If you work for a company of any kind, you probably need to find creative methods to do marketing. A popular solution to this is with promotional products. There are a few web sites that sell promotional items.

One website like this is ePromos – one of the original promotional products companies online.

Read the review of ePromos and then visit them at http://www.epromos.com.

Promotional items can greatly help your organization by making your brand memorable. If you find the right promotional products company, they can assist you in your advertising campaign. Price is only one factor in choosing a promotional products company, and another is expertise. ePromos seems to have the most experience in the field.

ePromos

Website: ePromos Promotional Products

Pros: ePromos has a user-friendly site, good prices and a great item selection.

Cons: Some set-up fees, limited numbers of customer reviews and a return policy of within 15 days of receipt.

The Verdict:

Their extraordinary inventory|selection|choice of items} makes ePromos an essential choice of provider of promotional products.

ePromos Review

ePromos offers all of the essential products & services you expect from a good promotional products supplier. Their experienced staff can help you choose the ideal items to integrate into a marketing campaign with a large variety of customized and niche items. We think ePromos is worth a visit, particularly in light of their unique high-end products.

Printing Services:

ePromos provides almost any type of printing service you might need. They offer silk screening in full color, embroidering, imprinting, embossing and engraving. ePromos also offers design services if you need help creating your own design or logo.

Promotional Product Selection:

ePromos has all of the products we looked for and more. They had a few promotional products not available on many competitors’ websites like games and auto products. Finding items on their website is relatively simple; not only can you search for the type of item you need, but also for the industry in which you are marketing.

ePromos does offer inexpensive products under a dollar and does have monthly sales and coupon codes. While $50 is a higher set-up fee than many companies require, it is only a one-time charge, so if you are ordering a repeat order item or an item that they sell for less than somewhere else – or an item that only ePromos carries, the fee shouldn’t affect your total to where you should shop elsewhere.

Website Features:
The ePromos website is good-looking and functional. It sports a functional and sleek layout – for which they’ve won awards. The website looks like it was designed with shoppers in mind.

We like companies that give their customers a way to provide feedback. While there is lots of information online from happy ePromos customers, it never hurts to enable customer reviews, so they offer a special section of their site for just that – customer experiences.

Shipping and Support:
The site offers a number of good ordering options, including rush order options, free samples, item tracking, quantity discounts and free proofs. Additionally, their 110% guarantee says that you get your order free and get 10% off your next order if you are dissatisfied.

ePromos also has live chat, which is always convenient if you have questions but don’t want to call. Of course, they have email and phone support too. If you would like to be aware of sales or other special offers, be sure to subscribe to follow their regular blog or Twitter account – or join the ePromos mailing list. You may also speak to custom service using Skype.

Summary:
ePromos is a very good promotional products company with some good products and printing methods. With ePromos‘ massive inventory, unique products and competitive prices we think ePromos should be on any serious buyer’s list of promo product sites to visit.

We do the research so you don’t have to do it!

If you have been doing affiliate marketing for a while then you probably know how profitable the dating vertical actually is. There are some great networks with high converting offers and Cupid PLC is one of them.

You can sign up here

Cupid PLC is an affiliate network specializing in running dating offers. They are based in the UK and offer many niche oriented dating sites for you to promote. The sign up process is quite easy and you will get approved instantly. Once inside the members are you can choose which offers you want to run and get your links.

Their payouts are very attractive. You can get paid up to $140 per sale with their Facebook dating app! They also offer mobile version of their dating sites which is great because if you are collecting phone numbers on your landing pages, you could follow up with them by sending a text just like you do with emails.

Let’s check out their offers

A lot of the offers are from reputable brands that invest millions of dollars into testing so you know you are promoting high converting landers.

When you are on the “Programs” page you can also click on the “Other sites to promote” link and that will take you to their more adult oriented programs

What’s cool about their affiliate network is that you can choose which payout structure you prefer. On the “Programs” page you can switch to get paid per sale, per lead, on CPA basis, or revenue sharing.

If you discover that your traffic is converting very well then it’s probably a good idea to switch to revenue sharing because you can make more money that way.

Another cool feature of Cupid PLC is that you can redirect some of your traffic that is not accepted to another offer using their “Traffic Back” technology.

To activate that you simply click on the “Traffic Back” link on the left sidebar inside your member’s area and set up a redirect.

They show a table with a list of countries they accept traffic from as shown above. So for example if you are promoting DateTheUK.com then you might want to set up a redirect for visitors from countries other than UK and Ireland to another offer that accepts that traffic.

This is a powerful feature because it allows you to monetize your traffic better and make money on possible leads that would be otherwise lost.

Cupid PLC also offers a cool promo generator tool. When you click on the “Promo Tools Manager” tab you can quickly get the code you need for banners, links, landing pages, and even their API.

As you can see Cupid PLC offers a lot of tools to help you get started and make money fast. I like how you can create GEO targeted pages etc.

I haven’t played around with their API yet, but it’s definitely something you might want to look into. With their API option you can basically build your own landing page (which I recommend) and then post the data you collect on your form directly to Cupid PLC.

This way you can build your own list in the background at the same time. Simply make the form also submit names and email addresses to Aweber for example automatically.

Cupid PLC pays out within first 15 days of each month. You can get paid by Paypal, wire transfer, Alertpay, Check, or through Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard.

When you start driving traffic and generating leads you can monitor your performance through their reporting tools with great detail. Cupid PLC offers support for affiliates so if you got any questions you can always reach their marketing team. They can even design a custom made landing page just for you to maximize your conversions.

