Trust is a big word right now in the internet. Everyone is talking about being open and honest, transparency and a willingness to lay it all on the table. You’ve got to be seen as trustworthy before you can expect anyone to listen to you.

Earning trust isn’t as simple as just telling people they can trust you. You’ve got to earn it. You have to know exactly what people need before they can start trusting you.

• Show them your expertise. People will trust other people who know what they are talking about. Make an effort to learn more about your niche every day, and then pass on that information to your subscribers. If they can see you as a knowledgeable source they will be more likely to trust you.
• Admit it when you don’t know something. Just as showing them that you are an expert wil earn trust, being honest about hat you don’t know shows that you are trustworthy. It also gives you a chance to open up for a guest blogger, which can be a huge benefit for both of you.
• Tell it like it is. It’s temping to hype up every product you get if the chance to make money from it is there. But think about it, is that small affiliate check worth losing the trust of your readers? If the product sucks, tell your subscribers that it sucks. It only takes a few bad sales for you to become the blogger who cries wolf.
• When you’re wrong, say you’re wrong. It sounds so simple, yet you’d be amazed at how many people just can’t do it. No excuses, no buts, no pointing the finger. Just say you were wrong, apologize, and try to do better. When your subscribers know you will admit it when you are wrong they will become a loyal following that can take you to the top.

Remember that when you get the trust of your subscribers, you don’t want to lose it. If you start playing hard and fast with your subscribers’ trust you will see them unsubscribing as fast as they can.

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We’ve all been there at least once. You open your blog to check for comments and find a handful fo spam sitting staring back at you. Or maybe you’ve checked your spam folder in case any real comments were misfiled and become shocked at the jumble of links and keywords staring back at you.

And then there’s what I call grey-spam. It’s kind of like spam, but not exactly.

A friend of mine has a small personal blog where she mostly writes about family life. It’s tiny, but it’s built up a piece of pagerank over the years. Which makes her a target for spam. Most of it is the obvious kind, but there’s one company that tries to walk the line between commenting and spam on her blog.

Every few days she finds a few more comments from the same company. Often different email address and sometimes different IPs, but the name is always the name of a printing company and it always links to that compnay’s website. But the comments are great. They’re well thought out, related to the post, and they even seem to remember details of her kids’ lives (in a good, regular reader sort of way). Yet they are always trying to link to the printing company.

Obviously it’s a real person (or several) leaving these comments. They have even put effort into their commenting to build a connection. But every time she sees the name of the printing company rather than a real person’s name, she marks it spam.

We all know that getting links back to your blog or site makes you look good for the search engines. Especially targeted links that use the name or keywords rather than just “click here”. And commenting is a great way to get a bit of linkjuice flowing your way. But spamming, that just won’t cut it.

Imagine if that same printing company made an effort to leave these same comments and used real names. Even real names that linked back to the website would have been better. Then, after leaving all of these comments the company sends her an email asking if she would give them some link love. Chances are she would have loved to because there was already a connection built through the comments.

We’ve all probably been tempted at least once to try to get some SEO link love from commenting, and some can get away with it easier than others. Spamming, however, will most likely get your comment deleted. Worse it could get your blocked from a potential great connection.

Think, don’t link.

photo credit: nDevilTV

I’m back from a short, unplanned, break from blogging. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say I might have been another victim of the Swine Flu. I suppose that will teach me not to joke about it ever again.

While I was gone, however, the blog had a nice little spike in traffic. Most of it coming from a single post, my review of FirePow, that was loved on StumbleUpon. That simple review managed to get almost 1000 hits in a single day, which is fairly impressive for this small blog. From that spike I doubled my subscribers, made about $3 in Adsense from 12 clicks on ads, and even made a couple Amazon sales. All in all a pitiful performance, but if that happened on a more frequent basis…

I’ve read a few scathing posts about StumbleUpon on other blogs, pointing out the obvious negative parts. A high bounce rate, a low conversion rate, and generally fickle “stumblers” who can pass on or, worse, give you the thumbs down. However the random search toolbar does have some benefits. For one the long tail of traffic, I received a small handful of hits days after the initial spike. And unlike sites such as Digg, that tail can continue long afterwards as there is no real front page to fall off of.

With a little work you can make your blog work well on StumbleUpon.

Firstly you need to remember that stumblers are notoriously fickle, they will flip to the next site within a few seconds if you don’t tempt them to stay. You need to make sure your blog loads fast. ProBlogger has a short list of a few great plugins you can use to speed up your loading time. Not only do you need to load fast, but you also need to catch their eye. A boring, bland theme can turn off the average stumbler before they even get to your words. Make it look sharp, and keep it interesting above the fold. A big, beautiful image words great to catch their attention, and having at least one advertising unit high up will leverage your bets at making a little money from clicks.

