One of the things you should do before you begin cranking out a lot of articles is to be clear about what you want to gain from article writing. Are you interested in promoting other products and websites (affiliate marketing) or are you going to focus on your own products and site?

The reason I ask that question is because these two methods need to be approached in very different ways. If you are writing articles that are going to call for the reader to be directed to another website or product then you will need to have the author resource information worded differently than if you were promoting your own product.

If you are going to be using the article to drive targeted traffic to your own product or website then using the resource box and a good call to action within that information can be very valuable. You need to keep in mind that
however you do this, once the article has been published, it is almost impossible to make any changes to the articles.

Since your articles will be used in different ways it is a good idea to make minor changes to the article for each directory that it will be submitted to. With some article submission software, you have the ability to do so within
the software, but in most cases, I would recommend manually submitting the articles. This may sound like a lot of work, but really it should only involve editing 3-5 submissions since these articles will be picked up by different ezine publishers.

Once you have a few articles published in the niche you are writing about, you will begin to be recognized as an expert in that area. That’s exactly what you are looking for. You want people to perceive you as someone who is
knowledgeable in the subject that you are writing about.

In order to retain your credibility it is always a good idea to write the articles in the same ‘voice’. In other words, if you are paying a ghost writer to do the work, you will want to proof the material before you just start submitting willy nilly. Depending on the article directory you are submitting to and how well they screen the material that is being submitted, you may end up being  ‘penalized’ for duplicate content if the writer you have hired is doing work for other marketers in the same niche. That’s why it’s a great idea to research your topic deeper and, if you can, write your own material.

One thing you don’t want to do is start writing articles in different niches and using the same author resource box for all of them. If you are doing that you will tend to be seen at as someone who may be trying to find that sweet spot instead of focusing on one or two niches and targeting them. If you are using the same information in your author resource box, not only will the links back to your sites not be optimized, but the search engines will tend to rank your articles lower because you are not sticking to relevant subjects.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, there is no need to make your article perfect in language, grammar or literarily, in order to be successful in article marketing. Just write it the way you feel about it. That’s your ‘voice’.

Although posting your articles to several article directories on various sites will give you a higher chance of the article being republished, which in the long run benefits you, you should be a little selective before posting them
anywhere you get a chance to do so. Article directories that have high rankings and a lot of traffic should be your priority.

Be mindful of the length of the articles you are writing. Most directories suggest ones that are between 450 and 800 words. The longer you make your articles, the better chance that your readers will lose their attention and start surfing elsewhere, and you don’t want that.

If you find yourself in the position that the articles(s) that you are writing are going longer than 850 words, you may want to start combining them into a short report and give them away as a bonus for joining your newsletter.

HEY, there’s a novel idea!

So now you have some great ideas about how you should be writing and where you should be targeting your article marketing efforts. There is one more thing that I would like to go into next time. That is the different types of articles you can write, so be on the lookout for that in the next few days.

Until then, if you are having a shortage of brain ideas, or the brain for some reason just won’t get any traction for your article writing efforts, I invite you to check out Teri & Doug Champigny’s Easy Articles Pro site. As you are finding out in my series here, to succeed online, you need laser targeted traffic. To get that traffic, you need relevant content. Only articles targeted to your specific niche will provide that traffic and in turn fatten your wallet. Teri & Doug’s Easy Articles Pro provide 125 plr articles each and every month, so there is bound to be something for you, or maybe it will jump start the brain waves for you to find a new niche. Get Easy Articles Pro.

Just a reminder….click on the Giveaway Events tab at the top of the page, there are some outstanding giveaways going on right now….your chance to go pick up some fantastic gifts.

Til next time,

Here’s to YOUR Online Successes,

Ron

Cloaking your affiliate links is a good way to keep people from stealing your commissions. All a “cloak” has to be is some sort of a redirect.

One of the ways that I was ‘taught’ how to create a redirect a while back was to use a .php  file and upload to your server. That way when your customers clicked on the URL, their browser would redirect to the sales page that you are promoting.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use this method for a number of the affiliate products that I promote and they still do work. The problem that I found was that for each new affiliate product that I was promoting, whether it be here, or in the emails I send to my subscribers, I had to upload a brand new ‘file’ to my webhost.

That is until I discovered a much easier way to do this. It’s a very easy way to manage as many redirects as you want, and it’s FREE and easy to manage with just a single file.

