Besides quality web hosting, there are certain other things that you would need in order to run your membership site. These are: a content management system and a payment gateway. Once again, you need to make the right choice when selecting these two, as they will be very important to running your site. Here is a closer examination on how to choose them:

• Content management system

Basically, it will be the software that resides on your server and will be powering your entire membership site. This will allow you to add content and manage your site. There are hundreds of different membership site systems out there. Some are commercial, while others are open source systems. The best way to select a good content management system would be to first read some information about this. You can find this in many webmaster and internet marketing forums such as Digital Point and the Warrior Forum.

Basically, some points that you should compare the various systems on are:

• Security – Is this system vulnerable to any kinds of malicious attacks and are there any known security vulnerabilities affecting it?
• Functionality – Does the system give you all the features that you would need to manage your site well. Is it able to be fully integrated with payment systems? This will allow members to be given access right away after they join.
• Flexibility – Are there any limitations on how much content and what kind of content you can add to your site? Is there a maximum number of users you can add?

• A Payment System

This will allow your membership site to take payment from members and can be fully integrated with your content management system in order to activate accounts as well as deactivate those that did not renew their membership.

The payment system that you use will process credit card payments and allow you to receive the proceeds of your membership site subscriptions. The most common payment processing system available right now is of course PayPal. Many membership site owners use it because of its popularity and the fact that it offers many API features that can integrate very well with the majority of content management systems out there. PayPal also supports recurring payments, meaning that your subscribers will not have to pay manually every month. Rather, they will be charged automatically unless they themselves cancel their subscription to your site.

Although PayPal is the most popular system right now, there are other payment processors available too. Some examples are MoneyBookers and Plimus. It is also recommended that you use more than one payment processor, in case someone has problems using one. Creating a business account is free and integrating multiple payment processors is not that difficult, all you would need to do is to add the right code to your membership site. This could also be convenient for users, as for example someone might not have money in their PayPal account but might have some in their MoneyBookers account and would want to use that to join your site rather than paying with a credit card.

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 is a lot of talk in internet marketing communities about using traffic from Craigslist to publish affiliate or CPA offers. While it is possible to do so, there are certain practices to avoid. Here are some things not to do when using Craigslist.

• Don’t use it for offers where it is not allowed

CPA networks are aware of the fact that some marketers use Craigslist. Some networks ban this type of promotion outright, some forbid it for certain offers, while certain allow it as long as you follow some rules set forth by them. If you do not want to get banned from the network and possible lose the earnings that you have made, you should comply with any rules that they have. When in doubt, contact your affiliate manager just to be sure.

• Don’t simply put in your affiliate links and banners all over the place

Craigslist is mainly designed for local businesses and individuals to post ads and not a place to spam affiliate offers. Any blatant affiliate links and offers will be flagged down rather quickly by users of the site. Simply put, do not direct link from a Craigslist post to an affiliate offer. Your post will probably be gone within minutes anyways.

• Don’t post in the wrong category just to get traffic

If you post an ad in a category that is irrelevant, it will get flagged down almost instantly. The bottom line is, keep your postings to categories where they are relevant if you want them to have any chance of staying up.

• Don’t attempt to trick or mislead people

This is one of the biggest things not to do when using Craiglist. While it was quite popular with black hat marketers about 2 years ago, Craigslist, affiliate networks and merchants have all come down on this and took action to prevent it from happening.

Now, what exactly is “misleading” people? Some examples would be: posting a fake job offer, telling people that they got the job, but that they simply need to complete a biz opp offer to “verify their info”. Or putting up an ad for an apartment and then telling people that they need to pass a credit check, then sending them over to a credit report affiliate offer. One other trick that was popular consisted of offering people a job and then telling them to buy a video conferencing software from an affiliate offer as the “training” for the job would be done remotely. In all cases, this is misleading people, as the apartment or job that was promised to them simply does not exist.

If you do this, soon enough, somebody will complain to the merchant and say “Hey! You promised me a job if I signed up on your site! How come nothing happened?” and you will simply end up banned.