I’ve found a greeting to people also helps. I added the Referrer Detector to this blog and saw a fairly decent increase in subscribers soon after wards. This type of plugin detects where readers are from and encourages them with a little message. So all the people coming to my post from StumbleUpon saw this little message at the very top of the post.

You can edit the message to say whatever you want, make it more personal or tie into your blog, and give a little encouragement at the same time.

These are just a few of the basic things you can do to make your blog get more love from StumbleUpon users. What tips would you suggest a blogger do?

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Viral Marketing is a powerful way to generate traffic to your blog, and in turn generate additional money for you.

Think about how a virus spreads from on person to another. One person gets sick and just by sneezing they can give the virus to many more people. Those people get sick and share their germs with everyone they know and the next thing you know everyone is out with the flu. That is the very concept behind viral marketing. The idea is to get everyone to spread your marketing message to everyone they know, though with a little more purpose than a sneeze.

Most marketers us an Ebook to start a viral marketing campaign. First you create an E-book, hopefully a really good one that has links to your blog or to your sales page and affiliate links to products and services that you recommend. If you don’t think you can write an Ebook from scratch, check out PLR sites. Many have pre-written Ebooks that you can buy the rights to, edit, and pass on as your own. You can also use bundles of articles that you buy and piece together into a full Ebook.

Once you have the book ready, give it away to five people completely free. In the book you encourage those five people to give it to their friends and family.

Before you know it the Ebook is spreading across the Internet faster than the Swine Flu. Digital information duplicates easily and quickly so before you know it, thousands of people could be reading your free E-book.

Make certain that you let people know that they have permission to forward the E-book around the Internet. When you create the Ebook, you have the right to give people certain rules for use of your Ebook. One of those rules could be that you allow them to give the book to other people. Make it clear that this book is free to give away.

You can write the E-book yourself, use private label content or you can hire a ghostwriter to prepare the content. There are a lot of ways to create an E-book. Once you have your E-book written, you can use software to create your E-book such as. A free way to do this, though with less frills, would be to upload a Word file into Google Documents and then convert it to a pdh.

As more people read your viral Ebook, some with click the links. And some of them will buy the products or services you offered or recommended. Others will check out your blog to see what else you have to say, and they may become subscribers. A free Ebook that you sent out into the world months ago could be making you sales today, tomorrow, next week, and further.

photo credit: jondoeforty1

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning some money online. This kind of marketing gives everybody a chance to make a profit through sales. Since these affiliate marketing programs are easy to join, implement and pays a commission on a regular basis, more an more people are taking the leap.

However, like all businesses, there are lots of pitfalls in the affiliate marketing business. Committing some of the most common mistakes will cost you a large portion of the profit you could be making everyday. Once you know what the biggest mistakes are you can begin to make changes that will boost your power.

Mistake number 1: Choosing the wrong affiliate.

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible. In their rush to be part of one, they tend to choose a bandwagon product. The kind of product that the program is calling “hot”. They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them. This is not a very wise move obviously.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, try top choose a product you are truly interested in. Even better, choose a product you actually love. Forget about whether or not you get a high commission, or if it’s the new thing that everyone is buying. Promoting a product you are more passionate about is easier than promoting one for the sake of the earnings only.

Mistake number 2: Joining too many affiliate programs.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join everyone you find. Afterall, the more you join the more streams of income you can have. Unfortunately trying to focus on several different affiliate programs means you have to stretch your attention across them all.

The result? Your income resembles the energy you were able to put in: thin and spotty at best. The best way to get results is by joining just one program at first. Then give it your best effort by promoting your products enthusiastically. When you start to see a profit coming from one program then you can try joining a second one.

The technique is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush into things, especially with affiliate marketing.

Mistake number 3: Not buying the product or using the service.

As an affiliate, your main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service and to find customers. For you to do this, you have to know what you are taling about. It is difficult to do this if you haven’t tried the products or services yourself.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate. You need to be able to honestly pitch the program to your potential customers, and the best way to do this is by having first hand knowledge. A couple examples would be FirePow and the Chris Farrell membership site. Both of these services are ones I have tried out myself. That’s why I feel comfortable promoting them. And it shows.

Many affiliate marketers make these simple mistakes in their hunt for easy money. I know, it feels easier to just slap up a few affiliate links to the “hot” product now and hope your rewritten version of their sale’s pitch works. But if you really want to make money you have to do better.