Cupid PLC is definitely one of the leaders in the dating affiliate space. If you want to make some cash promoting dating offers then make sure to create an account and test out their offers.

They can help you set up a campaign that generates money. You could promote them through Facebook ads or on PlentyOfFish.

You also might want to read my post about driving adult traffic.

Overall it’s a great affiliate network

Related Posts

Tagged as: affiliate offers, affiliate program, cupidplc

[Original Source]

States are broke so they are looking for loopholes to steal some money. When the affiliate nexus tax was passed in Illinois, Amazon dropped all their affiliates here and tons of bloggers and small niche site owners lost their income they count on every month.

When Amazon announced their decision to drop Illinois affiliates it was condemned by the law makers and the Illinois governor even offered a program to provide alternatives for those who got affected by Amazon’s decision.

Give me a freaking break! Did you see their proposed program? You can check it out here.

It’s a joke! I mean not only they don’t provide any substantial answers, they try to tell us that Amazon is exploiting a loophole.

The system is one that is antiquated and needs to modernized for 21st Century commerce as brick-and-mortar businesses are at a significant, competitive disadvantage as they are collecting the tax as required by law, while retailers operating on the Internet are exploiting a loophole that allows them to forgo collecting the sales tax at the point of purchase despite the fact that it is still due.

The only people who are exploiting a loophole are the law makers!

Amazon does NOT have physical presence in Illinois so why should they pay tax on sales made by affiliates. Looks to me like the law makers need a lesson about affiliate marketing.

An affiliate is just someone who gets paid for advertising the merchant’s link on their site.

If you display Adsense on your website you are also an affiliate of Google, but this doesn’t apply to them, why?

Here is another quote from their so called “Stand With Main Street” program.

Online-only retailers are exploiting a massive loophole that puts small brick-and-mortart businesses at significant disadvantage…

Whose fault is that? Why should Amazon be punished for smart business decisions? Brick-and-mortar businesses should have jumped on the internet bandwagon years ago. Now they are whining because they missed the boat.

Here is an example:

Blockbuster went bankrupt because they didn’t get on the internet fast enough. They sat and watched as Netflix crushed them. Blockbuster CEOs should have been fired long time ago!

Everything is moving online so get with the program or perish!

So we should just stay in the Stone Age because some small shops can’t make sales? Maybe they need a different marketing angle to compete. Believe it or not, the really small shops have an advantage over Amazon because they offer something that Amazon cannot.

- Personality (l like going to small shops because I know the people there personally and they provide good service)

- Instant gratification – I pay now and I get it without waiting or taking chances on DOA

So who is really complaining about Amazon’s unfairness? (cough cough…Wal-mart, Best Buy)

What the law makers don’t realize is that Amazon doesn’t need its affiliates anymore. If you go to Google and search for any product Amazon has top search engine rankings almost 98% of the time.

The small affiliates basically were able to get in front of that traffic and presell the customer before sending them back to Amazon.

The proof is in the pudding! When you send someone to Amazon most people will buy stuff you didn’t even promote. I would see commissions for sales of products I never even heard about weeks after I sent people there because they added stuff to their shopping cart. So the fact is that the customers you send to Amazon most likely already purchased from them before.

I highly doubt that dropping affiliates will hurt Amazon in a big way, but I know that it will hurt the people who counted on that income every month. So in reality, since the income made by affiliates is now lost, the state won’t even get any income tax they used to get. Oops!

Now other states are trying to follow and pass similar laws. Outrage!

This law is unconstitutional and some courts are realizing it…I hope Colorado stops this bill.

If you are an affiliate from one of the states that is trying to enforce this ridiculous law don’t give up. There are legal workarounds! Here is a link to an affiliate from New York who didn’t let them bully him.

There is simply no way I would want to promote some other merchants. Amazon’s conversions are killer and people love shopping there.

If you have been dropped from Amazon affiliate program there are a few things you can do to get back in

- Move to a different state (Like FatWallet taking jobs, income tax to a different state that appreciates your business)

- Set up an LLC in a different state (Establish yourself as employee of the LLC)

- Use someone else’s affiliate link and charge for advertising (Contextual ads are not affected by this law)

In my opinion this law is an absurd. It’s just a lazy way for the state to try to squeeze some money from their citizens.

We shouldn’t let them do this to us. I encourage you to fight this any way you can. Amazon is being singled out and it’s unfair to them.

Here are some other interesting links I found that you should check out:

- Illinois will crush affiliate marketing if you don’t act now (Perry Marshall’s blog)

- Hawaii Governor Vetoes Amazon Tax Law (Keep it up)

- Supreme Court: Sales Tax on Mail Orders (Similar case ruled in favor of out of state publishers selling subscriptions)

- Performance Marketing Association Sues State of Illinois over Affiliate Nexus Law (Way to go!)

So I am glad to see that this is not going to go down without a fight. This law has only crippled the small business owners and affiliates that are looking for ways to generate some extra income.

Anyway, don’t give up on Amazon so easily and find a way to get back into their affiliate program. Don’t let them take away your income.

Instead of going after small US affiliates the law makers should impose some kind of laws on affiliates outside of USA who are raking in the money because they don’t need to obey some of the ridiculous laws we have to. International affiliates get away with not disclaiming they get paid for recommendations. They don’t have to pay income tax in some cases, but yet they advertise in US and making money hand over fist from sales made by US citizens.

