I have to admit, I really don’t make the use of Clickbank that I ought to. But with all the upgrades they’ve been doing lately, maybe I should.

I’ve blogged about some of the changes already, such as the addition of the Marketplace. That made an unsearchable mess into something much more useable. But now Clickbank has added tracking capabilities, which is much pleasanter than opening a variety of accounts to track, as many affiliates have done in the past.

I really need to take the time to go through the Marketplace and see what works with each of my sites. I know there are some great products out there… all I need to do is get busy and start adding them to my sites.

Technorati Tags: clickbank, tracking

Just read on any webmaster or SEO forum and you’ll hear all kinds of rules for search engine optimization. Some are pretty on target while others are just plain nuts.

I just read a post on increase search engine traffic. It simplifies search engine optimization into three steps. Does that sound easy enough?

The steps sound pretty easy, but they do each take time and some creativity. The first step, for example, is keyword research. Thinking up all the basic keywords that you would like to focus on and seeing what you can discover beyond them can be pretty tough.

Creating a page for each important phrase is tough too. You need to figure out not only how to make each page unique and useful, you need to make it reasonable to have the page linked to the rest on your site. This means you have to balance the number of key phrases targeted with driving people nuts with too similar pages… or find a way to make them give just the right information that it all just flows beautifully. Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading on the Google blog that they are doing away with Google Answers. They’re not deleting the old questions, as I understand it, just not accepting any new ones as of sometime this week. You won’t be able to add new answers by the end of the year.

I never participated there, but I did have fun sometimes reading the questions and answers. There were some pretty interesting ones. I’m sure it was also loads of fun for the people who researched the answers for pay.

Go ahead and browse Google Answers if you want to see some of the weird stuff people wonder about. You might just find inspiration for your business there.

Technorati Tags: google answers

Have any of you given marketing on MySpace a serious go? I haven’t, although I do have one profile on which I do mention one of my sites.

If you want to get serious about it, I understand that a MySpace Friend Adder can be pretty helpful, provided you know how to use it safely. It’s a pretty interesting idea, especially since I must say adding friends manually is dreadfully dull.

I suppose it really depends on what you’re marketing and how seriously you want to market on MySpace. I’ve had a lot of fun reading profiles over there. I know it’s something I ought to give a more sincere try at, but the inspiration to do so hasn’t hit yet. Might just have to experiment with the aforementioned too, hmm?

If you’ve been at home business for very long you know how time consuming it can be. You really have to be dedicated to running your home business in order to be a success. That often means long hours, late nights, working when you’re sick and so forth.

Some distractions are not so easily dealt with, and that’s what I’m facing personally right now. My grandfather died yesterday, and such an emotionally charged event cannot help but distract me. Not to mention travel time to and from the funeral.

I vary between working hard to distract myself and taking a break to be with my own thoughts. It’s not easy, but what else can I do? I’m not the sort to just sit.

It’s interesting to see how I’m coping. At 34 years old, this is the first time someone close to me has died. I know that’s pretty unusual, but there it is.

Publicity in a good newspaper or many good newspapers is tremendously valuable to a business, whether run out of the home or a more traditional brick and mortar location. It build your credibility and gets your company’s name out in front of many people who might never have heard of you otherwise.

There’s a company now guaranteeing you publicity. For more information, visit http://www.PublicityGuaranteed.com, but I’ll tell you the basics here.

Starting at $195, they guarantee you placement in a variety of newspapers. Prices rise depending on how many newspapers publish the article on your business. It can get pretty pricey for us small businesses, but the basic level is not that bad when you really think about it.

This strikes me as a great option if you’re just tired of submitting press releases and not getting results. You can set a budget cap so you don’t have to worry about overspending. You’re also only paying for results rather than attempts.

When you want publicity, it’s great to know all the possibilities. This could be a good one.

So you weren’t quite ready for the holiday season. You finally have your products up but there’s no time to get indexed. What do you do?

There are still plenty of options. Pay per click is ideal for a quick start. It can be quite profitable if you closely target your ads to the exact products you send visitors to. Don’t do the general keywords… those are mostly people just researching their options. Do variations on your exact products and even consider including your price.

Keep up with the relevant article submissions. Good quality can attract customers, even if the search engines don’t have you indexed yet. Work on that balance between blatant advertising and giving information so that you have the best chance to have your articles picked up.

Work more in information than in product sales? Take a look at how you can slant things for the holidays. What are some fun things that are relevant both to your topic and the holiday season? Most topics will have a few possibilities.

The holiday season has amazing opportunities available to your home business. Get moving and have fun!

Today and possibly through tomorrow I’ll be reading my latest acquisition… an affiliate handbook from the website Quit Your Day Job. Well, obviously I won’t be quitting my day job since affiliate marketing is my day job, night job and anytime I have time to work job. I don’t think this one is going to scare me away from it, LOL.
I’m always on the lookout for more ways to master affiliate marketing because quite honestly I’m not a master yet. I still have lots to learn and very limited time each day in which to work on it.

Now is definitely a good time for me to be getting into this. Traffic and income on my sites are definitely down just now, so any fresh advice I can get is a good thing. I have loads of original content, write incessantly for one site or another and generally just keep at it.

Even though things aren’t going as smoothly as they were this time last year, I’m having a blast trying. There’s so much to learn and so many possibilities.

I think with this ebook I’m going to pick one of my sites and really focus the principles on it… just to see what I can do. Best way to test, after all. I’ll decide which site once I’ve actually read it, of course.