Choose something you love, stick with one good program, and know what you are talking about. You might be surprised how much more money you can make with these three simple truths.

I spent much of the weekend hanging out over at the new ProBlogger community forum. And I still can’t get over what a great idea it is. Like I said before, creating a paid forum was simple perfection as far as making money online goes.

OK, so you’re probably thinking that’s great for Darren, but the average person just couldn’t do that. And that’s where I tell you that you’re wrong. Want to make a couple hundred extra month? Follow Darren’s lead, give people something they want but charge only a couple dollars. I’ll break it down in six simple steps. (Some of you may already have the first couple things done. Go you!)

Alright, first thing’s first. You need a freebie. Something sweet that your readers would love to get for free. Yes, free. Let’s say for the sake of example that you have a blog about gardening. I bet you could easily find or create a small ebook on making great compost or winter gardening tips or growing perfect roses. Flex your knowledge muscles here.

But don’t worry if you don’t have the time to write a freebie. You can find dozens of free or low cost PLR ebooks and reports online. A little editing and you have a personalized beauty to hand out.

Now, you need a way to give it to your readers. Sure, you could just write a post about it, but there’s a way to get something in return. Put a simple little sign-up box on your blog. Just as basic name and email address collector set up to filter into an autosubscriber. Then custom an email to be sent out to anyone who signs up. Something thanking them for signing up, promising to never sell their info to spam lists, and a link to where they can pick up the freebie.

Now this, you should blog about.

Hey, have you seen? I’ve got a free newsletter and if you sign up you get this ebook free. ‘Cause I love you, man.

So, you’ve got people signing up and they need a place to go to get the ebook. Now you’re going to create a simple website just for that. A special page called a Squeeze Page. I won’t go into detail on this, it would take too much space. But I will tell you that if you join Chris Farrell’s membership (<– affiliate link) he has a super-easy step by step guide to help you do just this.

OK, we have a freebie, we have an autoresponder, we have a squeeze page. Now, we need something worth paying for. Remember, you’re only going to be charging $1 or $2 a month for this. Why? Because you want the people who wrinkle their noses at the $127 a month programs to be thrilled with your’s. And you want it available to everyone, no matter what. Be sure to sell that second point to your potenial customers.

Back to the gardening example. You could make an ecourse on gardening help all year round. Or a super select forum that is tied in with your blog. Now, this needs to be something that requires a membership rather than the basic pay once and go item. Give them something to come back for each month, and keep paying for each month.

This is what you are going to sell on your squeeze page.

“Hey, I’m so glad you signed up! Scroll down to download your free copy of Gardening Compost Starter Guide. But, before you do, I wanted to share a little known secret with you. I have a private forum just for gardener to chat and learn more. And since you’re here, I want to offer you a chance to join. To keep it private and only for serious members I do charge $1 per month. Interested in joining? Click here!”

See how that works?

Now, the majority of people are going to pass on buy and just download the free ebook. But that’s OK, you have their email address. Remember, they had to give it to you to get the free download. So once a week you send out a mass email through your autoresponder sharing some news, tips, highlighting an important post, and oh by the way did you know I have a private forum only available for my subscribers?

Of course it doesn’t have to be a forum. It could be a monthly/weekly ecourse. Or one-on-one advice. Or monthly access to a special site you have created. You get the idea.

Setting up a squeeze page really isn’t anything new. What is different this time is instead of selling an ebook once, you are selling a continued membership. So every month you have a steady flow coming in. This works even if a month or two goes by that no one is interested in your ebook or product. The subscribers will keep on sending their money.

photo credit: smellyknee

photo credit: ian_ransley

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you have heard about the ProBlogger community forum that Darren Rowse opened up. It was the logical next step for him to take. After years of offering free advice and building a community of readers, opening up a space for everyone to come together and share makes perfect sense.

And because Darren is a genius he is charging a meager $1.95 for membership each month. Yes, most forums are free. But this is different, this one is created by one of the top names in blogging today. The information gained in invaluable. Think about it, $2 a month isn’t really that much to spend. But that $2 a month, each month, from hundreds of registered users each month … that quickly adds up.

Now, don’t you wish you could mimic that plan? What if you could create something that required a monthly subscription. A special newsletter, an ecourse, a forum. And then charge people just $1 per month to get it. Hey, a buck isn’t much money. But then get 50 people to subscribe, then 100 people, then 1000 people. The income potential just goes through the roof.

