate marketer that is pushing Clickbank ebooks. You can use your staff to do certain things, such as writing articles that you will submit to article directories, building landing pages for you, building backlinks, etc.

You can also provide services to other internet marketers and business owners as well. This can be done by simply applying the “Buy low – sell high” concept that nearly any business in the world uses. Now say you own a landscaping company. You would charge the client a certain rate for landscaping services, which would factor in the cost of materials, operations and wages for your employees. You would then picket the difference as your profit.

The same thing can be applied online as well, and doing so actually is more advantageous in many aspects than running a “traditional” business for many reasons. First of all, you won’t have much overhead, as you don’t need a physical office from where to run your business. You can run everything from home… or anyplace that has a computer and internet access, for that matter. It’s that simple.

All you have to do is to find clients that will pay you for your services. This can be done by putting up a thread on internet marketing forums or on classified ads sites that will attract customers who will pay for your services. You will then outsource the work to your virtual staff and pay them a lower price than what the client is paying you and thus pocket the profit.

Say, for example, that a client is paying you $6 to write a 400 word article to promote their website. You would then pay $3 to the outsourcer and then pocket the profit. While this may seem like just a few dollars a profit, if you get larger products and many new clients you can make a lot of money by outsourcing services to your staff members.

One of the best things that you can do with this method is to basically do a combination of both providing services for others and using your virtual staff for your own marketing efforts. That way, you have two streams of income at any time.

Now, how do you make sure that all your operations will run smoothly and that the staff that you hire will be the very best? Join in tomorrow for more information about how to ensure that your staff members will be capable of doing the job and how to avoid common scams.

If you were looking for content to add to your website or for some ebooks that you can resell, then you may have come across someone selling PLR content. You may have been surprised that it is quite cheap or even free. In fact packs of PLR such as articles, ebooks, website templates, graphics, etc. are often given as a free gift when you buy some products in the internet marketing niche or you join a membership site about making money online. Can using PLR really earn you money, or is it just something that is good as “filler” content for your website?

As you may already know, PLR products give you “Private Label Rights”, meaning that depending on the license included with the content, you can do pretty much anything you want with it, including republish it, modify it, bundle it in another product, etc. This creates a wealth of opportunities in which PLR products can be used, some of which could indeed be very profitable for you.

Let’s take a look at PLR articles. Obviously, we all know that in order for a web page to be both attractive to readers and search engines, it needs to have regularly updated and unique content. PLR articles can help you with that. However, there are certain things that you should know about using them. If all you need is content for your site and you don’t care too much about SEO (i.e. you don’t expect to get most of your traffic from organic search results), then you can simply use the articles as they are on your site.

However, if you want to increase your ranking in the search engines, the content that you supply on your site needs to be actually unique. You will therefore need to rewrite it. However, we all know that rewriting content is far more simple than actually writing an article from scratch. You don’t really need to think up of original ideas, just say the same thing than the PLR article is saying but in different words. For example, if the original text is: “I saw a huge dog running on the street”, you could spin it to “I looked at the street and saw a big dog barreling through”. You get the idea. You can, of course hire a freelancer to do it for you. In that case you will save money, as rewriting is usually quite cheaper than writing original content. You can spin the PLR articles as many times as you desire to suit your needs.

Remember that you actually don’t have to use the entire article on your site. For example, if the PLR articles are 600 words each and you only need a 300 word blog post, you can use only parts of the article on your site. You can also split the article into two different posts as well.

When you are seeking for ways to make money online, chances are you will be bombarded with advertising for many different earning methods. And of course, the majority of these will require you to spend some money in order to join the program or “unlock the top secret power to become rich”, etc. Here is an overview of some of the most common ads related to money making found online and the truth behind them.

“Single mom makes $600 a day with Google!/Earn $500 an hour online!/Join my top secret money making club, etc”

These are advertisements for either electronic guides (also called ebooks) or membership sites which show you information on how you can earn online. Due to the fact that the offers are varied (there’s thousands of them out there), it is not possible to make a judgment as to whether the information found in each one of them is valid or useful. In general, they will show you some ways that are used to generate some income on the internet. Here are some things that they conveniently fail to mention or hide deep in the fine print of their site:

• It’s not easy. People who earn impressive figures online have spent countless hours building up their business ad still need to work several hours a day to run their online business.
• You will probably need to invest money (and may lose it). While it IS possible to start a online business with little or no money, if you hope to earn any significant amount you will need to put up your own funds.
• The earning figures are exaggerated. The chances that you will be earning anything remotely close to what was advertised during your first attempts are quite remote themselves.

