Perhaps one of the complaints I have with most affiliate marketing sites is that they all have a typical look.  They say the same things with a similar font, and highlighter. It’s almost like there is some mediocre web designer somewhere who is making a killing!

At the height of the first internet craze while business fundamentals where tossed to the wind, companies were certainly innovative. Ideas were the currency, and a great idea – long before execution, could make you millions. It wasn’t OK to simply have a site, you had to stand out. Sure they had more sizzle than substance but now we have some stuff under the hood but little “Wow!” factor.

I challenge you to step away from the computer, quite trying to duplicate someone’s success story. It’s great to know that such success is possible and the methods and best practices of those who did it, but chart your own path! I bet a few readers would rather lead the pack than simply join it.

With so many sites and tons of content, simply being another site hoping to share a part of the money pot is – boring. If you are going to put in the effort – why not do something outstanding. Let me take a few steps back. It’s important to take baby steps when you are starting, and those steps may not be innovative or ground breaking, but let your vision be out of this world.

Walt Disney was very non-traditional in his thinking. Many business geniuses are ridiculed early in their carets. The press doubted the potential of Disneyland – they called it “Disney’s Folly”.

If you have a crazy idea that you dare to share – expect some ridicule. Imagine telling family and friends that you are going to start an internet business where you give everything away free. That’s right, free. That’s what a small company called Hotmail set out to do with their email platform. They were first, they were free and these isn’t anyone reading this article who doesn’t know someone with a Hotmail account or at least heard of it.

Hotmail understood what would be outstanding in the late nineties. Take a service that people pay for, improve upon it and give it away free. They sell ads on the site, so many that Microsoft decided to get in the action and rather than compete, simply bought them out and repackaged it as we now know it.

The “find what people are paying for on the Internet and give it away free” concept is still good, but to be wildly successful you may need something more. What would that be? That’s the million dollar question, rather if you come up with the answer you may stand a chance of turning that idea into a few zeros!

Having said all this, you have to start somewhere – even better, start with someone who has shown some success, so find a mentor who has shown some success, so find a mentor and learn the ropes. Then jump in the ring with the intention of scoring a knockout!

Many people are looking for new ways to make money online and a very popular way to earn money online has recently been auto surfing. Auto surfing allows you to make a small investment in agreement that you will view ads from other websites. The more ads you view, the more money you are paid based on your initial investment.

To make any kind of decent money in auto surf programs is really hit and miss. The two most recent popular auto surf programs where Studio Traffic and 12 Daily Pro. Studio traffic ran for a few years, while 12 Daily Pro survived almost 1 year. Both programs paid high returns for surfing web-page and a lot of people did make large sums of money, however when these systems crashed a lot of people also lost money.

My take on auto surf programs is that they work, but we never know when the administrator is going to take down the program or run with the money. Usually auto surf programs will offer a return on your initial investment that may range anywhere from 10% of 10 days or 15% over 15 days. It’s nearly impossible for a company to keep up with these high returns for such a long time and a lot of them rely on new business.

There are a few new auto surf programs popping up such as Alien Trust and Phoenix Surf, however I would be reluctant to invest any type of money with these programs given the past of Studio Traffic and 12 Daily Pro. At the same time, I do believe they will pay out; it’s just a matter of time before the program actually crashes.

If you’re looking to generate any substantial income online, look to find solid programs that have existed for years. There are tons of programs available online and I’ll be the first to admit that the majority of them do not work. However over the past few years I have found a few that do work and that I have been successful with.

Most people who are looking for an online business are usually looking for fast money and that’s why auto surf programs do so well initially. Don’t get caught up in all the hype, when a new program comes out sit back for a while on the sideline and asses the opportunity. There are plenty of ways to generate a substantial income online, just be sure to find a program that works for you and meets your ideas.

Timothy Rohre

If you want to improve your rankings and traffic for your site or landing page you need to have back-links, and a lot of them. This article will talk about what back-links are and the best places to get them.

Google puts a large emphasis on back-links when looking for relevant sites for a natural search. If you want to improve your natural listings and rank higher on Google you need to increase the number of back-links to your site. Here are some ideas in helping you choose where to place your back-links.

What is a Back link? In simple terms, a back link is a link from another site that links to yours. Back-links that come from higher page rank sites have more value to your site. Most people try to get back-links from sites that have a page rank of 3 or higher.

“Do Follow” or “No Follow” Links A “no follow” link tells the search engine not to follow the link while crawling the website. This means that if you submit and article with links to a site that is “no follow”, you are getting minimal benefits from that site. Many experts will tell you not to bother submitting your articles to “no follow” sites if your main purpose is for back-links.

Get Back-links from Sites That Are in Your Niche Although you can get back-links from most sites online, search engines do put more value on “relevant” back-links. It is worth the effort to find sites in your niche.

Do Not Link to “Spam my” Sites Some sites and the links attached to them are seen as spam by the search engines and could cause you to be penalized by them. Again, linking to sites with high page rank will normally be fine.

Be Consistent in Generating Back-links In order to be listed naturally, search engines want to see increases in back-links at a natural pace. If you want to generate 5 back-links a day, that is fine. Just make sure that you don’t do 1 link on the first day, 25 the next and then 2 the third and another 25 the fourth, etc. Search engines will penalize you for generating at an inconsistent speed. A good pace is up to 5-7 links per day.

