well yes you read it correct. Till now people keep talking about alexa ranking, alexa traffic ranks, etc etc but no one ever told you that there is actually a way to get traffic from alexa.

But before i come to that let me tell you a bit about alexa. Alexa is a ‘site monitoring’ service that monitors your site statistics, such as traffic, geo-analysis, page views, age group of traffic and many more things. It then ranks your website among all others based on your traffic in a particular month. This is called a alexa rank.

What is the use of traffic rank?

Alexa traffic rank is of no direct use to you. Unless you are a web analytic of course. However it does effect your sites popularity and income indirectly. When advertisers look for websites to advertise on then they consider few factors, alexa traffic rank is one of those factors.

Alexa is very popular among all webmasters, there is absolutely no webmaster that don’t use alexa to monitor his site and improve his rankings.

Tell the secret already!

ok alright, there is no big secret. Its a very simple thing which the smart savvy people have noticed and are taking extensive advantage of it. While others might not even know of such a feature.

You must be wondering what this feature is which you can use to get traffic ‘from’ alexa? Well let me explain you in easy words. Alexa has a feature called ‘reviewing’. Everyday thousands if not millions of people look up on sites such as google, yahoo, msn, twitter, youtube, facebook, amazon….. the list is too big. But you know what i am talking about, the big guys with the traffic rank 1-100 get lots of views on there profile pages.

Won’t alexa care?

That is the sad part unfortunately. Alexa as a big reputed company should be more considerate about its own site. I find many people writing ‘useless’ reviews on sites with good traffic rank. Sites such as google, yahoo, etc. Not only does they write useless reviews, they actually SPAM the hell out of them.

Take a look at the screen shot below on reviews for yahoo.com or go directly to this link. Make sure you go to the ‘review’ section though.

You see how people simply just spam like that? But worse off, there are others who actually pay a visit to those links. This has been tested in fact, if you go and write a review with a reference to your product then you get lots of targeted visitors. But your product must be relevant to the site you write a review for. That works even better.

Now wait! I am NOT asking you guys to spam there. Now that you know of a way to do so. But i told about this basically for everyone to know more about the services they use. Informational purposes only. I didn’t try yet but i wonder what effect it will have on my site in terms of traffic.

I also noticed some people write reviews multiple times and some do this on daily basis to try and keep their reviews on first page. This is hilarious and am rather disappointed in alexa. I mean don’t they have any maintenance? How can they allow so much spam on their reputed site? If that wasn’t enough, but these reviews also hurt the image and reputation of the sites about which they are written. For someone who is new to facebook and if he reads such Spam reviews about it on alexa, do you think that person is going to join facebook? I highly doubt that.

Is there another way?

In fact there is. There are 2 ways you can get traffic ‘from’ alexa, legally and spam free traffic. But how?

1. You can use the above method ‘without’ spamming, meaning giving your honest reviews with a link to your blog or site under your name. Such reviews won’t be considered spam and would actually get you traffic and people won’t even call you a spammer. So review writing on alexa is a new traffic generation method on my list.

2. You could do it like how the others do. Make your site popular, gain higher rankings. No don’t worry, rankings in top 100 or even top 100k is very hard. But you can aim for higher traffic ranking in a particular country or on a particular topic. I mean there are 190+ countries in the world [not sure how many total, damn i am not good at geography] and each country has its own ranking sites.

Once again please don’t spam and i do HOPE someone from alexa reads this message and actually employees someone to remove off those Spam comments and reviews. I had the notion that they do have staff who does that, but i guess they get too much spam reviews daily. In that case how about ‘moderating’ the reviews before publishing them?  That won’t be hard to implement i guess. Folks at wordpress might be helpful too. It will certainly reduce the spam.

And sorry for the late post guys, i was busy with lots of work. Take care and don’t spam. good luck in this new adventure, do it legally though.

