With the stress of the current economy, it’s important to properly deal with your anger. Like perhaps using a machine gun!

Just kidding. Forget copywriting, backlinks, campaigns, design, CSS, XML, RSS and other 3-letter acronyms for the next minutes.

Let’s talk about being human and what it takes to be an affiliate marketer in real life.

I have a short one-week vacation so I’ve put together some tips for the lovely MoreNiche blog.

So here’s what you gotta do to be sure you can enjoy your high affiliate commissions for years and years to come.

• Avoid stress. Mental, physical and emotional. Plan and prepare for your activities in advance. Write stuff down. And I literally mean writing down with pen and paper, it’s easier to carry papers around and stick them on things than txt files.

Text files can easily be deleted and edited. It’s harder to do the same with written notes and that is, mainly, a good thing.

• Backup your virtual assets and practice preventive maintenance on your car and household applicances.

• Simplify and automate. Make your online work and your life easier by turning to automation. Don’t fall in love too much with your first commissions. Affiliate marketing is a longterm investment. And remember, what can’t be automated can be outsourced.

• Take care of your eyes. Follow the 20/20/20 rule. For every 20 minutes you keep your eyes on the computer monitor look 20 feet absent for 20 seconds. Keep contrast to medium-low values and set dark/grey backgrounds from your desktop and your windows.

Adjust your monitor in such a way that you will look down on it rather than up. This will prevent neck and upper back pain and will also keep your eyes lubricated because you will blink more.

• Get in shape. Start doing some serious physical exercise (jogging, martial arts or going to the gym). And read my weight loss blog for tips and inspiration. ‘Nuff said.

Make a habit of making simple exercises when your back or wrists get sore. The carpal tunnel a is passageway in the wrist through which nerves of the hands pass. Frequent use of the mouse can cause thickening of the ligaments can cause carpal tunnel syndome which is described by numbness, tingling and pain in the hands and wrists. Massage your hands and wrists from time to time and try some simple exercises.

• Improve your posture by strenghtening your back muscles. Sitting too much in front of the computer usually causes your shoulders to become rounded and fall forward and your upper back protruding. It’s time you become self-aware of your posture. Try doing this right now: keep your back straight, suck your abdominal muscles in and pull your chin towards your chest. Inhale slowly using your stomach. See how good that feels?

• Spice up your emotional life. Make love and friends. Take time to play and listen to new music. Strong emotions increases your quality of life.

• Boost your brain power. Scientists have proven that eating the right kind of stuff will increase your brain power, beside making you healthy.

I always munch on chocolate chip cookies while working on my sites. Why? Carbohydrates are pure brain fuel.

Inspiration and work power are not some mystical forces, fellow marketer!

Your left brain hemisphere is responsible for rational thoughts, language, reason etc. It even keeps your right brain hemisphere in check. But if you want to connect two apparently unrelated things you don’t want rational part to limiting your ideas.

• Don’t waste your time with irrelevant articles and sites. Subscribe to 3 extremely awesome blogs and stay active in no more than 2 forums.

When in doubt, don’t forget: few issues remain unsolved after a burger and a beer.

To your success,
Cha.

Just like my previous post about starting out as an affiliate without a site, this 1 is for the beginners mostly – but to use what I am talking about here, you already need to have a site of your own.

So, you just built your shiny new affiliate site and are wondering how to promote it. You may have heard a lot of different opinions about directory submissions – some people claim they are a waste of time while others swear by them and credit their sites’ rankings to directory links. Where’s the truth?

Indeed, directory submissions are a good way to start getting links for a site. You may not want to risk doing reciprocal link exchanges that are frowned upon by Google and may not have the resources for 3-way or more advanced link exchnage schemes. You may not have the time to submit your site to all the social bookmarking services, of which there are a few hundred new ones appearing every day. You may not like writing articles to build links through article submissions. But directory submissions are one of the fast and easy ways to get the links you site needs to rank well.

However, a directory submission campaign can make or break your site’s rankings. It seems easy and trivial but there are tricks to know that make a whole lot of difference. Here are a few quick tips that will help you avoid possible mistakes and make the most out of directory linkbuilding:

one. Choose the best directories. Treat the time you spend on directory submissions as an investment. Think carefully whether each directory you submit to is worth your while. Give preference to authority directories.