Craigslist is a popular and free online classified ads site. While it certainly isn’t as popular as say Google or Facebook, it is still one of the most popular sites on the internet, with millions of users from all around the world visiting it. This has given online marketers a lot of ideas on how to monetize all of this traffic. Unfortunately, Craigslist is not what it used to be when it comes to internet marketing and you have black hat marketers to thank for that. What some people did went far beyond just spamming CPA offers to downright lying to people such as promising them jobs or mortgages if they complete a CPA offer for a credit report or a biz opp. As a response to that, Craigslist has upped its security mechanism and has even posted warning in many of its sections that specifically mention affiliate marketing.

But this doesn’t mean that is is completely useless to online entrepreneurs. There are a few ways to use it for your online marketing efforts. Here are some of them:

• Promoting your e-commerce site

If you have a website that sells merchandise, then you can still use Craigslist to promote it. For example, if you sell clothes or electronics in your online shop, then you can post an ad in the proper section of Craigslist and get some traffic to it that way. Make sure to post in the right section, or your ad will be flagged down rather quickly. Also, don’t post the same ad in different cities at the same time. While there is nothing wrong with a global e-commerce site posting ads in multiple cities, remember that Craigslist is not mainly aimed at internet marketers, but rather for small, local businesses to post ads in the city where they operate.

• Providing services

If you offer some services that can be done over the internet, then you can use Craigslist to get some business too. For example, if you create websites for businesses and individuals, then you can put an ad in the right section to promote that. There are plenty of services that you can do over the internet and have your clients pay your by Paypal or another payment system. Some examples include: translation, writing, graphic design, flier/advertising design, promotional video creations and a whole lot more. If you want to appear more professional and therefore more trustworthy when providing these services, you can always create a simple “business” style website that gives details of what you do and your prices, as well as get a toll free phone number to get your clients to reach you. You can get one for a few dollars a month and then forward it to your cell phone, or just leave it to always go to voicemail. Here’s a tip to get more sales: put a special discount or coupon code in your ad and tell readers to mention it when they order.

If you want to make some money online by promoting affiliate offers, then there are various ways for you to accomplish this. You could building landing pages for each offer you push, or even link directly to the offer depending on which advertising channel you use. But one of the ways to push affiliate offers online is by simply creating a blog.

Blogs have many advantages. They make it very easy to add unique and new content, which will help them remain interesting with readers and also make SEO easier. With blogging platforms such as Joomla and WordPress, creating your own blog has never been easier. So how do you make one for affiliate marketing? Here is an example scenario:

Let’s say that you are promoting web hosting affiliate offers. The main topic of your blog will be web hosting, or issues that are of interest to other internet marketers or webmasters. You would make regular posts such as: web building tips, reviews of particular web hosts, comparisons between different types of web hosting, SEO advice, etc. Basically, anything that is related to being a webmaster.

There will be various ways for you to “plug” the affiliate ads into your blog. You can, of course use classic banner ads, or text ads placed in prominent locations. But it is also possible for you to include affiliate links inside the text of your blog. For example, you could link the name of a web host that you talk about in a blog post to the affiliate offer.

But one important thing to remember when you are creating a blog for affiliate marketing is to not make it look like this is the only purpose of your blog. Sure, for you the main objective of your blog would be to generate money for you. But your readers come to your blog in order to be informed about something they care about, not simply read post after post that is singing praises of various different companies and products.

So back to our example of a web hosting blog. Sure, it is fine to have certain posts talk about how great a certain web host is, or that inform readers of a special promotion that a hosting company is having at this time. But you also need to include some informative content as well. So you could make some posts that talk about web design tools or posts that explain how VPS web hosting is different from shared hosting, etc. If your readers notice that your blog is nothing more than an advertising platform, chances are they won’t trust it very much. They will probably leave to go to another site and the chances that someone would click one of your ads and sign up for one of the web hosts that you are pushing are quite remote if your blog is structured that way. Basically, the key to success is having regularly updated and informative content.