But I guess they would rather screw you than try to help you.

Related Posts

Tagged as: amazon, scam, tax

[Original Source]

If you want to make some serious cash then you might want to consider getting into selling health products. I am not talking about some lame ebooks, I am talking about actual health supplements and vitamins.

This is not a cheap business to get into though, but extremely lucrative to say the least.

To get into this business you are going to need some serious cash up front. You don’t have to spend a ton of money but you will need at least $10k to start I would say.

If you are promoting or promoted CPA offers in the health vertical then you’ve probably wondered how these guys come up with their products so quick to fill the demand. When Oprah talked about Acai Berry there was a huge dump of Acai products into the marketplace literally overnight, right?

Well, the guys making money with those products didn’t create them or paid for development. What they do is buy private label health products and basically slap their own label on it. The claims that they made on their sales letters is another story, but that’s how it’s done.

There are 2 different ways to make money selling health products.

1. Build a store –You could create your own e-commerce store and sell your health products that way. It’s easy to set up a nice looking store these days. There are some great scripts that you could install in one afternoon with a built-in shopping cart. In fact, you don’t even need a script. You could just build the pages manually with some good content and use Paypal, or 1ShoppingCart to take payments.

2 Create your own CPA Offer – This is where the big money is being made! You could come up with your own Acai berry trial if you really wanted to. I know it’s a risky business, but you can bet that those companies are banking millions every year from these offers. With this business model you are going to need some additional cash to get your offer listed with a CPA network. Most networks will require rock solid proof that your offer actually converts, plus verification of funds available to pay for leads generated by affiliates.

So the question is how do you find these health manufacturers that provide private label health products?

Nutrition Manufacturer is one of those companies. They are located in Idaho, USA. Go check out their products I am sure some of you will find many similar offers you’ve promoted as an affiliate before.

You could purchase all their stuff wholesale and make a killing selling it. What’s important though is how you market it. Obviously you would need a great looking landing page that converts. But hey, you already know the format that produces best results lol Just look at the current health CPA offers on different affiliate networks. You can hire a graphic designer for like $200 bucks to create something that looks even better.

Next step is to hook up a merchant account to take payments and start the conversion testing phase. It’s important that you have your own merchant account. I recommend Authorize.net. They have proven track record and fees aren’t too bad compared to Paypal or some other payment processor (plus they offer API). Why do you want your own merchant account? Because you want control! End of story.

Anyway, there are many other health manufacturers that provide private label products. By the way, Nutrition Manufacturer will even help you design your label, or formulate something custom. When searching for a good manufacturer, pay attention to where they are located. Personally I would only do business with companies that are located in USA or Canada.

As I said before it’s a risky business and you want to make sure that you have proper disclaimers before going wild with your product.

I am looking into this myself and have been talking with someone who sold millions worth of stuff. I haven’t decided what kind of product I want to create yet. Right now I am just looking at the possibilities and how the process works.

If you cover your ass with all the proper disclaimers and make sure you don’t lie or state false claims, then it could turn out to be a highly profitable venture.

Related Posts

Tagged as: make money online

[Original Source]

There’s no getting around the fact that building an affiliate marketing business requires content – lots and lots of content.  You need articles to build your websites, posts to share on Web 2.0 and social bookmarking sites, messages for your autoresponder series and much more.

In fact, chances are good you’ve sat down at your computer on more than one occasion with a grimace on your face at the thought of writing another page of content.

There’s got to be a better way – and there is.  Enter your new best friend…  PLR content!

PLR stands for “private label rights,” and basically, this designation means that the original author of the content is granting you permission to claim the content as yours and use it any way you can think of.  The potential benefit of PLR content is obvious – no more frustrated nights spent tearing your hair out and battling an endless case of writer’s block.

Consider some of the following ways you can use PLR in your affiliate marketing business:

Build out your own sites – It’s no secret that Google and the other search engines love freshly updated websites.  But staying on top of a regular publishing schedule can be difficult, which makes PLR content a life saver.  PLR content is available in virtually every niche, from internet marketing to golf to scrapbooking, making it easy to find content that you can modify and post to your affiliate marketing websites.

Use PLR for backlinking – If your affiliate marketing business’s SEO or promotional techniques include article marketing, Web 2.0 site development or any other backlinking strategy that utilizes niche content, PLR articles can help you to generate the text needed to populate these sites much faster than you’ll be able to write it all yourself.

Obviously, there’s a big caveat here – since PLR is available to anyone on the internet, chances are you aren’t the only one who’s downloaded it.  Even if you purchase PLR content that’s available in limited release (ie – only a certain number of copies are sold), you’re still going to want to modify your PLR content to make it unique from the original version – especially for sites like Ezinearticles or Squidoo, which are particular about accepting only original content.

Now, if modifying PLR content to be unique sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, don’t forget that you don’t have to rewrite the text yourself.  There are plenty of freelance workers on sites like Odesk.com, Guru.com or eLance.com who can help you to rewrite your PLR to a pre-determined degree of uniqueness.  You can even find people on sites like Fiverr who will rewrite your PLR for as little as $5 – so don’t let this extra step prevent you from taking advantage of good PLR content!

Develop your own product – Once you’ve found success with affiliate marketing, the natural next step in your business is to develop your own info products.  Owning your own products means no more split commissions – no more busting your butt to sell a product, only to receive a fraction of the total purchase price.