2. Watch your competition. Check in Yahoo! the backlinks of other sites ranking in your market niche. Yahoo! sorts a site’s backlinks by the value it sees in them. Use the directories you watch in your competitors’ first 100-200 backlinks. Do not stop at just the directories your competitors are using but having them in your backlinks should definitely help.

three. Look for topical niche directories related to your market – Google holds them in higher regard than an average run-of-the-mill general directory. To find such directories, use directories of directories or search Google for your keyword plus typical directory “footprints” such as “submit your URL”, “add a site” and the like.

four. If you are targeting any kind of regional / local market, use as many local / regional directories as you can find. They will help you rank locally as Google will use your backlinks from them to identify your local affinity.

5. Do not use the same anchor texts in all your directory links – vary them around a few keywords you are targeting. This is a universal rule for any kind of linkbuilding but I just have to stress it once more. When submitting to a directory, pay attention to what element of your provided information will be used as the anchor text of a link. In most cases it will be the title you indicate for your site in the submission form. Make sure you vary it across different directories – but stick to the same topical niche unless you are submitting different pages related to different products.

Regarding the varied anchor texts of directory links, you may have difficulty achieving this if you use some kinds of automated submission tools. These tools will speed up your submissions a lot – but they have their own drawbacks such as this one. In my ebook titled “Directory Marketing Reborn” I review several such tools, and some of them actually have an option to provide several different variants of titles / anchor texts which are then iterated through by the tool. If, however, the shaft you use does not do it, you have 2 options: either make part of your submissions manually or run the guy meat several times, each time for only a portion of the directory list it submits to, and change the site details every time.

About the Author

IrishWonder is a SEO consultant and Internet marketer. He has just released an updated edition of his Directory Marketing Reborn ebook - a detailed guide to directory marketing featuring the most recent and largest directory list.

Traffic is one of the most essential elements of your success. Traffic can be generated in many ways and below you will find most typical and most reliable methods.

As the title explains – in this post we will talk how to find free traffic. So if you’re starting out and have small or no budget, these methods will be most suitable for you.

Starting a blog – there are many ways to start a blog. The most recommended way is to get a domain name and hosting and install a WordPress blog there. While the blog and hosting would cost you a couple of dollars per month, the traffic generated trough blog will be 100% free. Submit your blog to various directories and feed sites to gain extra exposure and links. Communicate with other bloggers in the field, comment on their posts.

Submitting articles – is 1 of oldest free marketing methods. The principle is simple – you write an article and submit it to multiple article directories, like ezinearticles.com. At the bottom of each article you can include short author’s biography or small ad taking the article reader to your affiliate offer. Article directories are well visited so people will read your article and will follow the links you provided.

Being a guest blogger – is another option if you are comfortable with writing. The key idea here is to find relevant blog that suits your offer, e.g. weight loss blog if you are promoting Proactol. Contact the blog owner and offer to write a great article for him. In return ask for a chance to have few lines promoting your site or offer. Using this approach you instantly will be seen as authority as well will have opportunity to tap into readership of that blog.

Optimizing for search engines – is 1 of best methods to get lots of free targeted traffic. Gigantic percentage of all internet users uses Google and other search engines to find information and if you can optimize page for popular keywords that describes what you are promoting, e.g. “weight loss pills”, then visitors who lands on your site will be likely interested in your site and % of them will purchase trough you. While SEO might seem a bit complicated, over longer term the returns can be tremendous.

Classified ads – again this is popular method between beginners and also seasoned marketers. There are many tactics and tips, but basic idea is to find classified sites like craiglist.com and post your ads following their guidelines. Some sites will allow posting your link, if they don’t – ask people to email you in so once you have the email, you can respond with detailed reply including your affiliate link.

Submitting videos – is another way to generate traffic. Principle is simple – create or edit existing vides (e.g. ones provided by Proactol), put on them link to your site where you promote Proactol and distribute to various video sites. Quick tip: make sure you use unique text description for each video submitted even if its same video just to different sites. Also ensure that in the description you include many keywords as this can attract traffic not only from the video service users itself but also from the search engines.

Create a viral campaign – viral in a term as something others would like to pass over. For example a funny video, useful tips, or crazy story, joke packed power point presentation about certain problem. Just make sure you include a link at the end of the video or presentation pointing to your site.

Make sure you read MoreNiche guides located in your affiliate area

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