Looking for a great affiliate to market on your site? How about an affiliate partner that provides a service that differentiates one site from another… a solution that every serious blogger or business needs?

I proudly unveiled my new logo six weeks ago today. Since then, I have received many comments regarding how it provides with site with just that extra polish that separates it from many other blogs in the same space.

I enjoyed the experience so much that a few days later, I signed up to be an affiliate of LogoNerds, the kick-ass company that provided me with the professional design that helps establish the brand identity of Free Blog Help. The process and service is first class but the cost of a new web logo is a measly $27! How can anyone beat that?!?

In fact, if you need a new logo, please use my LogoNerds affiliate link! Oh, and please read my disclosure in case you didn’t realize I could make a few dollars of the transaction.

However, if you’re looking to add an affiliate to your site so you can earn some extra bucks, the LogoNerds affiliate program has perks for the casual earner as well as the hard core marketers. For those who are looking for a supplemental revenue stream, just sign up and add an affiliate logo to your site. You’ll see dollars trickle in with very little effort.

For the heavy hitters, being able to refer a handful of sales can lead to thousands of dollars a month with a real potential of over $100,000 annually if promoted properly. It’s hard work but it’s a great income for sitting in your pajamas and not even having a lick of design skills, right?

The great thing is that all referrals are tracked for life. That means if the same customer has additional needs, you will get a commission on every single one, even if it’s several years after the first sale.

So, are you ready to make some money? Sign up with the LogoNerds affiliate program today! And unlike my sales link, I don’t get a penny if you sign up for this program. I’m simply endorsing it because I want to.

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Obviously everyone knows who Facebook is by now. Gaining about half a million new users a day is no small feat. So how can we leverage FB to our advantage?

One of my responsibilities for a company that I consult for includes creating a social media plan. Part of building that plan consists of me breaking down the difference between a Facebook fan page and a Facebook group.

Although we get fan page and group invites all the time, how do we know which to take advantage of when it comes time for us to them for ourselves? While working on this for my client, I thought it might also be useful for you folks.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet that I created:

In short, a fan page is perfect for branding and sharing with the public while a group is ideal for community communication.

So based on that, here’s what I believe should work for most companies:

• Create a fan page for external social media purposes
• Create a group for internal photo sharing and other informal messaging

Do you have your own fan page or group? What are you using them for and how have them benefited you?

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Have you written Google ads that haven’t produced the results that you wanted?

Many of us have received Google Adwords credit either from their hosting company or from Google directly. Often times, we take that amount, create an ad in less than a few minutes and cross our fingers. Sure, you might get lucky but the reality is that writing really effective ads take years of practice. There’s a reason why people go to school for marketing and hone their skills for many years.

I believe in Pareto’s Law, which many of you know as the 80/20 rule. In this example, I believe I can get you 80% of the way to writing effective Google ads in 20% of the time. In the long run, to be really good (practicing and learning that remaining 20%), it will take time and a lot of trial and error.

So let’s focus on starting that 80% right now.

The secret to writing better ads immediately

The biggest problem with many untrained marketers is that they fail to place themselves into the shoes of the target audience. Once you determine the keywords you want your ad, before you even start writing, take a moment to wear the hat of your target. Literally, I want you to “become” that person.

Let’s say you have a website that sells natural soaps. You decide that the keywords you’d want this particular ad to appear for is ‘goat milk soap’. So when someone types ‘goat milk soap’, what do you think they are looking for?

So if you are thinking like the target, are you looking to buy it or make it? Do you want to learn about its benefits or adverse reactions?

You decide that you are typically looking to learn about benefits and then acquire the product. Now what type of ad would draw you in?

Secrets of Goat Milk Soap

10 reasons people switch to

look and feel healthier and younger!

www.PureNSimpleSoap.com

If you typed ‘goat milk soap’ would that ad make you want to click it? If not, start tweaking. Keep going until you can answer with a definitive yes. Before you butcher the ad, I have several business degrees and have many years of marketing under my belt and I still won’t claim that my first pass at an ad for goat milk soap is perfect.

However, even if you think you have the perfect ad, you must monitor the ad and fine tune it. But at least now you have a great starting point to work from!

Those of you who have played with Google ads, what are some ads that have worked for you?

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Do you know when search engines pick up on your blog updates? What if I told you that there is a way to manually ping over 20 top search engines in less than 1 second? Would you believe me?

Welcome to Ping-O-Matic! A free service by the WordPress Foundation, this tool lets you ping your selected search engines with a single click. Every time you publish an article, all you have to do is literally go to the site and click the ‘Send Pings’ button.

With me, I simply leave the Ping-O-Matic site up in one of my tabs and with every update of my blog, I click on the tab, click the button, and I’m done. No exaggeration, the entire process takes me a fraction of a second.

