What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing as the name suggest is to sell a product of a vendor as an affiliate and receive a percentage of the profit as commission. In a simpler sense you as an affiliate, sell products of others (commonly known as vendor) and receive a commission on every sale. The percentage of the commission varies, depending on the type of goods or services the vendor is selling.

If you are selling any digital product like software, ebooks then the commission will be high ranging from 45% to 75%. The reason of such a generous commission is the digital natural of the product. The seller does not need to ship any product and the buyer can download it to their computer as soon as they make the purchase. As the product does not need any maintenance, it further reduces the overall cost for the seller and they can offer good commissions to their affiliates.

On the other hand in case of physical goods, the commissions are low ranging from 2% to 10%, because of the maintenance, insurance and shipping cost of the product raises the overall price

What is Pay Per Click advertisement?

Do not misunderstand PPC advertising as denoted here to, advertising in search engines.( As people commonly refer advertising in Google AdWords, Yahoo or MSN as PPC) Here we refer it to the advertisement you can put on your website, from any third party for which you are paid per click basis.

For an example we can take the case of Google Adsense, where they allow publishers to add a snippet of code on their website through which they show ads related to the content and theme of the website. The publisher is paid for the number of legitimate clicks on the ads.

In this form of advertising the publisher needs not to worry about the sales or any other specific conditions (like in case of affiliate and CPA marketing).

Which one is more profitable?

These both types of marketing approach is profitable and depends on number of factors like niche, your website traffic, your web content etc.

If you have a very desperate niche and getting a decent amount of traffic you can chose affiliate marketing, because in desperate niches where visitors are in need of solution of a specific problem, the conversion rate is always higher. So in this case affiliate marketing would be the best option.

If you have a general theme website with lot of content pages and traffic you can try various pay per click advertising from Google, Yahoo, Adbrite, BidVertiser etc. but this does not mean you can not do affiliate marketing here, you can try both at the same time.

Special Requirement for Affiliate Marketing:

There are some general and legal factors which you should always keep in mind in case of affiliate marketing which we will discuss in coming posts.

Liked this post? Please post your comments here and let us know.

Popularity: 89% [?]

What is Google Commerce Search?

Google Commerce Search is a hosted search solution for online retail sites. Powered by Google.com’s indexing, Google Commerce Search is a fast, flexible, and familiar alternative for online retailers. This product allows administrators to customize their search engines in various ways, with features including synonyms, advanced spelling, and targeted promotions within search.

How Google Commerce Search different from Google’s other enterprise search offerings?

Google Commerce Search is designed specifically for online retail websites. While it shares common features with Google Site Search and Custom Search, only Google Commerce Search is able to provide e-commerce specific features such as product promotions, product boost, and parametric search by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other product attribute you choose.

What is the difference between Google Commerce Search and Google Search Appliances?

Google Search Appliances are on-premise products that customers can deploy in their own data centers, and are primarily used for secured behind-the-firewall search inside the enterprise. Google Commerce Search is a hosted product that is completely focused on e-commerce/retailer sites. Google Commerce Search has several features specific to the e-commerce vertical.

What is the difference between Google Commerce Search and Google Site Search?

Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search are both hosted products that leverage Google’s core search and data center platforms. Google Site Search is a broad product designed to provide keyword search across different types of websites and suitable for any industry. Google Commerce Search is a hosted product that is completely focused on e-commerce/retailer sites. Google Commerce Search has several features specific to the e-commerce vertical.

Improve your shopping experience with fast, intuitive Google search technology.

• Enable visitors to find the right products faster
• Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
• Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
• Increase website conversions and sales
• Boost or promote chosen products within search results
• Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
• Customize, track, and optimize performance

Features

With Google Commerce Search, you can power your online retail experience with fast, trusted Google search technology. Key features include:
Google-quality search for your site

Like google.com, automatic spellcheck, stemming, and advanced synonym options mean shoppers will find what they’re looking for with fewer unnecessary clicks and no frustrating navigation mazes. Google speed, search quality, and ranking capability help users find the most relevant product match.

Scalability

As a hosted solution, Google Commerce Search will insure that increased seasonal query volume won’t erode the quality of your product search experience, so you can spend less time and money on capacity planning around these peaks.

Parametric Search

Enable search refinement by product category, price, price range, brand, or any other product attribute you choose. Automatically generate groupings based on the user’s query and matching items.

Product Promotions

Easy to manage product promotions give marketers and site administrators complete control with guaranteed top search result promotions for custom search keywords you choose. With Product Boost, you can promote specific products, vendors, or product categories at the top of your search results.