Furthermore, many of these are “trial” offers. You are told that you can access the site right away for just $1.97 or some other small amount. What is buried in the fine print is the fact that if you fail to cancel your subscription to the site within a certain period (varies between 3 days and 2 weeks), you will be charged the full amount which ranges anywhere from $30 to $100 a month. Sure, you can call to cancel, but be prepared to wait on hold, then sometimes have a rep try to “retain” you as a member of the site by trying to talk you out of canceling, offering you a discount or a “super exclusive bonus just for you because you are such a great person”.

Once again, not all money making guides or membership sites are inherently bad. Just make sure you know what you are getting yourself into. If you pay for something, make sure that there is a money back guarantee that you can use if you are not satisfied with the product. If you sign up for a trial offer, find the number to call if you want to cancel and make sure that this number actually works.

When you are promoting various kinds of affiliate or CPA offers, you need a way to get traffic to your offer. Obviously, the traffic will not come by itself so you would need to use some advertising methods to get people to see your site. There are many different kinds of ways you can use to draw visitors to your site. Each one of them has its unique advantages and disadvantages, so it is up to you to consider all available methods and make your decision. You would also need to see what types of promotion are allowed for a certain offer, as not all offers and networks allow certain methods of advertising. For example, email ads could be forbidden for certain offers. Let’s take a look at some ways you can advertise online:

Article Marketing.

This consists of writing short articles that will get the viewer interested in your offer and want to click through to your link in order to learn more. While these are often used in order to tout the benefits of digital products, such as ebooks on the Clickbank network, they can be used to promote almost any kind of affiliate or CPA offer.

The format that your article takes on will also depend on what offer you are promoting specifically. The most common types of articles are either general information on the niche or a review of a specific product or service. For example, if you are promoting a fax to email service and writing a general article on the topic, you will detail some of the advantages of using a fax to email service and explain to the reader how it works. If you were writing a review, you would write about how a specific fax to email service works and what its good points are.

Since you are writing in order to promote something your tone would need to stay positive. It is OK to include some slight disadvantages of a certain product or industry, but these would have to be drowned out by the positive aspects. It is also possible to compare different competing products in a “review” type article, but once again, the overall tone needs to stay positive.

Depending on where you are submitting your article to, you may be able to include your affiliate links in the body of the article itself, or you would be provided a “resource box” where you could write a short statement about yourself and put a link to your offer.

You don’t need to be a professional writer in order to create promotional articles. In fact, most of the content on the web is written in a way that even a 4^th grader will be able to understand. You also have the opportunity to outsource your article writing to someone else if you are unsure of your article writing skills.

Where do you submit your articles to? There are many article directories online, such as Go Articles and Ezine Articles where you can post them.

If you have just started out and decided to build an online business, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the opportunities out there. Indeed there are many opportunities to earn online, so choosing the right one is important to your success. Here is an overview of some of the most common ways to make money on the internet and get your new business going.

Affiliate programs

In essence, an affiliate program pays you to promote a certain product or service and you get a commission in return. This commission amount will vary depending on a few factors, such as the type of product/service you are promoting, the merchant, as well as your past experience with that particular affiliate program. It is not uncommon for many programs to have tiered structures where you get to earn a higher commission amount if you drive a certain number of sales to them.

There are also various ways that the merchant will pay you per sale:

Fixed amount. Just like the name implies, you will get paid a specific dollar amount for each sale that you refer. This amount may vary depending on different products or services that are purchased by the referred customer.

Percentage of sale. This is most commonly used by merchants which sell dozens of different items which have different prices. The percentage that you get will once again vary greatly depending on what you are promoting. In the case of high priced physical goods, the commission percentages are usually quite low and range from 2 to 5%. But this is made up by the fact that the percentage will be based on an overall higher sale amount. For digital goods, such as ebooks and membership site subscriptions, it is not uncommon to be offered commissions ranging from 50% to 75%. However, it is worth noting that the sale price is much lower and normally ranges between $25 to $50.

Recurring commissions (also called revenue sharing or rev-share). This type of payment plan is sometimes offered by merchants who have a subscription based service, such as informational membership sites, dating sites, etc. You would get a percentage of the amount that a customer that you have referred to the site was billed. Once again, the exact percentage will vary, but is usually in the range of 25% to 75%.

Finding affiliate programs

As you have probably noticed, there is no shortage of affiliate programs that you can sign up to participate in. However, due to the complexity involved in running an affiliate program, many online merchants have chosen to join a bigger affiliate network. This network will take care of tracking the commissions owed and issuing payments to you after they have been paid by the merchant at the end of the month.

Some popular affiliate networks are: ClickBank (www.clickbank.com) for e-books, membership sites and digital products; Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and Linkshare (www.linkshare.com) regroup hundreds of different merchants, such as clothing retailers, online phone services, etc.

