Is it ethical to use a blog format for a niche site?  I think a clearly defined goal for your blog will avoid any confusion.  What do you hope to accomplish with your new blog?

There is nothing worse than a fake authority site where countless promotions take place.  That is why it is important to establish the flavor of the blog at the very beginning.  What do you think?  

You can catch the original article here.

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Rosalind Gardner is against all the hype floating around on the internet. She can be depended upon to tell it the way it really is. Her book, “The Super Affiliate Handbook” is required reading. Save yourself a lot of money and get this first. It is a real handbook on affiliate marketing. You will want to print out a hard copy as well as keep it on your desktop for all the valuable links.

The second product, “Affiliate Elite” is a real gem. It is hard to describe this service. You have to try it out to see what it is all about. Brad Callen is so confident that once you try it you will stay, that he offers a $2.95 trial.  Do not miss out on this strategic advantage for your affiliate marketing success.

I will be recommending more tools in the future but this is a good place to start. I bought a lot of junk before I found these two winners. Take it from me, this is a good place to start when you purchase products.

Click here for more information

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20 Free eBooks About Social Media

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/20-free-ebooks-about-social-media/

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This article presents 12 steps to help you succeed in affiliate marketing and earn lots of commissions.

1. Take the initial time to choose a niche that you are interested in and that you would like to promote as an affiliate. Do not try to be a jack of all trades and sign up for too many programs on different topics. At first keep your affiliate marketing targeted to a single market, and then promote products that relate to that market.

2. Research and select the best affiliate programs for your niche. You must choose the most rewarding, reliable and successful affiliate programs either directly from the merchant or through an affiliate network. The merchant or affiliate manager must also supply you with plenty of marketing tools that you can use to promote the products.

3. Make sure the affiliate program and products are of the highest quality and a good deal. This will make it much easier for you to sell these products or programs with conviction. Stay away from the quick buck and gimmicks.

4. Build a web site focused on your niche, and have high quality and unique content that is rich with your key words and phrases. If this is a niche that you are passionate about then you will have no problem updating your site regularly.

5. Use pay per click advertising but have a clear budget for promoting your website. If you stay away from the gimmicks and focus on good content you should have no problem with google slapping you. (banning or raising your cost per click through the roof)

6. Drive traffic to your website. Your website will need traffic for you to earn affiliate commissions. Write articles, submit online press releases related to your niche and submit your website to search engines. You can also exchange links with higher ranking websites related to your niche.

7. Review your affiliate programs or products on a blog, and include your affiliate links. This is very important and the wave of the future.

8. Build an email list with an auto-responder and offer free e-courses, articles or e-books. When you have a list, you can keep in regular contact with your prospects and recommend your affiliate products to them.

9. Be available to answer any questions from your prospects and customers. Customer relationship management is very important in online business. Make sure that you provide your real name and an email address on your website so that potential customers can contact you with questions, and know there is a real person behind that website. This is important for your credibility.

10. Always include a privacy statement on your site. Look at the statements on successful sites and adapt one for your specific purpose. Do not copy it verbatim.

11. Once you are consistently making money as an affiliate consider building your own network of sub-affiliates. Keep in touch with your sub-affiliates and motivate them to succeed because their success is your success too. Your job as a super affiliate is to manage those under you. Do not allow the tag “super affiliate” to go to your head.

12. Work hard consistently in promoting and adding content to your website and have patience. Have clear vision and work your plan.

These 12 steps can help anyone succeed in affiliate marketing, achieve success, and earn lots of affiliate commissions!

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There are three types of affiliate marketing methods of payment – either pay-per-click (generated by actual clicks or referrals to the merchant from the affiliate’s site), pay-per-action or pay-per-sale (very similar, in that the affiliate receives payment, either a fixed amount or commission, based on the sales or subscriptions that have come through referrals or adverts on the affiliate’s site.) The last two methods of payment are generally preferred by merchants, due to many fraudsters taking advantage of the click system and setting up sites with forced clicks, pop-ups, adware, spam, false advertising and many other “black hat” techniques.

Affiliate marketing is not limited to only display-adverts on an affiliate site, but also comes in the form of email, blogs, rss feeds, content and niche sites, loyalty sites, comparison sites or shopping directories, and other forms. It is an extremely low cost, but highly effective form of marketing and advertising, presenting little to no risk for both the merchant and the affiliate.

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