Till then have a great day,

SJ

I am sure you must have heard pretty much from every single guru, affiliate and successful online entrepreneur that the money is in the list, but what exactly is a list? How can you build one too? How can you convert huge traffic into your opt in subscribers and then later convert those subscribers into your paying customers?

These are the things to remember when building a list, but more importantly building a profitable list so you can really supercharge your ‘make money online‘ dreams:

What you will need in order to start building a list:

1. An Auto Responder: Building a list requires a few tools in order to get started. The first and the most important one is an auto responder. Auto responders are were you will store your list, build campaigns & send messages to your list. Auto responders are the backbone of your list building efforts & it’s important to get a auto responder that has good delivery rates, lots of features, good support and of course is within your budget. The industry leaders currently are Aweber & GetResponse, which are the most preferred auto responders used by internet marketers. However Aweber & GetResponse can be costly if you are just starting out with an average of $200 for 500 subscribers annually. For starters i would recommend Mail Chimp, another good auto responder but most importantly a great tool for building a list without a budget. Mail Chimp has a free for life plan where you can store up to 2000 subscribers & send up to 12,000 emails per month. That is good enough for now, so register at MailChimp if you are starting out or consider Aweber and GetResponse if you want more options.

2. A Landing Page or Blog: Now that you got a auto responder ready & fired up its time to start getting those subscribers. But of course where will you send your traffic? You will obviously need a site/blog or else a squeeze page (also known as landing page) to send your traffic to where your optin lead capture forms are (alongside your offers). If you don’t have one already then you will need a web host (i recommend Hostgator – use coupon code ‘SJRECOMMENDS’ to get 25% off) along with a domain (get them at Goddady or Namecheap). Once you got everything set up, all you need to do is set up your squeeze pages & plugin your opt-in forms.

3. Traffic: Its all about traffic when it comes to building a list. Once everything is set up you will need to start driving quality & targeted traffic to it. Start getting the word out, promote your page via social media, bookmarking, etc. Once you start building traffic then read my post on how to retain traffic to your site.

List Building Ethics:

Now that everything is set up its time to convert the traffic to subscribers & then the subscribers to paying customers.

1. Know what a mailing list is: A list is basically the collection of all the people [their emails and other optional information] who have opted to receive messages from you, always remember that manually entering a huge list of emails into your auto responder is not actually a list and their is definitely no money in that too, because what you will be doing that way is spamming those emails which could be very bad later on. So never spam your list or create a list without the permission of those people who are added into your list, make sure your list is 100% opt-in. On a site note it will be hard to find a good auto responder that will just simply allow you to add a list and send them mails. Another thing to take care of is that importing a large list can cost you a lot & migrating from one auto responder to another can result in loss of your subscribers.

2. Bribe your visitors: When it comes to building a list, most successful internet marketers actually ‘bribe’ their traffic into submission, they do this by giving attractive free offers which results in the traffic and the people to sign up for the list, those offers must be highly niche related, free and very tempting. If you obey this single rule you will convert more then 90% of your traffic if its highly targeted, so obey this golden rule, bribe them.

3. Write a good landing page copy: The landing page is the most important aspect of a list, its the page where the traffic comes to, this page should be able to convert that traffic into opt-in subscribers. So making your landing page as informative, short, tempting and attractive , the more will be the conversions. Read my post on how to make good landing pages for more help.

4. Don’t be a dictator, Respect Freedom: Give your list members the ability to unsubscribe, make sure they are able to contact you, so maintain a separate email for that activity. Give them valuable information but not all at once, keep them waiting so that they don’t run away, spoon feed them step by step, don’t be Hasty and don’t talk always about a product, i.e don’t always do promotions with your list, send emails that are worth reading and related to your niche, involve them in your work. Don’t annoy them by sending messages every single hour or day for that matter, maintain a gap and monitor your lists.