One of the areas a lot of internet marketers overlook is creating their own product. Many think in one way: affiliate revenue.

Now, affiliate marketing is great, however you sometimes need more than one way to generate revenue, and creating your own products is one of the best ways to do it.

The content doesn’t necessarily have to be 100% unique either, sometimes rebranding some parts of master resale rights products along with some unique offerings of your own can build a great product for potential buyers.

Here is a hypothetical example. Imagine that you are a prolific SEO specialist that is great at giving speeches and presentations, but lack the attention span to do long form writing such as ebooks or reports for potential clients.

Creating a video series could be a great way to create some passive income for yourself as well as your affiliate revenue. But sometimes you need to have more than just a video series. Luckily, you have several options, including hiring a virtual assistant or contractor to create an ebook for you. You could have them create a unique offering for your, including all of the areas you touch on in the video series as well as other things you may have overlooked at the time of recording. Or you could have them write a supplemental ebook that gives different looks and case studies on different websites and proper SEO work in practice.

Building a package of content like this is very enticing for potential buyers, because it will give them more content for the same price. If you could buy one ebook that comes with an audio only version, or an ebook on the same subject with a video series, a free case study, and a follow up series giving tips and tricks for 3 months after your purchase, which would you choose (given the prices are in the same ballpark obviously).

Packaging different product types together is the best way to reach a broader audience, every person learns differently — so having different ways to reach them with the same consistent message is very important and essential to a great product launch. Make sure you diversify your offerings in order to reach the most people.

Information products like ebooks, and reports can be a great way for a strong writer to bring in some money online. You’ve probably heard that part before, but just how do you go about selling an ebook online? There are a few effective methods you can use to get your information product out there.

Clickbank offers services other than affiliate programs. By registering with them, you can sell your information straight through them, and they’ll even help you set up a network of affiliates that push your product for you. If your product gets enough affiliates, you’ll have to do very little active selling in order to make a profit. If other people are doing the legwork for you, you can spend your time working on your next ebook rather than spending your time selling your current ebook. Click bank does charge for these services, but the fees are reasonable, and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to offset the fees  easily with a strong product.

Commission Junction offers similar services, but they offer you a little more control.  With CJ, you can choose to approve each potential affiliate who wants to promote your product. By choosing your affiliates carefully, you can minimize the risk of fraudulent transactions, as well as minimizing any damage a bad affiliate could do to your brand.

Of course, you could always just opt to sell your information product straight through your website. You’re going to need a few important things if you decide to go this route. First you’re going to need a well designed website. If your site looks unprofessional, your customers are going to be reluctant to purchase anything from you. You’re also going to need a method for accepting payments. Paypal is an affordable method to take payments, and you can also go through a bank in order to get a credit card gateway set up.  Be sure to shop around for the right credit card gateway for your needs. There are often a lot of fees associated with accepting credit card payments, and you might find that those fees can eat into your profits if you’re not careful.

Whichever method you choose, your success will depend on the quality of your information product. Take the time to write a good product, and be sure to promote it heavily after you launch it, and your information product will sell well.

It’s no secret that you can make money selling ebooks, but you can also make some money giving them away for free. Reports, and guides can actually be used to generate sales even if you’re not selling them, as long as you follow a few simple guidelines.

First and foremost, you need to create a compelling report. If no one wants to download your product, you can’t make it work for you. Be sure to pick a topic that matters to your audience. Think about questions your readers might have, or problems they might be looking to solve, and go from there.

Now that you have a compelling report in hand, it’s time to monetize it, and one sure fire way is through affiliate links. If your guide teaches the reader how to do something, consider including affiliate links to any products they might need to accomplish the task at hand. If you’re teaching the reader how to repair their DVD player, include affiliate links to all of the tools they’ll need to open the DVD player up, and any other parts they might need once they’re in there. The odds on making a sale are pretty high here, because you already know the reader is interested in the products you’re pushing – after all, they wouldn’t have downloaded your report if they didn’t intend to get into their DVD player, and they won’t be doing that without the right tools.

You can also use the report to push your own products or services. For example, if you repair DVD players professionally, at the end of your DVD player repair guide, leave your contact information and rates for your repair service. If the reader is intimidated by the repair process, they might have you fix their DVD player instead of attempting the repair themselves.

Remember, it’s not just the initial downloader you’re reaching, but everyone they share it with.If your report really helped them, they will be more likely to share it with a friend, and the more people that see it, the more money you’ll make.

By giving your readers a little information for free, you can turn a comfortable profit on affiliate links, and other related products and services. Be sure to provide solid content in the report, and your readers will be more likely to click your affiliate links or order your products and services.