When looking at full time online business opportunities, many people ask themselves whether affiliate marketing is a good thing to go into. While there is definitely a lot of money to be made in this business, it is not the most simple thing to set up. One of the reasons behind this is that you will have plenty of competitors who are going to be after the same kind of traffic that you are and pushing the exact same types of affiliate offers. So what do you require in order to become a good affiliate marketer and make a profitable business out of it? Here are certain things you will need:

• Patience

While some people did make a few thousand in their first months, there is nothing guaranteeing that you will be able to emulate them. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer will take some time. First, you would need to make various efforts to make your business become profitable. Next, you would need to consider the fact that most affiliate programs pay you one month after the end of the current month, so it is not instant money like if you would be selling things on eBay or offering services. If you need to make some money right away, like cash to pay some bills, you can try a different business model for the time being and then move onto affiliate marketing later.

• Money to invest

While it is possible to get started here with just a few dollars for a web hosting account, if you want your business to be successful, you will need to invest a lot of money into it. Some of the things that you may need to pay include: hosting, advertising as well as paying other people to do some tasks for you, such as creating landing pages or putting up ads if you don’t want to spend too much time doing these yourself.

• Ability to stay on top of things

The world of internet marketing is one that is always changing. As such, there are new offers for you to promote, new networks for you to do business with, new advertising opportunities, etc. that appear regularly. If you want to maximize the amount of profit that your business will be making, then you will also need to spend some time scouting for new opportunities in addition to running your existing campaigns. This will require some good planning and time management on your part.

• Having no fear of failure

There are many great methods to make money online, however no one will tell you the exact steps that you will need to take to build a successful affiliate campaign. This is something that you will need to figure out on your own. Along the may, it is very well possible that you will make mistakes. The important thing here is not to be afraid to try new things and to learn from your errors so that you can gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

There are many people who are new to internet marketing and the whole “make money online” scene and who naturally, have many questions about online earning opportunities. Here are some answers to questions that are frequently asked by newcomers.

• How do I earn money online?

There are plenty of opportunities, which are quite varied. The most common earning opportunities found online are:

• Becoming an affiliate of another merchant and getting a commission on sales that you get for them.
• Creating a web site, then selling ad space and getting paid for each click on the ads, for the number of views they get, or a fixed amount per day, week or month.
• Creating your own (digital or physical) product and selling it to customers.
• Reselling someone else’s product through your website or a marketplace like eBay or Amazon (buy low/sell high concept, similar to what a physical retail store does).
• Providing services to others (writing, web design, graphic design, translation, etc).

• How much money will I make? Are these ads that say I can make $1000 a day online true?

The amount of money you will earn will depend on what you do specifically. The earning potential is technically unlimited, but it will take a lot of work and dedication to reach good results. While some people can make $1000 a day, it will take much more than simply buying a product or signing up for some course to do the trick.

• Are all of these guides/courses/ebooks/membership sites about making money scams?

Some of them are, but the majority can’t really be considered a scam. Rather, they do give you some ideas and information that you can put to good use and start an online business of your choice. However, most of them stop short of holding your hand to the point of telling you exactly what to sell, exactly how to word your ads, etc. This is something you will need to figure out on your own.

• Do I need any startup money? Can I get started with nothing?

This depends on what you are trying to do to earn money. Some forms of online business can be started with absolutely $0, some others will require a small investment of $10 – $20 for a website and domain name, while others will need you to pay a few hundred or a few thousand for things like advertising, merchandise to re-sell, etc.

• Where are the best places to find information on earning money online?

If you do a Google, search, you will find that there are quite a few websites or blogs that provide useful information, but make sure that they are not simply a “front” that is trying to sell you some guide or get you to join a membership site. The best sources of free information remain internet marketing forums such as Digital Point, Warrior Forum and Wicked Fire.