However, as you might expect, creating your own info product is easier said than done.  Writing a complete ebook is a time consuming process – before you even sit down to start writing, you’ve got to come up with an idea, do your research and outline the product.  Outsourcing your ebook creation isn’t a significantly better option, as decent writers can charge $250 or more to put together a simple report.

Enter, PLR!  There are plenty of PLR ebooks out there for sale that you can put your own name on – for just a few dollars, you can have your own product put together and ready to sell within the hour.  Or, if you can’t find a PLR ebook that you like, you can always string together PLR articles to form an entirely new report.  Put your name and affiliate links in the ebook and create a new title and cover for the product – no one ever needs to know that you didn’t write it yourself.

Alternatively, if you don’t have any desire to get into selling your own products, you can also use the info product you created using PLR content to entice visitors to subscribe to your email list.  Most web visitors today are wary of giving away their email addresses to just anyone, so offering a free ebook or autoresponder course (built with PLR content, of course) is a great way to persuade them to provide this sensitive information.

Create a Video Series or YouTube Channel – Video marketing is hot right now, and there’s no sign of this trend going away any time soon.  People want to watch videos online, and search engines want to feature them prominently in the SERPs.  Simply adding a video series or YouTube channel to your affiliate site is a great way to gain tons of extra exposure and visitors.

And best of all, PLR content is well-suited to being converted into video content, as there’s no need to worry about rewriting the text to a certain level of uniqueness.  Since the search engines won’t be indexing a word-for-word audio transcription of the video, you don’t need to worry about the duplicate content penalty when it comes to PLR-based video content.

To create killer videos from PLR content, all you need is a free screencasting program, like Camstudio or Jing, and a microphone.  Install one of these programs, and create a simple background out of either an image or a Powerpoint slide.  Then, capture yourself reading the text of the PLR article, and – bam – you’ve got a video series ready to send visitors rushing back to your website.

As you can see, PLR content offers a nearly unlimited number of possibilities when it comes to affiliate marketing site building and product creation.  However, the final caution here is that not all PLR content is created equally.  For starters, avoid the “PLR article” packs that are sold for peanuts at all costs – the content is likely poorly written and out-of-date.

Instead, look for independent PLR providers who are well-reviewed on places like the Warrior Forum.  You can also use the classified ad sections of internet marketing forums to find PLR content that’s been reviewed by other past purchasers in order to weed out the good PLR from the bad.  By putting a little effort into selecting good PLR in the first place, you’ll find that transforming the text into any of the product creation methods described above becomes much easier.

Anyway, I understand that high quality original content is still king, but PLR can be used to supplement the original content you provide. There is nothing wrong with using good PLR content for your affiliate sites or reports you give away for free to build a list.

What I don’t recommend is using PLR for internet marketing related sites because people will see right through it. But you can use that content for your affiliate sites in the health market for example.

Related Posts

Tagged as: make money online, plr

[Original Source]

Up until very recently, the process of publishing a book was limited to the select few who were able to successfully navigate the hurdles of finding an agent and negotiating a contract with a traditional publishing house.

And although the Kindle ebook reading device has been around for several years, the ebook market has recently skyrocketed with the release of the Kindle app, which allows users to read their digitally-downloaded books via computer or mobile device.

Now, industry opinions vary on whether this shift towards greater media consumption via technological device truly strikes a death knell to the printed book, or whether there’s room for both in an increasingly tech-savvy world.

However, it’s reasonable to assume that as smartphone penetration continues to increase around to world and as more and more people become comfortable with digital book formats, the market will continue to grow over the next few years – whether it does so beside or in place of print books.  And that makes this an excellent time for internet marketers to get in on the digital publishing industry.

What is the Amazon Kindle Publishing Program?

In short, the Amazon Kindle publishing program allows anyone and everyone to develop digital content to be distributed through Amazon’s network.

- Kindle Direct Publishing – The Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program handles the publishing of full length books, whether from traditional authors and publishers looking to make print novels available to a wider distribution channel or more unconventional “indie” authors who are looking to share content without jumping through the hoops of the traditional printing industry.

- Kindle Singles – A recent addition to the Kindle content distribution network, Kindle Singles are 10,000-30,000 word essays sold for a few dollars each.  Think of them as longer essays or editorials that expand on a single topic, without the level of complexity of full books published through the KDP program.

- Kindle Publishing for Newspapers, Magazines and Blogs – Although these newer Kindle programs are still in the beta testing stage, Amazon has begun to introduce publishing models that would allow you to distribute your newspaper, magazine or blog content via Kindle.

How do I Get Started with Kindle Publishing?

Well, the first step – as you might expect – is to come up with the content you’ll use for your Kindle book.  If you don’t have a book, you can’t publish on Kindle – simple as that.

Now, if you’re a published author with a full length novel to your name already, coming up with content for your Kindle ebook won’t be a big deal.  Simply contact your publicist to learn more about how your publishing house handles digital distribution.

But for the purposes of this article, let’s assume that you’re an internet business owner looking to expand your brand’s reach or add a new revenue stream to your portfolio.  You don’t have a novel ready to go, but you shouldn’t let that deter you from exploring this new and growing business model.

As with generating content for your website, your email newsletter, your backlinks or your products, you have options when it comes to content creation for your Kindle ebook:

1. Write it yourself.  Drafting your own content is a free option for generating content for your Kindle ebook, but it can be time-consuming – especially if you aren’t a particularly talented writer.