Let me give you an example. My good freind, and one of my mentors, Doug Champigny, has just released a new PLR package in a smoking hot niche. You can pick up his Aromatherapy PLR Package and have the rights to do just about anything with it. You will need to read the license agreement to find out what you can’t do, but that’s pretty standard with a package like this. The Aromatherapy PLR Package includes a 50 page eBook in .doc & .pdf formats, 10 Aromatherapy Articles, mp3 audio versions of all 10 articles, TWO sets of website graphics, PLUS the .jpg AND .psd graphics for everything! After all of that, you won’t believe the price. I told Doug that he needed to go see his therapist with the price that he is offering this package at.

You will notice that when you ‘hover’ over the link, it looks like you are going to go to a page on my site (http://www.ron-barrett.com/AromaTherapyPLR.html), but you aren’t.

You will be ‘redirected’ to Doug’s site. This is something that ALL affiliate marketers should be doing, but a majority don’t. Why? I am not sure. Maybe it’s because they think it’s a bit too complex to create the file and upload it to their site.

Well, I am here today to show you how easy this really is. The person I learned this from claims that it is so easy, even a five year old could do it. It is now my preferred method of creating redirects.

There are a couple of problems with linking directly to an affiliate page with your ID. The obvious reason is that someone could steal your commissions if they are also a member of the same affiliate program (which is common if it is a large program like Clickbank).

The other main reason is that a lot of people are wary of clicking on long affiliate links, things with lots of letters and numbers. This seems to be more and more the case as I sometimes see these mile-long links, with un-needed crap in them like “id=xxxx”, “www.yourwebsite.com/cgi-bin/affil-id=xxxx” etc. A good affiliate link should have two items MAXIMUM. If the program is specifically towards one URL it should only have one piece of information, your affiliate name (preferably a name instead of a number). But that’s not always within your control.

The most common thing I see a lot of affiliates doing is just creating the folder or the file and doing a simple redirect. So if that person needed the URL: http://www.yourwebsite.com/theaffiliateprogram

… To send the user to:

http://www.affiliateprogram.com/?affiliate-id

They’d physically make the folder on their site and add in an index.php redirect. Sometimes they’ll also use .html redirect, which uses meta tags… which means the .html file has to actually load before the redirect takes place. That makes the trip take even LONGER and in the meantime the visitor is staring at a blank page.

This would be ok, but what if you were promoting 20 or 30 or 40 affiliate programs? That’s a lot of folders to get the coding exactly right and to upload each and every time you add another program.

Anyway, now that I have given you reason to change the method you use to redirect with, my NEW preferred method is with an .htaccess file. All I have to do when I want to add or remove a redirect is just edit a text file, and upload it to the webserver.

Redirect /clickbank http://hop.clickbank.net/?xxxxx
Redirect /paydotcom.html http://paydotcom.com/?xxxxx/jumpx
Redirect /AromaTherapyPLR.php http://www.dougchampignysaromatherapysite.com
Redirect /dotcrap http://www.thisisanexample.com

(In this example, you would change the “xxxxx” above to your own Clickbank name.)

You put each redirect on a different line. What you first need is the word “Redirect”, and then the relative path the .htaccss file is going to intercept. In the first line since my second part of it is “/clickbank”, that means if my domain is:

http://www.mydomain.com

… And someone goes to:

http://www.mydomain.com/clickbank

… It will send the user to that third item on that line, the long Clickbank hoplink.

The redirect doesn’t just have to be a folder name. You could even make people think you’re linking straight to an HTML file, like in the second example. Or, it could even end with “.php” if you want (3rd line) or even something you make up, like “dot-crap” (last example).

So go ahead and add tons of affiliate redirects in seconds. Just modify that above code to your needs, save it as “htaccess.txt”, upload, change file permissions to 755, and rename to “.htaccess” with that dot in front.

The file will disappear to you, because it becomes hidden, but if you need to come back to that list later you can still see it with many FTP programs. I use FileZilla and I go to Server -> Force Showing Hidden Files. I don’t know how it’ll be in your FTP client… in a lot of them this sort of choice doesn’t even exist. But that will allow you to see the .htaccess file for future editing if you lose the copy on your hard drive. (Hey, stuff happens.)

One last thing you should notice is that even though .htaccess has sort of a “bare bones” feel to it, it doesn’t have to be hard to read. Look at what I’ve done, I’ve spaced everything up so when I look at the file in Notepad with my fixed-width font everything lines up nicely.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I will get back with you as soon as I can. YES, I do monitor comments.