5. Engage & build a community: Once you have a list which is growing continuously, there are a few things to remember, now that the traffic to your landing page are your subscribers, its time to treat them as ‘humans’ and not ‘bots’ anymore, this is the most important step where everyone else fails. If you read point no.2 i told you to bribe them, but its actually that they are forced to join and after they get what your giving free, they are more likely to unsubscribe to maintain low spam in their in-boxes. This step is very important because once someone joins your list, your ultimate goal is to NOT let them unsubscribe, once you follow this the money will flow automatically, because you must win the trust of your subscribers and not make them feel as yet another group of email list which you keep spamming and try selling your products too.

Bonus Tip for bloggers: If you find some of your list members being inactive then consider deleting them from the list to free up space for other subscribers, this can help you save a lot of money. If you are building a list via your blog or website rather then a squeeze page then consider getting pop up domination, it is a very powerful tool that can help you get up to 300% conversion rates.

This should be enough for now for list building basics. Keep building that list, next time i would get more deep into the topic. Don’t forget to share this post, subscribe to my RSS feeds & follow me on twitter @sameerjoad till then have a good day,

SJ

That is the first question you are most likely to ask yourself when you hear about people making money by affiliate marketing. In fact there are so many people making lots of money via affiliate marketing, some of them are making a fortune.

Well we are definitely not talking about affiliate marketing in real world, which involves knocking doors, cold calling and annoying people. Yes its more technically known as a sales person or agent, but in the online world the term is affiliate marketer. Or simply an ‘affiliate’.

You know every single thing on the Internet is related to the affiliate concept? like when facebook asks you to invite your friends to join facebook – that is affiliate marketing but here facebook is the affiliate itself, even though you get nothing out of it. The term ‘affiliate’ itself describes the concept, meaning that you have a ‘affiliation’ with the site, product or service which you promote for a direct or indirect gain in any form, which can be money, branding, exposure, a job, any sort of benefit.

Well let me cut short and since almost everyone knows what online affiliate marketing is, in case you don’t know then its a concept where you earn money by promoting other peoples products (OPP).That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing, you just get payed for spreading the word. You will get commissions or share of a product or services value when someone who you send to your affiliate link buys that product you promote, affiliate systems are fully automated all you need to do is send the traffic to your link.

Most of the time there is also no need for explaining a product since the advertiser or product owner takes care of it automatically on the landing page. However you can sell hope as and write good product reviews to convince your prospect beforehand & let the product owner take care of converting the already convinced visitor. You can read my previous post on how to write a good product review for more tips & tricks.

Note: There are many types of affiliate programs, Pay per click, pay per sale, pay per lead, pay per install, pay per view, etc. This post is basically a affiliate marketing guide for the pay per sale type of programs.

Golden rule of affiliate marketing:

The more attractive, valuable, affordable, safe and demanding a product is the more it sells. So decide carefully on what you want to promote. Of course the product selection is just one single criteria, other criteria including competition, niche selection & targeted traffic sources. Promotion should always be done in niche related sites and should not involve methods of spam or any illegal activity.

Doing reviews of the site or product, offering discount coupons, making optimum use of the advertising tools the program provides is a good move if you are starting out, since most product owners will provide lots of information.

Once you master yourself as a affiliate, the next thing you should do is sell your mastery to others and make even more money of it, which is usually expressing or revealing your secret or methods to your success, people buy guides on topics such as make money online all the time. This is a huge industry, but of course first you must be a successful affiliate to step into that industry. Like i always say don’t sell false information, because the IM karma will get back to you very hard!

Their are 3 types of affiliate systems,

1.Affiliate portals, where all the product owners comes at one place to promote their product to a affiliate network sites which have  huge number of affiliates and promoters, the best example of such systems include clickbank, amazon, commission junction, etc. In fact if you do have a product to sell or wish to promote products as an affiliate then sign up to Clickbank, which is the biggest retailer of online & digital products. If you wish to sell or promote physical real world products then amazon is the way to go.