If you’re struggling to get started with a project of this magnitude, mind-mapping your ideas can be a great way to come up with a central theme for your Kindle ebook, as well as the specific subtopics and chapters you want to include.  Sites like MindMeister allow you to create a limited number of these helpful diagrams for free (paid accounts with more features are available as well).

2. Hire a ghostwriter.  A good ghostwriter will write content on any subject for you, and should be able to customize the writing to suit your unique style and brand.  Ghostwriters may be paid by the word or by the project, and you can find them through sites like Guru, eLance or Freelancer.com, or on the classified ads sections of internet marketing forums.

Just remember – not all ghostwriters are created equally.  The skill set required to draft humorous fiction pieces is very different than the talents needed to create research-intensive reference materials.  When choosing a ghostwriter, be sure to look for someone who’s written the type of content you’re interested in purchasing and who has a record of positive feedback and repeat buyers.

3. Use PLR.  The use of PLR in Kindle ebooks is frequently disputed, but when used correctly, PLR can help you to dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to go from initial thought to completion on your Kindle ebook.

Be careful, though, not to simply copy PLR word-for-word and paste it into a single document.  Instead, follow my advice on using PLR correctly to find a good PLR writer and modify the content as needed to suit your own business.

4. Repurpose public domain content.  Plenty of sites teaching Kindle publishing strategies recommend using public domain content to create Kindle ebooks.  After all, it’s free, it’s widely available and it’s already formatted as a book.

Now, the problem with public domain content is that everyone has access to it – including Amazon itself, which has published plenty of public domain content under its “Free Classics” program.  So the key to using public domain content correctly is to add value by expanding on the topic.  Include an updated commentary, add current resources or put together a collection of public domain works on a specific topic in order to create a public domain product that’s uniquely yours.

One final tip on putting together the content for your Kindle ebook…  Unlike with traditional book publishing, there’s no editor that will step in to proofread your work and correct obvious errors.  It’s up to you to be sure the content you publish to Kindle reflects well on you and your business.

So don’t just run the “spell check” tool on your word processing program and hope for the best.  Instead, print out a copy of your ebook text, spend some quality time going through it, and ask a friend or family member to go through it with a fresh set of eyes.  Although you will be able to correct any errors that you discover once the book is published, it’s best to spend some time on this up front to prevent any copies from going out with mistakes in them.

Publishing Your Kindle Ebook

The first step to publishing your ebook on the Kindle network is to sign up for an Amazon account.  If you already have an Amazon account, you may be asked to provide some additional information before you’re able to publish your ebook, including your business name, address and how you’d like your royalties to be handled.

Once you’ve entered your account, click on “Add a new title” to begin uploading your book.

In the first half of the publishing section, you’ll enter details about your book.  If you have any questions about what a particular field requires, check out the helpful FAQ column on the right hand side of the page.

Step 1 – Enter your book details, including the name, description, language and other relevant information, as shown below:

Step 2 – Confirm that you do, in fact, have the appropriate rights to publish your ebook:

Step 3 – Select categories and keywords to assign to your ebook.  Spend some time navigating similar products on Amazon to find the most helpful data for your book.

Step 4 – Upload your cover, following the guidelines provided by Kindle and the recommendations at the end of this article.

Step 5 – Upload your actual ebook text as either a Word document (.doc only), plain text file or HTML document.  Although you can upload PDF files, they don’t always format correctly, so it’s best to stay away from this file type.

It’s also a good idea to read through Amazon’s Kindle complete formatting recommendations guidelines before uploading your ebook, as certain elements – such as bullet points, headers, footers and special fonts – won’t format correctly in Kindle.

Once your book has uploaded correctly, you’ll be given the option to preview your ebook in the Kindle Previewer.  Definitely take the time to go through your ebook in this format, as it’s much easier to make changes at this point, instead of waiting until your book is published to see it!

If everything looks good, click “Save and Continue” to move on to the “Rights & Pricing” section:

Step 6 – Select the territories in which you own publishing rights to your ebook.  If you’ve written your own Kindle ebook, select the “Worldwide rights” option.

Step 7 – In step 7, you get to choose your royalty level.  If you’ve priced your book between $.99 and $2.99, you’ll only be eligible for the 35% royalty level, while publishers whose books retail for $2.99 and up can choose the 70% option.  Amazon’s calculator will help you determine which level is right for you, as well as estimate your delivery costs (based on the size of the file and the expected data transfer).

Step 8 – In the final step of the Kindle publishing process, you’ll decide whether or not to offer lending permissions and – if everything is set up correctly – save and publish your book!

Alternatively, if you have content in other formats that you’d like to convert to Kindle ebooks, Amazon offers two additional tools that you may find useful:

- KindleGen – Amazon’s KindleGen program is a command line prompt tool that allows you to convert HTML files into the Kindle format.  You can also use this tool to convert any ePub files you’ve already published through Apple’s iBooks program to Kindle documents.

- Kindle Plugin for Adobe InDesign – If you’re a more sophisticated designer who is looking to convert Adobe InDesign files to Kindle ebooks, you can use Amazon’s plugins to ensure that formatting and graphic elements aren’t lost in the conversion process.

The download files and documentation for these two tools can be found on the Kindle Publishing Programs page.

That’s it – you’re on your way to becoming a published author!  Your ebook will appear in the Kindle store within 72 hours (unless you specify a publish date for some time in the future).