 

 Redirects-A-MUST-For-Affiliate-Marketers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Is there really ‘one’ secret that the successful internet marketers share?

One that is so closely guarded that almost all of them don’t want to give it up?

I have been doing some reading about, and asking questions of, some successful marketers that I know.

The thing that I was curious about is:

What is the one thing, the one ‘secret’, the one ‘common thread’, that most successful information marketers share?

What I am beginning to find out is:

What it isn’t.

What do you think it is? List Building? That’s PART of it.

Yes, you must have some semblance of a responsive list that you can send out to in order to generate cash flow, but that isn’t the ‘secret’.

Copywriting?

You do need to have a compelling sales page in order to get people to whip out their credit card to purchase whatever it is you are offering.

But that isn’t the ‘common thread’. The closely guarded ‘secret’.

It’s not Network Marketing. Not PPC (pay per click). Not blogging. Not Successful Product Launches.

YouTube
Video Marketing
Classified Advertising
Membership Sites
eBay or Auction sites
Viral Marketing
Joint Ventures
Article Writing
Niche Marketing
SEO

Not, not, NoT, NOT, nOT, nOt, noT…

YES, all of the above things contribute to the success of marketers, but they aren’t the secret, the common thread.

It doesn’t take a lot of skill, and ANY marketer can do it.

All of that being said. Have you figured it out yet? Or are you still scratching your head?

What it  DOES require is a level of commitment that VERY few people have.

Commitment. That’s second in line to that four letter word W-O-R-K.

Now we all know that to succeed in this business you have to have some sort of commitment.

There’s the time commitment, which can be anywhere from a couple of hours a week, to working the business more than ‘full time’.

That depends on how dedicated we are and how bad we want success.

The time commitment takes away from our family and our tv watching (ugh), especially if you are doing this in the evening. Or writing a blog post on a Friday night:)

Don’t get me wrong, I have a few favorite shows that I ‘have’ to watch every week or it just wouldn’t be right. But I also have to find time to work this business.

But that isn’t the commitment I am talking about.

What I am about to reveal to you may come as a surprise, but it is the ONE thing, the biggest ‘secret’, the common thread that almost all very successful marketers share.

They are all willing to make the time, and, monetary commitment to:

Attend at least one Offline Seminar.

Are you shocked? I was.

You see, as I have been asking these marketers what the ONE thing is that made the biggest difference in their online business, it was attending at least one offline seminar.

It is in these seminars that you, as the attender, have the opportunity to rub elbows with the success stories.

To listen to the stories of HOW they became successful.

What they did.

How they did it.

What works, what doesn’t.

How to test. What to test.

How to decipher the results.

These seminars give you the opportunity to network with other people just like yourself who are struggling to make this thing work.

People just like yourself who have that dream that this WILL work, if I just knew what to do.

How to apply it.

Yea, I know. You’re saying to yourself ‘I would absolutely LOVE to go to one of these, but they cost a fortune’. The airfare, the hotel, the rental car…not to mention the fee to just walk in the door of the seminar.

Stop! I don’t want to hear the excuses!

I don’t have the time.

I don’t have the money.

My dog is sick.

My spouse wouldn’t approve.

Enough!

What if I told you that you could ‘attend’ one of these seminars for less than it takes to fill up your car with gas?

Fantastic!

Where do I sign up?

What if I told you that you could attend one of these seminars, and you wouldn’t even have to leave your living room?

NOW, that would be cool, wouldn’t it?

Well…

Ross Goldberg is doing just that.

His 2nd Annual Virtual Seminar is going on right now through March 4.

You have the chance to be ‘in attendance’ for every single presentation, so you won’t miss anything. Each one of the presentations are on video, so if you watch one and want to go back because you think you missed something, or need clarification, you can.

Here are just a few of the marketers that are doing presentations:

Ross (of course)
Doug Champigny
Willie Crawford
Bob the Teacher
Harris Fellman
Ken McArthur

Need I say more?

To get your spot in the seminar (yes, it’s just like a regular offline seminar, there are limited spots) just click here, sign up, and then start absorbing. I know I have.

If you are anything like I am, you are going to come away saying ‘WOW, I learned a ton’.

You get everything without leaving your living room.

The training, The Networking, The JV Opportunities.

What more could you ask for?

Go Grab Your Secret and become part of The Common Thread of successful marketers.

Ross Goldberg’s Virtual Master’s Internet Marketing Seminar

Until next time,

Here’s to YOUR Successes,

Ron