Some people may be asking themselves if internet marketing is a good choice of career. Sure, the money that can be made online may seem attractive to many, but earning cash on the internet by promoting affiliate products or having your own products is not for everyone. Here are some thing to consider if you want to go into online marketing as a full time activity:

• Remember, you are building a business

Being an internet marketer is not a job. You will actually be working for yourself and thus have all the responsibilities that come with that. So you need to be a person that will always be motivated to do work without having someone giving them orders and telling them what to do or what not to do. The success of your business will depend on your ability to make the right decisions and you cannot blame someone else if things go wrong.

• You will need to learn things by yourself

When you decide to build an online business, there is a lot of information that you would need to look up, read and understand. There are very few actual college courses that deal with online business, and those that do typically just explain you what internet marketing is, but do not go into any real amount of detail on how you can build a successful business on the internet. So, if your idea of learning is sitting in a classroom and hearing some guy in a suit rephrase what is already in a textbook, then the online world is not for you. You must have the ability to learn everything you need by yourself, either by looking up information, or through experience.

• There is no fixed salary

Remember again, you are working for yourself and not for someone else. Therefore, you are the one that will determine how much or who little you get paid. In certain jobs, you might be able to get paid just for showing up and loafing around for a few hours. This is not the case here. How hard you work and how creative you are will have a definite impact on how much you get paid.

• You need to be able to embrace change

The online world is constantly changing, with new earning opportunities always emerging. In order to maximize your profits, you will need to take advantage of these opportunities as soon as they appear. Just remember, about 6 years ago, social media marketing was a relatively new concept that barely anyone took seriously. Now, many businesses use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to stay in touch with clients and to acquire new ones.

What will be the next wave of change in online marketing? Some say it could be sites geared towards mobile devices, others think that the integration of various devices, such as internet enabled televisions could change the landscape significantly. No matter what happens, you need to be on top of your game and be among the first to spot golden opportunities.

When we talk about internet marketing, many people instantly seem to think that it is related to affiliate offers and building a website to host some Adsense ads. Sure, these things are what many people do to earn money on the internet, but they are not the only components of online marketing. If you have a local business, you can use the internet to draw more clients and above all, to get your business known in the community. There are various options for you to use to get the word out. Yesterday, we have talked about local SEO and your options for doing it. But search engine traffic is not the only way for you to get visitors to your website and clients for your business. Let’s examine a few other ways to get what you are looking for.

Getting Traffic

Whether you are pushing affiliate offers, or have your own, physical small business, you want traffic to your site. Traffic simply means visitors that look at your website. There are many ways to get this traffic: SEO (which we talked about yesterday), online classified ad sites, social media sites and targeted media buying. We will explore these one by one to see what the advantages (and sometimes drawbacks) are of using these methods. That way, you will be able to make a decision on how to advertise your business online.

Classified Ads Sites (Craigslist, Gumtree, Backpage, Kijiji and dozens more).

There are various sites which let you place a classified ad, which is similar to what you would see in a newspaper. There are some main, worldwide sites such as Craigslist, but there are also some local sites which could be geared towards people in your locality. For example, in French Canada where I live, the website Annonce123.com is very popular with people and attracts a lot of local traffic.

In order to maximize your chances of success and to take the highest advantage of the sites it is recommended that you:

• Post on all the sites. That’s right, both the national sites which have a section for your city and the smaller, local sites (if present in your locality). Posting an ad on these sites is free and takes 2 or 3 minutes. Remember, even if you only get 10 views a day for your ad, one of these viewers could be your next biggest customer. Say if you own a car rental place, the viewer could be a diplomat from Monaco on a temporary assignment in your city, who will rent your most expensive car for 6 months. Think of the money you will make with him. Sure, this is rare… but you never know… and if he doesn’t see your ad, well he never know your car rental business existed and use a competitor instead.
• Make you ad look interesting. Your ad should stand out and be engaging to the users. Thus, use a good title and also, make sure that you use proper spelling and grammar in the ad. Believe me, it helps.
• Use the “featured” or “upgrade” options if possible. Many sites, for a small fee of (varies from $0.50 to a few dollars) will let your ad be “featured”. This means that it will be either on top of all the other ads, or will have highlighting that will draw attention to it. If you have a few dollars to spare, use this option.