* You are the manager * You are the marketer * You are the service provider/widget maker * You are the bookkeeper

And the list goes on. We often get so busy running our businesses that we forget why we started them in the first place.

So what does a small business owner do to stay motivated while working from home?

1. Remember the “why”.

Take a step back to remember the reason you went into business in the first place. What was your inspiration? It helps to focus intently on how you felt when you first realized you wanted to be successfully self-employed. For me, it was the sense of freedom and independence that I knew would come with success as an entrepreneur.

2. Give yourself a deadline.

If you’re procrastinating about a project, you may be motivated by the self-imposed pressure of a deadline. Try giving yourself a deadline that you won’t want to back down on: send an email to friends announcing a new product launch, email your client with a due date for that big project you’re working on, take reservations for your first telecasts, you get the idea.

3. Maintain a support system.

One of the hardest parts of being a entrepreneur can be the sense of isolation. When things go right (or wrong), we no longer have the “water cooler” to go to. Be sure there is someone who you can share with, someone who is available for a quick motivational chat when you need one.

4. Keep the goal in sight.

A simple, yet effective motivational tool is to keep your goals in sight – literally. I’ve taken a picture of my dream house and made it the background wallpaper on my computer. One glance at it is a mega dose of motivation for me!

5. Take a nap.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, taking a power-nap is one of the best ways to rejuvenate your body AND mind. So the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed or low, slowly and intently read each of your goals and then go take a power-nap. Let your subconscious work on ways to manifest those goals while you rest.

When you wake, you’ll be raring to go!

6. Reward yourself.

When faced with a large project, unpleasant task or anything that overwhelms you, plan a reward for once it’s done. The reward can be as simple as a quiet bath with candles or as exciting as a professional sporting event. Just be sure to plan a reward that YOU want and will enjoy!

7. Take a break.

You’ve most likely never worked harder than when you are first starting your own business. In addition to actually “doing” all the work, you need to work on marketing, invoicing and other overhead or “non-billable” tasks.

Don’t get caught in the trap of “all work and no play”. Be sure you take days off and breaks throughout the day to rejuvenate and gain some perspective. Whenever I’m stuck on a project, I grab one of the dogs and go for a walk…by the time I return to the office, things have usually sorted themselves out in my head.

It doesn’t matter how successful your home business is or how much you love to work from home; both new and established entrepreneurs face the motivational dilemma at some point and while some of the above motivational strategies may seem conflicting on their face – giving yourself a deadline versus taking a break for example – they all have their place in the life of a successful entrepreneur.

That’s been a lot of talk about landing page these days. So, what’s a landing page? It’s the page your website visitor arrived at after clicking a link. The link could be on any page on your website or pay per click advertising or banner ad.

The goal of landing page is to cause your visitors to take definite action. You don’t want your visitors to leave until you get them to do what you want them to do. To click on the buy button, to sign up for an affiliate program, to download a free e book or software, to sign up for a course, or to subscribe to your free newsletter.

The landing page is a direct marketing copy. Your visitors landed here through a link on your web-page, an ad, a keyword search, pay per click advertising, banner ads, and now you want to convert them.

Here are some ideas to design a good landing page…

1.Content Relevance

Your landing page content must be relevant to what people were looking for when they applied the click through. The closer the match is the higher the chances of conversion.

2.Be Concise

Net writing is different than offline writing. Generally, when people surf the Internet they give short attention span to what they are reading. So be concise. When visitors arrive at your landing page they are already predisposed to buy, or they want to get more information of your product or service.

By all means give them information but be concise. Don’t use more than three sentences to communicate a point. Think through and concise what you want to say. Use bullet ed list to communicate the benefits of your product or service.

3.Get straight to the point

The landing page is a highly customized marketing copy for your product or service or affiliate product or service. Don’t distract your visitors with advertisements, links to other web pages. Don’t let your visitors wade through a whole bunch of hosh posh before they get to want they want.

4.Focus

Dedicate one landing page to only one product or service. Don’t try to promote multiple products (unless they are of the same product group)or services on one page. Create separate landing pages and campaigns if you have multiple products or services to promote. Focus on one product or one product group on each landing page.

5.Be Factual

Use facts and figures instead of generalities.

General: Prices Reduced
Factual: Prices Reduced by 20 percent

6.Clear Call to Action

Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Buy now, click here to download, fill in name and email address to subscribe or whatever. Keep all call to action text in bold.

7.Readable Text

Sure, there’s nothing much to look at a page with white background and black fonts. But it’s definitely easier to read the text than a red
background with black fonts. Remember, it’s the words that sell. Your website visitors must be able to read your text with ease.

8.Navigation Links

Not at all, if you could help it. The only link you want your website visitors to click on your landing page is the call to action link.

9.Graphics and Images

Keep visual effects to a minimum unless you are running an online audio or video business, real estate business, or selling holiday destinations. Keep in mind that for direct marketing it’s the words that sell. Graphics and images serve only to enhance your text communication, not cloud it.

10.Grammatical and Spelling Errors

Check through your text and correct all grammatical and spelling errors. Otherwise it gives your website visitors a negative impression of you and the company you represent. Once visitors have a negative impression, it becomes difficult to convince them of the product or service that you are promoting. First impression counts a lot.

11.Make it personal

Make it personal to connect with your visitors. Use a lot of You and Your in your text.

12.Make your text clear and simple to understand