Getting the Most out of Kindle Publishing

So, the good news is that publishing a book on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program (as well as on Apples iBook marketplace and the Barnes & Noble PubIt program, if you choose to expand your ebook distribution to these channels) is incredibly easy.  The bad news is that actually making money with this business model isn’t quite as simple.

Although most people think of Kindle publishing as a “set-it-and-forget-it” kind of deal, there’s no “Rotisserie Magic” here to help you.  Once your ebook is accepted into the Kindle collection, you can’t sit back and wait for the sales to come rolling in – they won’t.  Instead, you’ll need to take specific actions to ensure that you get the most out of your Kindle ebook.

Choose the Right Topic

The key to launching a successful Kindle ebook actually begins in the planning stages.  When picking a topic for your ebook, most newbie publishers set out to find an untapped niche and write the first book on a subject that hasn’t been covered before.

And although this might sound logical, the obvious issue is that there’s no good way to test for demand for a subject that hasn’t been covered before.  Just because you think a topic is interesting and because there seems to be a wide open space for it, doesn’t mean that readers will be interested enough to shell out money to read about it.

But the great thing about books is that few people who are truly interested in a subject only ever read one single book on it.  Think about golf enthusiasts.  Do you really think they’re only going to read one book on how to improve their technique?  Chances are they’re going to read dozens – if not hundreds – of books on the subject, including everything from technique advice to course guides to player biographies.

Now, if you’re planning to use your Kindle ebook to promote your blog or website, you might not have as much flexibility in selecting a topic as someone who is simply interested in building a business as a Kindle content publisher.  However, there are a few tools you can use to find which specific subtopics within your niche are in highest demand on Kindle.

One in particular is the free website, http://www.novelrank.com.  This site tracks the sales data of both print and ebook content on Amazon, and by tracking specific books in the subtopics you’re considering, you can see how well these subniches are selling.  If you find a subtopic of your niche that tends to rank higher and sell faster than another, pursue the busier niche to capitalize on existing interest in a topic.

Another great tool that you can use to find great Kindle topic ideas is Jungle Search to really dig into Amazon’s sales data.  For example, if you find a niche of physical books that’s selling well, but doesn’t seem to have as many related options available as Kindle ebooks, couldn’t that be a sign that the market is ready for a digital version?

To confirm how many Kindle ebooks have been published in the niche you’re considering, visit EReader IQ.  You can even drill down your searches to see what ebooks are currently available in the Kindle market place by genre or keyword, price point, language or target reader age.  Using these three sites together can help you to put together a picture of where you can meet a currently untapped need in the Kindle marketplace.

Design a Professional Cover

Even in the digital world, people judge books by their covers, so designing a professional cover graphic for your Kindle ebook is an absolute must.  If you don’t have the graphic design skills to create one yourself, hire it out to a professional on Guru, eLance or Fiverr – but don’t assume you can get away with some cheesy graphics slapped together to form your cover.

Now, one interesting thing is that many Kindle publishers have found that the faux “ecovers” we use so often in affiliate marketing (you know – the ones that look like 3D paperback novels, with mock shadows and everything) don’t convert as well as the flat 2D graphics used by traditional publishing houses for their ebook conversions.

So when choosing a design for your ebook cover, it’s best to take a look at the best selling ebooks in your niche and see what kinds of cover graphics they’re using.  What stands out to you?  Which elements of their covers catch your eye?  Mimic (but don’t explicitly copy) these elements on your own ebook cover.

Get Reviewed

Since Amazon has changed the way tags are utilized with Kindle ebooks (namely, making them significantly less user friendly by requiring users to start with tag searches at the specified tag cloud pages), ebook publishers need to make even more of an effort to connect readers with their books.

One way to increase your Kindle ebook’s visibility is by getting it reviewed.  This adds credibility and social proof to your ebook and may make it easier to get included on best seller or recommended reading lists.  Check out some of the following options:

Indie Book Reviewer Yellow Pages

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing (search here for content on getting reviews)

The Book Marketing Network

Recommend Your Products or Services

As you can guess from Amazon’s royalty rates, you probably aren’t going to get rich simply selling Kindle ebooks.  For example, if you launch a new ebook at $.99 (which can be a smart move if you’re a new publisher without a set audience), you’ll only earn $.20-.30/copy, depending on your delivery fees.  And at that rate, you’re going to have to sell a lot of books to get rich as a Kindle publisher!

Instead, plenty of marketers use their Kindle ebooks to promote their own products and services.  Consider the following:

- Affiliate links that promote the products mentioned in your ebook

- Special coupon codes for readers to receive a discount on your products or services

- In-text recommendations that send readers to your squeeze page or opt-in form

Now, there’s some debate as to whether or not advertisements are truly allowed in Kindle ebooks based on Amazon’s terms and conditions.  The specific language from Amazon’s TOS that has publishers concerned is the following:

“You may not include in any Digital Book any advertisements or other content that is primarily intended to advertise or promote products or services.”

Of course, there are a number of different ways this language could be interpreted.  Can squeeze pages that offer free information or free trials to membership programs be considered advertisements, as they offer additional value to readers?  Would traditional publishers who include announcements about upcoming volumes be bound by this restriction as well?

As you can see, this is a gray area where it’s best to use your own judgment.  There certainly are Kindle ebook publishers out there using all of the methods described above successfully, although your own tolerance for risk may differ.