Tomorrow, we will examine social media sites and how they can be useful for marketing your local business on the internet.

If you look at information on internet marketing, you will find plenty of success stories coming from people who have “made it” in this industry and who have made very good amount of money in online business. But what about those who haven’t? Let’s take a closer look at what causes many online marketers to simply give up rather than want to do everything they can to make their business succeed.

• They Set Their Income Expectations To An Unrealistic Amount

Advertisements for IM products are partly to blame for this one. They show money falling out of the sky, flashy cars, big houses, etc. All of that, with promises that you can make thousands of dollars every single day. While these amounts are achievable, after all, some people have made millions on the internet, they are not what you will be earning when you start. Every business starts out small and brings in a modest amount of profit at the beginning and the online business world is no different.

• They Thought Everything Was So Easy

Again, ads for products that teach IM methods are partly to blame for this. They use language like “all you have to do is put up a few ads on Google each day and you might make thousands!!” Well, this is technically true. You CAN make thousands by putting up a few ads on Google. But then again, you need to know which products to promote, what to write in the ads, what keywords to select, etc. And this requires work and dedication. When some people realize that actual work will be required, they seem to back out of the deal rather quickly, instead of actually giving it a shot to see what works and what doesn’t.

• They Thought That You Would Never Have To Invest Any Money In Their Business

Some people come to internet marketing thinking that since this is the “virtual world” starting a business that will bring them hundreds of thousands a year in “real” money will not require them to spend anything. When they realize that they will need to spend a few dollars on domains, hosting, advertising, tools, etc. they once again run away thinking that this must be some kind of scam or conspiracy to get them to lose money. The funny thing is when you consider that those people are not unable to get the cash necessary to start their business. They are rather unwilling to invest in it. And if you look even closer, very often you will find that the people who complain about having to pay $10 for a domain would not think twice about spending $2000 on a vacation trip, or would run to the mall to buy a $300 pair of shoes that they would wear a few times only. While there are ways to cut down on your initial expenses, if you want your business to grow then you MUST invest some money in it at some point.

You aren’t required to be a SEO expert to understand the fact that in order for your website to go up in rankings on Google, you will need to have lots of quality backlinks. These are essential for anyone who is trying to get more traffic through organic search results. While building enough backlinks to have an effect on your traffic can take some work and requires patience on your part, the results will be well worth it. A question that is often asked in webmaster and internet marketing communities is how to get more backlinks for your site. There are many places that you can get backlinks to your site. Here are a few examples:

Article directories

These are sites where you submit an article that is related to your niche. Depending on the rules of the article directory, you can either include links inside the body of your article, or in a signature box at the end. This will help you get traffic in two ways. You will create backlinks to your site and will get some traffic from people who read the article and then click through to your site. Search engines hold article directories in high regard, so they are an essential tool for you to use in your search engine optimization efforts.

Blog comments

On many niche blogs, you can leave a comment after reading a post and include a link to your website. It is important, however that you do not simply spam comments and actually write something useful. Also, make sure that the blog you are commenting on is related to your niche to give you the maximum quality backlinks.

Classified ads sites

Here again, you can get traffic in two ways. Either from the increase in search engine ranking due to your backlinking efforts, or from the people who will see your ad and click on to your site. Not all classifieds sites allow you to insert links in your ads, so check beforehand. Some let you post a link if you pay a small fee.

Video sharing sites

These are places such as YouTube and Dailymotion, where you upload videos for other viewers to watch. Creating your own videos and uploading them is a great way to get traffic from video sharing sites. But a fact that a lot of people forget is that you can also make use of these sites in order to get backlinks as well. Many sites allow you to place a link back to your sites in various places, such as on your profile, in the description of videos that you upload, as well as in comments on other people’s videos.

Remember, backlink building is an activity that will boost your traffic, but it has to be done gradually to have the best results. If done correctly, you will soon notice that your site is increasing in position in search results for your desired keyword and that you are getting more visitors from search engines.