Customization Options

Multiple refinements allow you to choose whether to display product images, descriptions, etc. If you choose to, it’s simple to adjust the look and feel of your search engine by adding or removing the Google branding, uploading your company logo, and changing text colors on your search results pages.
You can customize search results further, and integrate results into other applications, by using the XML API. The XML API enables you to access the raw search results for your query in XML format, including the URL and description text.

Simple deployment and maintenance

Google Commerce Search is a hosted platform, which means that your company will be able to leverage innovations and advancements as soon as they are developed, with no administrative overhead. Deployment is fast and easy, and you’ll have access to Google Commerce Search support experts for specialized assistance with set-up, customization, and analysis.

Advanced Reporting and Analytics

View custom reports including result sets, top queries, product promotion clicks, special feature usage and more. Use integrated Google Analytics to understand how visitors are using your online store, and improve the effectiveness of your search results.

How it Works

Once you’ve signed up for Google Commerce Search, your site administrator will follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Submit your product data to the Google Merchant Center and Google Product Search. Visit www.google.com/merchants to upload your items via data feeds, direct uploads, or use our API.

Step 2: Customize the look and feel of your on-site search engine. Log into the administrative console to manage product promotions, upload synonym dictionaries, and control parametric search options.

Step 3: Analyze your site’s traffic and search effectiveness. View custom reports on top queries, special feature usage and more.

Benefits

Search is a critical part of the shopping experience; in fact, 71% of online shoppers use keyword searches to find products (eTailing Group). Google Commerce Search addresses this need by offering an easy-to-deploy solution with Google speed and relevancy.

Increase your website conversions and sales

The average conversion rate of retail sites is barely 3% (Forrester). Yet, with effective tactics, retailers can achieve a much higher conversion rate. For instance, the top 10 visitor-to-buyer conversion rates ranged from 16% to 45% (Nielsen Online). Effective search can bridge this gap considerably: customers who use the search box on e-commerce sites convert at nearly three times the rate of general browsers (MarketingSherpa).

Increase customer lifetime value

Forrester projects that 47% of online retailer revenue comes from repeat shoppers. By enhancing shopper experience, Google Commerce Search can improve customer loyalty, and ultimately increase customer lifetime value.

Deploy within days

Google Commerce Search is an entirely hosted, software-as-a-service offering. You simply upload your product information to Google Merchant Center, and Google Commerce Search intelligently leverages the product feed and provides your website with search capabilities.

Easy to scale

With Google Commerce Search, you are leveraging the powerful Google platform: the speed, relevance, reliability, and certainly scalability. As your customer base grows, you can scale your search solution effortlessly – without adding any servers or other infrastructure.

Add features without upgrading

By deploying a Software-as-a-Service solution, you’ll be able to enjoy the ever-growing number of Google features and updates automatically, without any sort of deployment or upgrade on your end.

Measure and streamline

Retailers who excel at understanding and responding to usage metrics are able to improve conversion rates by as much as 24%, while less responsive companies’ conversions tend to stay flat (Jupiter Research). Google Commerce Search provides you advanced reporting tools to measure and streamline – so you can maximize the effectiveness of your website.

Pricing

The pricing model for Google Commerce Search is based on the number of products/items (SKUs) in your data feed and the number of search queries entered on your site each year. Pricing starts at $50,000 per year.

If you want to discuss your specific search requirements with a Google representative, please contact a sales representative directly.

For More information visit: http://www.google.com/commercesearch/

And Download Data Sheet Here: http://www.google.com/commercesearch/gcs_datasheet.pdf

Popularity: 9% [?]

Building a good, professional looking and user friendly website is a tough task and attracting visitors to it is tougher. This is a common thinking in the community engaged in web design, development and promotion. But if some simple core points regarding re usability and presentation are kept in mind you can make the work very simple. We have discussed some points in our previous posts; today we will look into press release distribution, its benefits and some simple techniques to make it effective.

What is a press release?

Generally a press release or news release is a written or recorded statement aimed for news media, announcing some news from a company. The statement has some “news value” like launch of a new product, changes in policy, appointment of a renowned person in key position, merger and acquisition etc. This is an official statement to be published in news media online and offline.

Arranging press conference by companies or government departments is a very good offline example of press release distribution. In these events the company announces some statement which has a value to become news; later those statements are published in news papers or magazines for common person.

Large companies have their own news letters which they print and distribute on monthly or quarterly basis to their customers.

Big companies also have a press release or news section on their corporate websites. They do not distribute their news release through offline media and other press release distribution websites because they have a large user base that can access it easily.