Translate Your Kindle Ebook to Other Languages

Yes, the majority of Kindle readers will purchase their books through Amazon’s US or UK stores, and most will prefer to read your content in the English language.  But don’t let this dissuade you from offering your content in global markets, as ebook downloads are increasing far faster in some of these countries (Germany especially) than they are in the US and the UK.

If you don’t speak a second language well enough to translate your Kindle ebook, you can always pay to have your content translated through sites like Guru, eLance or Freelancer.com.  Or, if you’re starting your publishing business on a shoestring budget, contact local language groups in your area or the foreign language department at your local university for referrals to individuals who may be willing to barter for translation services.

Keep Publishing

Although Kindle is the largest ebook retailer online, it isn’t the only game in town, as both Apple’s iBook marketplace and Barnes & Noble’s PubIt program are gaining traction in the growing digital book space.  So once you’ve mastered publishing on Kindle, it’s a smart move to expand your publishing empire to these arenas as well, in order to reach more potential buyers and increase your earnings.

Now, if learning about the different publishing and formatting requirements of these different services sounds too time consuming, consider looking into an ebook distribution service like SmashWords.  As a SmashWords author, all you have to do is upload your ebook once – then, their service submits your content to the big three ebook networks listed above, in addition to a number of other smaller digital content distributors (like the Sony Reader Store and the Diesel eBook Store).

There is no upfront fee to use the SmashWords service, although they will take another cut off the top of your ebook royalties.  Currently, you’ll receive 85% of the net sales proceeds from sales of your ebook on their site, or 60% of the list price of your ebook from purchases made through their retailer network.  Although this can cut into your profits, the convenience of publishing your ebook once and having it distributed automatically is worth the cost for some publishers.

(As a note, SmashWords does not accept PLR content ebooks or public domain content ebooks.)

To get started with the SmashWords service, check out the SmashWords Book Marketing Guide and the SmashWords Style Guide, both of which are available for free in the Kindle Store.  These two guides show you exactly how to format your ebook for maximum success with the SmashWords format, and how to market your published ebook effectively.

If you’re lucky, your Kindle ebook will be a winner from the day it’s launched.  But if not, don’t worry – most publishers find that they need a portfolio of several books in order to earn a reasonable income.  Try to figure out what worked in your first effort and improve on your publishing and promotional methods with your next release.  With time and by expanding your portfolio, you should see a definite increase in your Kindle income!

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Tagged as: kindle, make money online

[Original Source]

So does submitting your site or blog to web directories still work? Can that increase your search engine rankings? I get asked this question all the time so I decided to write a blog post about it.

First let me tell you what doesn’t work.  When someone offers you a directory submission service where they submit to hundreds or thousands of directories then hide your wallet and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction

Those services usually submit to low quality directories that Google doesn’t like and rarely ever crawls.

What you want to do is submit manually to a handful of good web directories that have a real human reviewing each submission. There aren’t that many of them out there and links from those directories still count and produce trust in the eyes of Google.

Those links won’t pass any page rank for the most part but Google will assign a trust factor to your site if it’s listed in quality directories.

So the question is which ones are good directories?

The obvious ones are:

BOTW.org – Great web directory that every site and blog owner who is serious about his business should be listed in. They guarantee your site will be reviewed by an editor in timely manner (unlike DMoz)

DMOZ.org – Once used to be a great directory and getting listed there still helps but good luck getting reviewed and actually accepted. Just submit your site once and forget about their existence.

Yahoo Directory – Worth every penny and Google crawls their pages all the time. Yahoo directory will also pass some page rank. I have listed a new site there without any other links and got Page Rank 3 on the first update.

Business.com – Well, if you can get them to give you a dofollow link them it’s worth it, otherwise don’t bother. I don’t understand why they changed to nofollow (makes no sense). It’s like saying, “Yes, your site is good quality but we will use nofollow cause we still don’t trust you)

So now how do you find more directories that are still worth submitting to? There are more and you can find them easily using old school methods.

What I usually do (this still works well after so many years) is search for my competitor’s domain name with quotes.

Simply analyze the results by going through as many search results pages as you can and pay attention to directory listings.

Click on them and see where your competitor is listed and submit your site there too. This is sooo simple but so effective. I have done this for many different sites I own and always had positive results.

When a directory you submitting to charges money for submission that’s a good indicator that they manually review sites and Google will count those links (It’s funny that Google counts directory links which are paid links, but not when you buy them from other sites)

Always make sure that the category you are submitting to is indexed in Google. Just grab the url and paste it into search to see if Google indexed it. If yes, then obviously Google crawls that page and it would be beneficial to have your site listed there too.

Manual directory submission to quality web directories works well and you should always do that for your sites.

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Tagged as: directory submission, search engine rankings

[Original Source]

Most affiliate marketers promote products through affiliate networks and obviously it works, but you could create your own affiliate deals like I do with local businesses in your area.

Going direct and bypassing affiliate networks can not only double but sometimes even triple your earnings. Why? Because you control the process and track leads yourself through your own tracking platform.

The truth is that selling local businesses on the fact they need your service can be difficult sometimes, so what I do is ask them how many leads they want per day and how much they are willing to pay for it?

Next, you set up your lead capture page and start a Facebook campaign targeting local area where the business operates. (you can also set up a facebook fanpage for them for a fee)

For example, you could contact one of the local real estate agents in your local area and set up your own lead generation campaign for them.

Once you have a few clients paying you $20-$30 per lead you could scale up and target companies that operate nationwide.