Anyway, if you are a member feel free to say hello to me. I will be surfing the forum and checking things out. I’m johnss in the forum.

photo credit: eflon

The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything pulls a lot of people into affiliate marketing.  But affiliate marketing don’t really work this way, at least not if you expect to make any money. That is why the majority quit soon after they step foot into affiliate marketing. They don’t want to do the work.

As an affiliate, all that is basically required of you is to simply place the merchant’s ad on your website.  Then after that, you virtually do nothing but wait for anyone to click on the merchant’s ad and later collect your profits.  Easy, right?  Well, not quite often.  Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing.  Remember that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing, and you’ll definitely need to market your merchant’s product for you to earn something.

Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don’t sit there and wait for money to come.  Why?  Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting.  If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you’ve got to do something.  Think of ways on how to promote your merchant’s business and products better.  Think of ways on how to induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant.  Think of ways on how to make your affiliate sales increase!

So if you’re new in affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky pit that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you’re definitely on the wrong track.  But we’re not advising you to stop right there.  No.  Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you.  How?  Here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

* Become an expert on your affiliate product.

You can promote your merchant’s product better if you know a lot of things about it.  To become an expert, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchant’s product yourself.  This way, you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the product.  You can even write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about it.  But if any condition does not permit you to purchase the product, you can at least make a thorough research about it.

* Host your own website.

Or at least have a domain name that is short and easy to remember.  You certainly wouldn’t expect a visitor to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL.  And if that’s so, you also wouldn’t expect him to visit your website any time soon.  That means less traffic for your page and the less chance for your affiliate ads and links to be clicked.

It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads.  Visitors usually get interested with these private websites.  Private websites also gives you a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.

* Write your own affiliate ads.

Many merchants usually wouldn’t mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, for as long as you ask permission from them and present them your ad before posting it on your site.  This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who must be advertising the same affiliate products.

* Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.

If you use to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them.  You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product.  You don’t have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along.  The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.

* Create a free ezine or newsletter.

Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject.  In your ezines and newsletters, you don’t always have to promote your merchant’s product for this may greatly annoy your subscribers.  Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter.  Also, don’t forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are just a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks.  There are hundreds of more unique ways, some that will work for you and some that won’t.  What’s important is that you be able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant’s products even outside the boundary of your website.

If you can do those three things, you will see your affiliate checks grow.

(P.S. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Chris Farrell Membership site and loving it (<– affiliate link). If you want to be blasted with ways to earn money online, this is the place to go. New members can get the first 14 days for only $4.95. After that it’s $27 a month. With all the free help, tips, and the free hosting it is absolutely worth it!)

photo credit: plugimi

This is a guest post from Nicole Dean of www.EasyPLR.com

Recently, in an interview, I was asked “Is it ethical to use private label rights and ghostwritten articles?”

Let me step back a moment and explain… Private label rights (or PLR) articles and ghostwritten articles are used by web owners as a method of outsourcing some of their content.

* PLR articles are packages of articles that are pre-written and sold to more than one person.

* Ghostwritten articles are articles that are written by someone else just for you that you can put your name on and are not sold to anyone else.

In both cases, you are allowed to edit the content as much or as little as you’d like and use the articles on your website, blog, or in your newsletter.

So, back to the question. Is it ethical? My answer was, “usually, yes”.

If you’re using the articles and saying “written by me” without changing anything at all, it may bite you in the butt later, when someone else does the same thing. Does that make it unethical? Not really. It’s just not smart. Can you use the article as it is or edited slightly, without saying it was written by you? Of course!

Most PLR packs are written by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are professional researchers and writers. If you purchase well-written, informative PLR or ghostwritten articles and share them with your readers, don’t you all benefit? Your readers benefit by getting great information. You benefit by saving time. Is it any different than hiring a graphic designer or webmaster? Not in my opinion. Heck, most politicians don’t write their own speeches. They leave that to people who are professional speech writers.

Of course, you’d want to only use top-notch articles and not “sell-out” just to pump out blog posts or web pages quicker. We recommend you research thoroughly before choosing any ghostwriter or PLR service.

Here’s what to look for in a PLR service so you don’t waste your money:

• 1. Make sure the articles are written well.
• 2. Make sure that you know what topics you’ll receive (instead of some grab-bag of articles).
• 3. Be sure that the people running the program have some experience in article writing themselves, so they know what they’re doing.

There’s no point in doing everything on your own, especially if you dislike writing. All successful business people outsource the tasks they are not good at or dislike. Check it out. It might take some pressure off you and allow you to spend more time with your kids. And, that’s definitely ethical.

P.S. If you decide to buy anything from EasyPLR click right here to use my affiliate link and send a few bucks my way.