If you are doing search engine optimization or search engine marketing, it is possible that you have seen some advice pertaining to long tail keywords. It is quite possible that you may have asked yourself: what exactly is a long tail keyword? And what benefit does it bring to my site exactly?

To give you a quick answer, long tail keywords are those which have more than 2 words in the main keyword phrase. What makes them so powerful is that these keywords are often what people search for when they are ready to purchase a certain product or service online. By making your site rank high for these keywords, you increase the chance that a buyer will see your site and therefore make a purchase from you.

Targeting long tail keywords during your online marketing efforts has a lot of advantages. Here are some of them:

These keywords convert better than general ones

Traffic that comes from long tail keywords is more likely to convert than traffic which comes from general ones. This is a known fact throughout the internet marketing industry. The reason behind this is because these keywords are a lot more targeted and specific than general ones. People who are searching for more detailed keywords such as “buy iphone” or “iphone discount” or “used iphone New York” are more likely to buy a product rather than someone who is just seeking for “iphone”.

You can put in your product name in them

Basically, people who are looking for a specific product online can be in two categories. They either have already made a decision to buy a certain product or they are seriously considering to buy it but they are seeking more information about it. In both cases, what you need to do is to target the necessary keywords and have a landing page that will be able to convince visitors that your product is exactly what they have been looking for.

Don’t require as much efforts to rank higher

In the internet marketing world there is plenty of competition. Unless you have a product or service that is extremely unique with no competition (highly unlikely… chances are somebody will copy you sooner or later) or is in a very obscure and specific niche, you will see others online promoting the same product or service that you are.

If you are in the dog training niche, you will see, for example that keywords such as “dog training” or “dogs” are already dominated by your competitors. The problem is that many of these competitors are large businesses which have a large budget and staff that is making sure that they stay on top of search engine results. Therefore, going against them is not the best idea. However, if you target a more specific, long tail keyword, such as “make your dog stop barking”, you will find that there are far fewer pages with that keyword phrase. This means that you will not have to do as much SEO work if you want to rank high for it.

As we all know, traffic is king in the internet marketing world. No traffic to your site equals no money for you, since there is no one visiting your site. There are various ways that you can use to get traffic to your website, but many webmasters are looking for free traffic. Is it even possible? Don’t you need to spend money in order to make money? Well, thanks to the power of the internet, it is possible to get free exposure for your site and thus draw visitors to it.

Yahoo Answers is a very good way to bring people to your website. For those of you who don’t know, Yahoo Answers is a place where people ask questions about various topics and others give them answers. The good thing about this platform is that you can insert a link to your site in your answer. Also, the site gets a lot of traffic from all around the world. What makes it a great marketing tool is that anyone can see the questions and answers, not only the person who asked the question.

But in order to stay out of trouble and get the maximum benefit from Yahoo Answers, you need to conduct your marketing activities properly. Remember, this is a place where users seek information. They don’t come to Yahoo Answers in order to be bombarded with commercial advertisements. After all, if someone wanted that, all they have to do is to open up their “Junk Mail” folder in their email account, there’s plenty of ads there all right.

When you answer a question, be sure to state some useful information and not just say “Here go to this website NOW!!! (your link)”. For example, if someone asks whether online surveys are legit or a scam you would say something like “While there are a few scam sites out there, most online survey sites are legit and pay you either in cash or by giving you stuff like gift card, I found a list of legit survey sites that are free to join here: (your link)”. It is better for you to build a landing page, rather than insert affiliate links. This will seem a lot less suspicious to Yahoo.

To stay below the radar, vary your answers, don’t simply copy and paste the same answer to everyone, even if the question is the same. Give answers in different topics as well, without inserting any links. Even if the site you are promoting is related to online surveys, for example, answer some questions about other things such as dogs or computers or whatever else you may know about as well. This will make it look like you are a legitimate contributor, rather than someone who is just answering questions related to their niche to get clicks to their own site. You should give more answers without your link than those with it.

The traffic that you will receive may start slowly, but if you keep at it you will soon get enough visitors to make some decent commissions or sales each month.