But if we talk about small businesses, distributing press release through different PR directories can be a very good tool for traffic, SEO and brand building.

In a nutshell if you are an owner of a small business and website, press release submission can prove to be very effective for your online campaigns.

How to write an effective press release?

The profit of a press release distribution depends on the value of the news posted and the way it’s being presented. Always keep in mind; people do not take interest in bogus news and offers. So creating a buzz is necessary for proper exposure of your news release.

While writing a press release pick up a long tail, low competition keyword and write an interesting title around it. In this way you will also get SEO value, as the press release is likely to be picked by news search engines, thus giving you lot of traffic.

In addition press release websites themselves attract a lot of traffic and can refer a lot of visitors to your website.

If you are announcing any product or special offer clearly specify the timeline for it. Clearly state the time period for which the offer will remain valid.

Clearly write your contact information, the contact person, phone, mobile and fax number, email and website. Provide as many ways as you can, so that the prospective users can contact you easily.

Frequency of press release submission:

The frequency on which the press release should be distributed depends on your industry and market. Suppose you are in travel industry, you can distribute one or two press release per week in off season days and 4 to 5 press releases in holiday season. If you are in jewelry or gift related industry, you can increase you press release frequency during festive days (like Christmas, thanks giving, valentine’s day etc.)

List of Press release submission websites:

There are millions of press release distribution websites both free and paid. Below is a list of few of them. Use them in your press release distribution and reap the benefits.

betanews

directionsmag

prleap

news.thomasnet

nanotech-now

npr.org

prlog.org

bizeurope

free-press-release

clickpress

downloadjunction

newswiretoday

openpr

pressbox

filecluster

digitalmediaonlineinc

sbwire

1888pressrelease

afreego

sanepr

theopenpress

free-press-release-center

prfree

ukprwire

pressreleasespider

Popularity: 13% [?]

What is a bookmark: We use several websites frequently, even daily for checking emails, doing shopping, company website and other website related to our interest or hobby.

If you are not new to internet and web browsers, you know all web browsers provide the facility of bookmarking websites you like or use frequently. In a similar way there are lots of websites over internet where you can save, categorize and share your bookmarks of the websites of your interest. There are some other websites like news submission and story submission websites and social networking websites.

Social Bookmarking Websites: Literally there are millions of websites over internet where you can save your bookmarks and share with other users. Here is a list of some of the best social bookmarking websites.

yahoo bookmarks

yahoo Myweb

digg

technorati

del.icio.us

stumbleupon

netscape

reddit

fark

ilike

mog

newsvine

furl.net

blinklist

dzone

clipmarks

pligg

kaboodle

bumpzee

rollyo

jaiku

9rules

startaid

shoutwire

bluedot.us

gather

simpy

nowpublic

plugim

stylehive

spurl.net

blinkbits

librarything

netvouz

diigo

wink

corank

popurls

mister-wong

backflip

rojo

shadows

bloghop

rawsugar

listible

thoof

tailrank

wists

bibsonomy.org

plime

yoono

searchles

hugg

citeulike.org

kuro5hin.org

de.lirio.us

spotback

spotplex

fazed.org

kinja

markaboo

stylefeeder

i89.us

linkagogo

lifelogger

feedmelinks

tagtooga

buddymarks

claimid

clipfire

linkroll

aboogy

oyax

gravee

butterflyproject.nl

myhq

wirefan

a1-webmarks

connectedy

sitejot

linkatopia

myvmarks

getboo

mylinkvault

urlex.info

lilisto

philoi

syncone.net

syncone.net

30daytags

shoppersbase

linkfilter.net

voo2do

jeteye

hanzoweb

myprogs.net

reader2

fungow

feedmarker

zlitt

hyperlinkomatic

tektag

givealink.org

unalog

plum

ifaves

taggly

rrove

maple.nu

links2go

sync2it

saveyourlinks

web-feeds

ez4u.net

6-clicks

ambedo

cloudytags

dohat

chipmark

bookkit

wobblog

meme-stream

thinkpocket

yattle

tutorialism

2centsnews

gibeo.net

portachi

aworldofhelp

tabmarks

sitetagger

trexy

openserving

allyourwords

newsweight

nextaris

pixelmo

listmixer

wurldbook

memfrag

feedalley

smelis

Correct way to do bookmarking: If you do bookmarking in correct way it can bring lots of traffic to your website. People on the web are always interested in value information (value information may be a very important news related to science for a science student or funny stories for a seeker who wants fun), if you will share value, it will really benefit you.