Anyway, there are only 4 things you need to create these deals:

1. Tracking script (like Affiliate Prophet)

2. Hosting account (so you can host your lead capture pages)

3. Autoresponder (like Aweber)

4. Cash to fund your campaign

Here is how this works…

You contact the local business and find out how much is a lead worth to them. Next, you ask them how many leads per day they are willing to acquire from you (this will determine your daily spending budget). Then you create a lead capture page or a facebook fanpage with a good offer (discount or coupon in exchange for a like and optin)

You need to place a tracking pixel on the page people land after opting in. With Affiliate Prophet it’s easy because it gives you the pixel automatically after you create a campaign.

There are other free tracking scripts out there, but Affiliate Prophet does some amazing stuff and it’s a self-hosted tracking platform, so there are no monthly fees to use it.

Next, you start the Facebook campaign. Login to your Facebook account and click on the Advertising link at the bottom. From there you can create your campaign.

It’s important that you ask the business what demographics they are targeting. Also, you want to make sure that you can actually make money with them, so if they are not willing to pay more than $10 per lead I wouldn’t do business with them.

Keep in mind that after running the campaign it might turn out that they like the leads and if it’s not producing a good ROI for you then you should charge not per lead but for advertising costs plus percentage of their spending.

What’s cool about Affiliate Prophet is that you can see in real time how much money you are making and how well the campaign converts.

Those are my stats from some of my campaigns that I have done in the past for some clients.

When you start the campaign make sure to run with a low daily budget so that you can quickly figure out if it’s going to be profitable for you or not. When starting a campaign on Facebook use CPC model at first and if it produces good CTR you can switch to CPM.

It’s a simple business model that works. Most affiliate marketers do not like offline marketing because the only reason why they want to make money online is so they can do it from home in their pajamas without talking to anyone So if that’s you then this might not be for you unless you can hire someone else to do the talking for you.

This strategy can be very lucrative because the leads you capture also go into your autoresponder, so you can email them too! I don’t know about you but building a list for free sounds good to me.

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Tagged as: make money online

[Original Source]

So you probably wonder what Link Wheels are and how they can increase your search engine rankings, right? Link Wheels is a hot topic in the internet marketing space because they actually do work to some extent.

Does Google like it? No! Because the fact is you are manipulating the search engines to get higher rankings by placing these links yourself regardless if the content on your website is high quality or not.

So what if your content is good? Well, then you can try that and see what happens

If you are going to use Link Wheels to get backlinks for your website it’s crucial that your website has quality content to back up the rankings you achieve by using them.

What are Link Wheels?

Link Wheels are clusters of web 2.0 pages linking back to your website. The concept is quite simple. You piggy back of the authority that these web 2.0 properties already have to pass link juice to your website, so you can rank higher for your keyword phrases.

Here is a simple Link Wheel

In this example all the web 2.0 sites in your Link Wheel cluster point back to your own website. The problem with this Link Wheel is that it’s easily detectable and if your site sucks (doesn’t provide any value) then it could be dropped into the Google’s Spam Sites Oblivion…lol

Well, not really because if that was the case then competitors would be doing this to each other to eliminate one another.

The Link Wheel above is kind of weak too. Just links from web 2.0 properties isn’t enough so let’s super charge this sucker.

How do you super charge a Link Wheel? It’s quite simple actually; just build backlinks for the web 2.0 pages you created.

It would look like this

You can get backlinks to these pages from article marketing, press releases and other web 2.0 sites. Some people even buy links to these web 2.0 pages they created so they gain Page Rank, but that’s risky and I DO NOT recommend it

So now this super charged bad boy can pass some serious link juice, but the main problem is still not solved and that is the footprints easily detectable by Google.

What do we do now? Hmm…Well, let’s take it to a whole new level

Let’s make a Link Wheel Monster

Ok, now we are in business! This Link Wheel can do some damage (meaning in a good way) and seriously influence your rankings.

So how do you create a Link Wheel?

First of all, you need to come up with a plan and design your Link Wheel from scratch. Then you create accounts on these web 2.0 properties and submit your content.

The problem with creating Link Wheels manually is that it takes quite a bit of time, but the benefit is that manually created Link Wheels are much more effective because your content will be higher quality.

The content you create for Link Wheels should be original and high quality so those web 2.0 properties can also rank high.

Link Wheel Services

Link Wheel services can save you a ton of time but the main issue is that they don’t care about quality of your site and spam the hell out of serps to get you ranked. They produce low quality content from spun articles and distribute it cluttering the serps with garbage that doesn’t help the search engine user.

Link Wheel Software

There are software tools out there that can automate account creation which is cool if you are using your own original content for submission. I don’t recommend using spun articles, but I know they work (for now).

Here are some tips if you want to create quality Link Wheels that produce amazing results

- Produce your own original quality content for distribution

- Design complex Link Wheels so that you don’t leave any footprints

- Make sure your site also has quality content

- Don’t start your link building campaign for a brand new site with Link Wheels (Get some decent saturation first and let the site age a bit before dumping hundreds of backlinks at it)

Link Wheels are quite effective and can truly bump your site up to the top if done right, but you shouldn’t use this strategy as your main link building tactic. It needs to be part of a bigger picture, which means that it should be used as a supplemental technique to give your site a boost.

The most important thing though is that you link to a site that provides valuable content. I have seen so many sites that use Link Wheels and get top rankings but then their own content sucks and they drop after a while.  Make it last!

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Tagged as: backlinks

[Original Source]