One great feature is if your blog update has recently been recognized by search engines, Ping-O-Matic will let you know and won’t actually push the ping.

If I only earned a penny for every question I see about when search engines ping your blog, I could probably buy every visitor I ever had a beer. The good news is that moving forward, you’ll always know since you’re the one doing it.

Oh, and BTW, no disclosure on this since I’m not an affiliate. Why? Because it’s FREE! No catch, just enjoy.

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I love this guest post topic! Although my experience is slightly different from Brad’s, who runs canadiantechblogger.com, his perspective is enlightening and I agree with his point of view for the most part.

Although things may seem the same initially, sometimes it pays to look closer...

First up what is a traffic exchange: a traffic exchange is a website where you view other people’s sites. As a thank you, you get a hit back (or cash).

What is a auto surf: it is basically a traffic exchange on automatic no user involvement needed.

This is why I call both just a fluff for your blog.

The manual version you basically sit there wait for a page to load and wait 10-20s to get your credit. It’s not worth it because you usually get marketer videos. Some traffic exchanges even have bad websites in their service (although most check ahead of time). It’s pointless since you are not really interested in a site but rather the viewing credit.

Auto surfers are worse since they do that automatically. As such no one is viewing your site but rather just fluffing your page views.

While you can add banners, and text links, and pay for hits they’re not worth it. Most large ad networks (adsense, adbrite, etc) DO NOT allow you to use traffic exchanges while their ads show since it’s basically invalid impressions.

So pretty much keep clear of them…unless you want to waste your time or fluff your page views.

Brad from canadiantechblogger.com is one of my long time contributors to this site. He writes about all things related to technology on his blog.

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In my last post, affiliate marketing – the nutshell version, I stated that I would provide details on the various types of affiliate marketing. Of course I always keep my promises so here goes.

There are basically four different methods of getting paid as an affiliate. Some are more common than others and depending on what you’re trying to promote on your site, some types may work better than others. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to choose your affiliate partners.

Alternatively, you could choose to go with a strictly passive approach like using Google AdSense straight out of the box. In that case, Google will control what ads to bring onto your site and you’ll end up with mixed bag. As you learn more about the different ways to leverage affiliate marketing, there’s no reason why you can’t start with Google Adsense and integrate your own affiliate ads as you grow.

Four types of affiliate marketing

Pay Per Sale

Probably the most common methods of affiliating, Pay Per Sale is pretty self-explanatory. You only paid when your ad brings in actual results, usually in the form of money being passed through.

Cost Per Click (CPC)/Pay Per Click (PPC)

One of the more well-known affiliate types, CPC pays you every time a visitor clicks on the ad. Although this seems like a surefire way to get paid by simply abusing the ads, the top search engines have technology to prevent this from happening.

Cost Per Mil. (CPM)

For every 1000 page views, you get paid a certain amount. Also abused in the past, CPM is now protected through the top search engines.

Pay Per Lead

You get paid every time a lead is provided. This can be in the form of an email, address, or even phone call. There are plenty of technology tools to track any type of lead.

Choosing the right affiliate marketing type for your site

The logical follow up question is: which is the best? The simple answer is that it depends. I know that’s not what you want to hear but there’s no magic formula. A lot of it depends on your niche and your goals.

Even though some methods have worked better for some sites than others, over time, the bloggers who are able to maintain and even increase their revenue are the ones who are able to monitor and adapt. That means changing their affiliate strategies as necessary. Just like anything else in this crazy, fast-paced, tech world that we live in, being able to shift gears at a moment’s notice is key.

Which type of affiliate marketing has worked best for you?

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Often times, especially for people who have been blogging for a while, we make assumptions that everyone knows what we’re talking about. The reality is even the most commonly used terms become black holes for some new folks. Today, let’s review one of the big ones: affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is just a fancy phrase for producing results for a seller and getting paid for it. In some cases, you could look at it like selling a product for a company without having the need to carry inventory or fulfill an order. Not a bad concept!

Here’s one of the ways it could work, in a nutshell:

1. Visitor arrives at your site
2. Visitor clicks on a banner ad on your site and it leads him to your partner’s site
3. Visitor purchases a product from your partner
4. Your partner pays you

Seems like a simple model, right? Well here’s the best part, in many cases, the visitor doesn’t even have to buy anything! Although Pay Per Sale is very common, there are other ways affiliate marketing could work. I’ll describe them in detail in my next post.

One last thing, even though concept has created many affiliate millionaires, it’s actually not all that easy and success won’t come overnight. The part that people don’t realize is that it requires a lot of work to get visitors to your site. There are many resources, especially online resources, that can help you meet your goal. The key really involves combining other people’s lessons learned with a lot of your own trial and error.

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