Do not always submit bookmarks related to your own websites, sometimes share some information from other sources also if it provides value. In this way you can make your account more trust worthy and other users will like to visit the sources you provide.

If you have some other suggestions, feel free to post in comments.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Introduction: There are several ways to build one way and reciprocal links for your website, some of the methods we have discussed earlier. You can read the related post by visiting the links at the end of this post. The methods discussed are conventional methods of link building which SEO’s and link builders are using from a very long time.

For making good money online through pay per click programs or affiliate marketing you need traffic and you need a lot of it because without traffic no is going to click your ads or affiliate links. For attracting traffic either you have to spend money on paid traffic like Google AdWords or you can get free traffic from search engines by using search engine optimization.

The free traffic from the search engines is the best form as you do not need to spend money on it (though you have to spend considerable amount of time for bringing free traffic and time is money). Here comes the concept of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Ranking higher on a search engine especially Google can bring you a lot of quality traffic and it’s free.

For ranking higher for your keywords you need lot of links with relevant websites. Today we will discuss about the concept of link wheel or link loop.

What is a link wheel?

Link wheel is a collection of several web2.0 properties, ranging from 5 to 18, interlinked together and your website, just as shown in the figure.

Here you can see 5 web2.0 properties namely squidoo, weebly, quizilla, wordpress and blogger used to make a link wheel.

How to develop link wheel:

Choose 5 or 6 web2.0 sites to make a link wheel. Here is a list of some of them.

http://squidoo.com

http://wordpress.com

http://livejournal.com

http://blog.com

http://blog.co.uk

http://jimdo.com

http://blogger.com

http://weebly.com

http://blinkweb.com

http://blogsome.com

http://freewebs.com

Take articles of 400 to 500 words and related to your keywords. Start from blogger (or any other) starts posting your article. Make two links one linking to your neighbor (quizilla in this case) and another to your main website. Using two links is just an example and more links can be used as the situation demands.

In the last you can either close the loop or leave it open.

How to use content: Choose topics which are relevant to your main keyword. Let us have one example. Suppose the main keyword of your website is “India hotels”. And it has separate sections for hotels in all important metro cities in India. Then

Choose six keywords related to your main keyword. You can write articles on following topics for your link wheel

India Hotels – Hotels in New Delhi
India Hotels – Hotels in Mumbai
India Hotels – Hotels in Calcutta
India Hotels – Hotels in Chennai
India Hotels – Hotels in Jaipur
India Hotels – Hotels in Pune

These entire articles must be written around keyword India hotels and secondary keyword like Hotels in New Delhi, Hotels in Mumbai etc.

For best results I would like to suggest you to have article of minimum 500 words (for this example) and create three hyperlinks.

One link must link to the relevant section on your website, second link must be for main website and third one should be to the neighbor web2.0 property of your link wheel.

Like in this example (suppose your main website is www.abc.com with relevant sections like www.abc.com/hotels-new-delhi, www.abc.com/hotels-mumbai etc)

The article title “India Hotels- Hotels in New Delhi” shall have 3 links, first one linking to www.abc.com/hotels-new-delhi with anchor text Hotels in New Delhi, second link to the main website www.abc.com and the third link to its neighbor web2.0 page.

I hope this would have cleared the point.

Double Layer Link wheel or Extended Link wheel: Once your link wheel is ready, you can make a link wheel around every single page you used in your main link wheel, thus giving more link juice and power to the web2.0 pages of the main link wheel and in turn giving more boost to your main website.

IP Diversity: do not use a single web2.0 website (like blogger, wordpress etc) twice in one link loop, so that it maintains a good IP diversity and more ranking power for the link wheel.

Promoting Link Wheel: For promoting your link wheel do some blog comments posting, social bookmarking and RSS submission.

You can do it in this manner:

1. 20 Blog comments for each web2.0 page used in the link wheel
2. 20 bookmarking for each web2.0 page used in the link wheel
3. Take the rss from each one of them and do 20 rss submission of each

You can also mix the rss from all of them by using free service like rssmix.com and then post to several rss directories.

So Apply this link wheel strategy and you will see good rankings for you main keywords in few weeks.

I think you would have enjoyed this post. I might have left some points; I would highly appreciate it if you all post it in comments.

You can also post your comments regarding which topics you all would like to read about and I will try my best to post it in coming days

Related Articles:

Off Page Elements: Link Building and Blog Comments

Off Page Elements: Using Articles and Blogs

Off Page Elements: Increasing your Web Visibility and Reach Part 1

Off Page Elements: Alternative ways of link building

Popularity: 26% [?]