2.Personal Affiliate programs, these are affiliate programs that are solely operated by a single company or person promoting products created by them, such sites don’t usually have a huge affiliate followers but they provide a bigger chance of promoting a unique product for the publishers and affiliates. Examples of such systems are every single affiliate program that is self operated by the site, which you promote.

Many major companies also operate in house affiliate programs, you can search on Google for related products to your niche ( the topic of your website example weight loss). Do so by typing ‘Niche keyword’ + Affiliate program, for example if you want to promote weight loss products then search for ‘weight loss affiliate program’ etc. But to be honest you can find all types of products on Clickbank & amazon as i mentioned before.

3. No product Affiliate systems, sounds weird doesn’t it? well their are some sites that have affiliate system which are built for 1 single purpose the purpose is to build a huge mailing list, a huge list of followers for a company or a huge database of affiliates to promote future products. These programs might provide a virtual income showcase but their might not be any actual income from such sites. Usually comprises of free to join sites or services that gives you a bonus when you get others to join.

Now lets come to the advantages of being a affiliate.

Why you should be a affiliate?

1. Affiliate marketing is the most easiest form of making money on the Internet : You can’t make free money online any other way.

2. Their is no need for your own site: You can make money online by writing articles, or as its commonly known as bum marketing.

3. No need to create your own products: Because you promote other peoples products.

4. No cold calling, no handling customer complains: Everything is online & automated.

5. Huge income opportunity with less work: All you have to do is send quality & targeted traffic, then wait for them to convert.

6. Big market with lots of products to promote: you can never run out of products to promote, there are thousands of new products popping out daily & hundreds that are doing well for the past decade!

7. Promote Niche targeted products, Smart way to earn, no hardships.

8. Payment goes directly to your paypal, bank or to your mailbox, no waiting for salaries or meeting your quota.

9. Tier opportunities, thus enhancing your income by getting others to become affiliates for a program you promote.

10. Recurring income opportunities, earn thousands month after month for doing no work. Some affiliate programs offer recurring income.

Tier system:

Tier system is something similar to MLM but in this case a tier system refers to other affiliates who you have referred to join a particular affiliate program, the program depending on its type might offer you additional bonuses for spreading the words about them, for example you might be paid 5% of the income of the affiliates you referred, which could be very rewarding.

Recurring income :

Some affiliate programs are membership sites, where the customer has to pay monthly or yearly to use their services, most of these sites offer a recurring income affiliate plan which grants you a share of the customers payment every month, month after month. Even though you might think that web hosting companies are such programs where the customers pay monthly or yearly, however not all web hosts offer recurring income affiliate programs.

Recurring income can be very useful since it is guaranteed to give you income every single month even if you don’t do any work at all for that particular month, and depending on the size of the commission and numbers you referred you could be earning anywhere between $1000 – $100k every month without doing any extra work at all, but promoting such services are not as easy and their are chances the customer might stop using the service after few months of membership.

What are Hoplink or Affiliate links:

A hoplink or affiliate link is a unique link which identifies you on the affiliate system along with many others, this is the backbone of your promotion and it should be protected very well.

Clocking affiliate links could be useful, not only it prevents the loss of potential customers but also from web savvy people who try to hack into the service you promote.

One thing every affiliate should understand is that affiliate marketing is not going to make you rich overnight, their are many people who joins various affiliate programs and end up gaining nothing and after few months they give up, its not like MLM  system and their is a need of being creative and work smart as well as hard to bank big bucks.

Well i think its enough about affiliate marketing as an introduction, just Google ‘affiliate programs’ or find affiliate directories which has tonnes of affiliate programs, chose the one your interested in or head over to Clickbank and start your journey.

The biggest and most single reason that you will be a successful affiliate marketer is this: Action! Take action & get to work.

Don’t forget to share this post, subscribe to my RSS feeds & follow me on twitter @sameerjoad till then have a good day,

SJ