5 Ways to Avoid Writers Block
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
But often coming up with ideas about what to write about is difficult. It’s not unlike the novel writer who has started a book but then sits down at their computer and then can’t think of a thing to say.
Welcome to the world of “writer’s block”. We all have it from time to time and while it might be difficult to get those wheels turning in your mind as to what to say, here are some tips to keep those wheels well-oiled:
1. Visit blogs that talk about your topic. Oftentimes you’ll find a topic on another blog that you hadn’t considered yourself. Take a look through their archives and see which topics are getting the most discussion. Jot down some ideas that you think may be interesting to your own readers and then use that as a springboard for your own ideas.
2. Check your email. You likely subscribe to other people’s newsletters within your industry. What kinds of information are they sending you? Are you interested in that information as well? If so, it’s likely your readers are too.
3. Visit Google. Visit Google and do a search for one of your keywords then take a look at the links that show up on the left hand side of the page. Here you will have the option of searching blogs, videos, and discussions on the term you searched on. Visit each of these to see if you can’t get a spark going as to what you can write about.
4. Visit your RSS Reader. Many people use RSS readers which help them to keep up to date on what other people are discussing online. A quick visit to your own RSS reader will give you a wide array of ideas that you can use on your own site.
5. Visit Article Directories. Most article directories have a section that showcases the most published articles within a certain area of expertise. Find out which of these articles have been published the most and then write your own take on that topic for your own site or newsletter. This is usually a great indication of what is popular right now.
Writer’s block affects everyone. But thankfully the Internet has provided us with a vast amount of resources that can help us break out of our slump by simply doing a little bit of investigation ourselves.
Google’s Love / Hate Relationship With Affiliate Marketers
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Google, Internet Marketing, seo
This fantastic infographic provided by SEOBook, shows how Google’s attitude towards affiliates has changed over the years. First, they loved you because you bought PPC traffic, then when that traffic began to get noticed by big companies, they started a slow but steady campaign to oust most affiliates from their PPC network; even going as far as to ban many affiliates.
At first you would think that it may be the affiliates problem right? They should have known that their ads would get banned. Not so fast…whenever you delete or pause a PPC ad in Google, no matter how old it is, it still remains in your account. Many affiliates were banned because these old, outdated ads, which may have been deleted or paused, were at the time completely within Google’s terms and conditions; however, because they currently don’t adhere to the rules, they were banned, some for life.
Essentially, Google had them by the throat. They ran completely legitimate ads in Google say in 2005, decided that they didn’t want to run that ad anymore for whatever reason, deleted it, (although still contained within the account, thus, not truly deleted), and then had their account banned because it didn’t adhere with Google’s current terms and conditions.
Can you see the problem here?
Over the years, affiliates have been taking some pretty big hits by Google; either getting their sites pushed down in the search results, or whatever the case may be.
Ironically, during this short amount of time, Google has opened up their own affiliate network. Which leads one to wonder if these same sites were to promote products from Google’s affiliate network, would it make a difference in rankings? I haven’t tested this but would sure be curious to hear of anyone who has.
So, all this rant out of the way, here’s the infographic I was telling you about…
Internet Marketing Infographics by SEO Book
Success at Affiliate Marketing WithOUT a Website?
Many times I have heard “I don’t have a website so I can’t be successful at affiliate marketing.” – nonsense! While it is 100% possible to earn affiliate income without a website, I won’t lie to you and tell you that it will be easy; as a matter of fact, it can be downright difficult.
But before we go any further however, I do want you to know that if you have been putting off creating a site because A) you felt it was too complicated or B) you felt it would be too expensive, I have some really great free and easy alternatives at the bottom of this post.
But for now, let’s just assume that you don’t want to create a site.
Just remember, the way to become a successful affiliate is to get people to click on your affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, fill out a form, or whatever it may be that gets you a commission.
Therefore, the most important thing to do is to get your link in front of people right? There are a multitude of ways to do so but, again, they will take time because no matter where you go, how you participate, or even what you say, it will take time to build up trust in you so that someone feels comfortable clicking on your link.
First off, one thing that you can do is create a free eBook that you simply give away. Within this free eBook, you can simply add in your affiliate links so that as your eBook gets passed around (which should be encouraged), the more people will have exposure to it, and the more likely you are to get clicks on your affiliate links.
Obviously, this eBook would be on a similar topic that your affiliate links are promoting. You don’t want to write an eBook about soy candles and then promote golf clubs.
Participate in forums. Virtually any forum online will allow you to add a signature to your profile and this signature can then link off to your affiliate offer. That being said, you should pick a forum that again, is directly related to your affiliate programs’ topic. Once you’ve found these forums, you can then start posting but whatever you do, make certain that you are posting helpful information. If you create a new account and then start making posts on the forum that say things like “great post!” or “thanks for the information” or some other comment that doesn’t directly contribute to the conversation itself, you will not earn a heck of a lot of trust. It takes time.
PPC Marketing. Now, this gets a little “iffy” because if you don’t want to put out the money for creating a website you probably don’t want to have to pay the costs of pay-per-click advertising. Not to mention that Google will probably not let you advertise a direct affiliate link on their network; Facebook however (at least at the time of this writing) will. Not to mention, Facebook is a lot cheaper, and you can target groups of people by age group, interest, where they’re located in the United States, etc. So this is another option to consider as well.
There are lots of ways to market your affiliate link but without having a website but to be honest, it takes about 1,000% more work than if you have a website of your own. Plus, having a website of your own let’s you track how well something is doing for you – something that would be incredibly time-consuming without a site.
That being said, I want to give you some really cheap alternatives to start with. Each of these locations will let you build a website for free (although I do recommend that you have your own domain name if not now, at least a little bit further down the road), and these sites are so easy to use you’ll even surprise yourself!
