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This is my guest post that was published yesterday on the MediaTrust blog:

10 Quick tips that can help you get started making money in affiliate marketing today.

In the past, we’ve offered many in-depth articles on various parts of internet marketing, such as information on SEO, PPC, social media and marketing in general. With more and more people entering this industry every day, it’s easy to succumb to information overload. To many new affiliates, this information seems useless since they are not yet savvy enough with internet marketing to generate revenue with more advanced techniques.

To start generating revenue, a new affiliate does not need to understand the very complex inner workings of SEO, PPC, social media, etc.; they just need to understand a few key tips about internet marketing in general.

I’ve compiled a list of 10 tips that you can help you get started today:

1. Familiarity with HTML is a must in order to edit landing pages, place pixels, etc.

2. Hope is not a strategy for growth, planning and executing your campaigns is key.

3.  Do target online Moms. Why? 67% of Moms online look for help making a purchasing decision. (Marketing To Moms Coalition Survey 2008)

4. Target market is key – targeting a Mom on a free iPhone email submit will not convert well; lip stick samples will likely convert better.

5.  Always track your paid advertising, eliminating poor ad placements can make or break a campaign.

6.  Landing page CTR is very important, you want as many users seeing the offer page as possible. Use click heat maps to optimize landing pages. ClickHeat is an awesome free tool.

7. This is BIG. If you can target Australia or UK, do it, the competition is much less fierce. Or better yet, promote an offer that has a translated landing page (French, Spanish, German, etc) to other countries.

8.  Are you thinking about doing SEO? Before investing in SEO, make sure you test to see if the traffic converts for the keyword that you are targeting via PPC.

9.  Be aware of macro environmental trends that may cause a certain campaign to convert higher. For example, weight loss products typically convert higher in January, right after many people make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight.

10. Affiliate marketing income can fluctuate, find multiple traffic sources that are profitable to create stability in case one traffic source is terminated.

Recently I setup a blog dedicated to a certain celebrity, and I added a description with keywords to each picture. I did this to provide the user with some information when they scrolled over the image. To my surprise, I unexpectedly saw hundreds of organic visitors from Google Images within a few weeks. By seeing these organic visitors from Google Images, I discovered a potentially profitable traffic source, with zero competition at all, in any niche!

This is sort of an “out-of-the-box” approach to SEO, because no one thinks of recieving organic visitors from Google Images, everyone thinks of web search. However, we all search for images all the time via Google and other search engines, except very few, if any people, have ever thought of the possibility of competing to be on the first page of images in a Google Images search.

In order to profit from this technique, you must place the images on a landing page with your links. Therefore, everyone who clicks on the image will be taken to your landing page.

This may spark a few of the performance marketers out there to dive into Google Images SEO! It’s worth a shot, here are my recent traffic stats from this technique-

Read the rest of this entry →

The final post in this series of sources of information that I recommend. As most of the readers of this blog would agree, most of the information we take in now in 2009, comes from the internet. Fittingly, today I will list the websites/blogs that I seek daily for news, information, and more.

Websites that I read daily-

Twitter –

Just thought I would get this one out of the way…

THEWEBLIST.net –

Their title explains it the best: “What people are clicking on today.” And in even simpler terms- Stories that have made it to the front page of digg, delicious, reddit, etc.

Mashable –

Stay informed on everything related to social media. They often provide comprehensive insight into the socialsphere.

TechCrunch –

Seriously, how can you be on the web and not read TechCrunch? This is one of the most read blogs in the world.

RedHerring –

This is also a magazine, and they cover mostly stories connecting business and technology.

VentureBeat –

Really cool information on the latest startup companies on the web.

Hacker News –

Nope, it’s not what it sounds like. This is a real quality stream of news related mostly to startup companies.

SocialTimes –

I like their tag line: “Technically social.” They cover all news related to companies making money via social media. Such as virtual currency networks.

If you have any recommendations for a website that belongs on that list, feel free to leave a comment; I’d be happy to add it.

Hopefully this series of my daily reading materials will keep you busy, and better informed. Thanks!

Yeah, that title is kind of an oxymoron, considering magazines are published once a week, month, or two months, etc.

Magazines are probably my favorite sources of information, since the articles are the most in depth, and they are usually complemented by nice little graphics to understand the issue. 🙂

Here are my favorite magazines:

Fast Company

Business and internet technology, wow. Does it get much better?

Entrepreneur

The issues mostly highlight successful startup companies that are moving and shaking.

Wired

Wired keeps an update of all things digital; anything about how emerging technology is impacting the way we live.

Fortune Small Business

Are you are planning on starting your own business? Read this magazine.

The Economist

The #1 source for any political news, and worldwide issues. This magazine is a must read to stay in touch with global trends and problems.

Those magazines will keep you anxious for each issue, be sure to pick up one of them. They are worth reading for sure.

Next up is Websites of course. Check back tomorrow to see the websites that I read daily.

This is the first part of a 3 day series listing my favorite daily media sources. Enjoy!

Today’s medium is the newspaper! To be honest, this is the medium that I read the least, but they are definitely part of my daily reading materials. Those few minutes of down time while eating breakfast allow me to gain a small bit of insight of what’s happening in the world through newspapers. With that said, here are the newspapers that I take a look at daily:

The Wall Street Journal

The WSJ is probably the most respected source of business and financial news… anywhere.

The New York Times

The NYT has top-notch coverage of all breaking news, and expansive coverage of events throughout the world.

The Star-Ledger

My surrounding area news. Always interesting to see whats going on.

Tomorrow is magazines, check back soon.

Believe it or not, even today, it’s possible to make a website TODAY, that will someday compete with Facebook, YouTube, etc.

As you have probably have heard multiple times, there is no secret formula to the success of these huge sites. However, there are a few common characteristics of their founders and stories. An idea is the starting point, but a unique idea that makes your site better than another person’s is the idea that will succeed. Then, executing the idea takes persistence and patience. The part that many people often leave out is timing, timing is everything. What makes the web so special and unique, is that it is constantly changing. Whatever is successful today, may not be successful tomorrow. Emerging technology forces web companies to code newer and more efficient tools on the web. The time that your startup site enters the web is crucial to it success because of these new tools, making or breaking a success story. This is unlike other industries/careers, such as doctors and lawyers because for the most part, the tools that made you a successful lawyer ten years ago, will most likely make you a successful lawyer today. (Not saying that lawyers or doctors aren’t great professions, that’s not true, they are very dedicated people.)

Back on the “Big” website idea, basically, if you focus on strategy (long term) instead of tactics (easily mastered in short term), then you will have a higher probability of developing successful website. Having a passion for your idea will allow you to outlast your competitors when they get bored. But ultimately, the reality is that it takes years for sites to go “big”. If it really is that idea that has been brewing inside your head for months, that idea that you know will take you to great heights, just don’t have you or the idea saying: “Please, please, don’t leave me.”

This post was inspired by Seth Godin’s post on  The Secret of the Web.