Search engine optimization (SEO) has become more and more difficult as online business continues it’s exponential growth. Ten years ago, SEO was as simple as targeting phrases and words in your content, having a link or two, and meta tags for your website.

Today, SEO is much more complex. Back links, latent semantic indexing (to be discussed in a different article), page optimization, site maps, and otherwise are all important (but unequally so) parts of a SEO strategy. Unfortunately for internet marketers (or anyone trying to SEO their website), the major search engines (MSN, Yahoo, and Google) have not and will not release their algorithms.

In other words, no one actually knows just how important each factor really is except for the search engines.

So, what is a back link anyway?

A back link is simply an incoming link to your website from another website. The other website can be a blog, an affiliate site, or otherwise. So long as they link to you, the search engines will pick it up when they crawl it and credit it towards your website as a relevant backlink. At the moment, back links are probably the single most important part of a good SEO strategy.

However, there are different types of back links (more on that in a moment), and there are many variables in determining just how beneficial that link will be.

Back link variables

Having a million back links to your website may do wonders for your search engine rankings, or it may do nothing at all. You see, back links are only beneficial to you if the search engines consider them relevant. And, in order for the search engines to consider them relevant, they need to be legimate and valid.

What affects the quality of a back link?

• The website it’s coming from. A website with a high Page Rank (PR), or a website that is well established and respected, will carry more weight than an affiliate website, spam website, or new website.
• The anchor text of the link. Back links with your main keywords as the anchor text are more beneficial to you than just a link.
• How relevant the link is. Back links that originate from websites that are completely unrelated to your website are likely to have little effect. Links from related websites pull more weight.

This is why many webmasters begin to pull their hair out as they begin the often long and drawn out process of generating valid back links.

Tips for obtaining valid back links

Before you start grinding your teeth and kicking your computer in frustration, realize that there are relatively painless ways at generating back links. However, as with anything that is free, it takes time and patience. If you have both, you’re ahead of the game!

• Write and submit articles. Submitting unique articles to many directories will give you free publicity as well as a back link. Many internet marketers base their entire marketing and SEO strategy around this.
• Social networking. MySpace and Facebook are great places to meet like minded people. Link to their websites and they link to you - eveybody wins.
• Blogs. Try writing guest content for a blog in exchange for a back link. Or, if that is not allowable, write valid comments and link back to your website.
• Digg/Stumbleupon/Technorati. Joining one (or all) of these communities can become fun and profitable at the same time!

Of course, there are also paid services from private individuals as well as SEO firms. Regardless, ensure that the back links are valid as per the terms mentioned earlier in this article.

Once you get the hang of it, generating back links becomes less stressful and more beneficial. The trick is learning the first time.

Forums have been around since the dawn of the internet, and even before that (albeit, in a slightly different form). Whoever thought of the idea of creating an internet forum was a genius, as there is no easier way to develop an online community that shares the same communal values and interests.

The key to making money online comes down to targeted traffic, trust, and necessity. If you are an affiliate, you may opt to create an authorative landing site for an affiliate offer, showing the end user a positive experience that is more likely to result in a conversion.

An internet forum is kind of like a large conference hall: thousands of individual people all voicing their thoughts and opinions about common interests. As an affiliate marketer, it would make sense to try and grow a forum around a series of affiliate offers, as people who participate are also likely to convert.

If you are running an offer for Cars.com, placing the offers creatives on your automotive themed forum is much more likely to convert than simply scattering the links around various websites. This is due to three things:

1. Mentality. Someone who is active in a similarly themed forum is more likely to become a conversion simply because they are more familiar with the offer.
2. Interest. You never know the mindset of your forums members, and placing offers that are relevant to their known interests (the forum topic) is more likely to result in a conversion. Users may be seeking various aspects of the niche at any given time, so catering to those needs is a win/win for all parties involved.
3. Trust. Active members of your forum are going to have more trust in the forum than some random landing site. This can work out to your advantage.

Case Study
A prime example of this type of monetization is PhenForum, a community based website about weight loss pills. The developer of PhenForum is a very smart marketer, as developing a community around one of the most lucrative markets in the world was a very smart way to develop an income.

PhenForum actively encourages its users to share weight loss stories, success, and failures, as well as experiences with various weight loss supplements. It also has affiliate links to various types of weight loss supplements, such as Phentramin. Through active encouragement of its user base, as well as clever SEO techniques, PhenForum is one of the top search results for many keywords and generates thousands of dollars per month in revenue.

Proven Success - Yours to Achieve
Starting a forum is almost identical to starting a website: you need to create the actual page, develop traffic, and generate an active user base. An internet forum will start to grow on its own as your forum attracts new members- word of mouth and viral marketing can bring in big results once they get going.

I’ve come to realize that I’ve put quite a bit of content on this website that is helpful in the sense that it talks about the poper mindset or expectations, yet there is nothing that flat out says “this will make you money”.

So, here it is. Read this post, do what it says, and you will make money. It’s that simple.

Step One: Finding an offer.

The first thing that you need is an account at an affiliate network. There are many to choose from, though I prefer to use Copeac (for a variety of reasons- see this post). You’re looking for a very specific type of offer- what’s known as an “e-mail submit” or a “zip submit”.

These types of offers are unique for two reasons:

1. They have low payouts. Their payout is almost always less than $2.
2. They require almost zero effort from the user. All the user has to do is enter their e-mail address of zip code. This type of simple entry means that your conversions will be higher (as it requires no effort at all from the user).

When I am looking for zip/e-mail submits, I just look for the one that’s paying the most. The offer itself is irrelevant to me, as the conversions are going to be high so long as the landing page is decent.

TIP: Right now, iPhone offers are converting like mad. My advice would be to use one of those.

Step Two: Make a diggable website.

If you don’t have a Digg account, make one. Sign up, and then post a story. Try and post a story that is funny or insanely interesting, as you want to draw in as much traffic as possible. I made a page about funny cat pictures, and over a four day period in drew in 5,000 hits (not bad, huh?).

Once the site (or page) is made, make sure to place your affiliate ads on good positions on the website. Use graphical creatives to catch the attention. If possible, use a targeted offer based on your Digg story (it will increase conversions).

Step Three: Start Digging

Submit your Digg story and make sure that it links to your website. Then, get a group of your friends to “digg” your story, making it more popular. As it becomes more popular, more people will see your funny page. If it is actually funny, viral marketing may spread as well (how many e-mails do you receive a day with funny stuff in it?).

This all translates into traffic, and traffic means more traffic for your affiliate ads. Since Digg traffic is free (it only costs time), any amount of money that you make will be profit.

Profit Potential

How much money could you make doing this? My first few Digg’s landed me four of five days, and each page was making $80+ a day. Though the longevity of this method is uncertain, the results are there for now.

Many affiliates shoot from the hip with their marketing, and the result is a massive bombardment of advertising and promotion that usually yields little reward. What many affiliates don’t realize is that the affiliate program itself is a major factor in their success.

Thousands of affiliate programs exist online today. Online commerce was completely revolutionized by them, in fact, and now nearly two thirds of all of the transactions made on the web have three parties: the vendor, the affiliate, and the customer. Generally speaking, two people are making money while one person provides it.

What Makes a Good Affiliate Program?
A good affiliate program will almost always become successful. Aside from happy affiliates and loyal customers, it’s just good business, and good business usually succeeds (with the right amount of push).

You can expect your affiliate program to do a few things:

1. Offer fair tracking. The tracking system should be top-notch, and you should never have to worry about whether or not your conversions are being credited to you accurately.

2. Pay you on time. Late payments are a sign of disorganization, and you don’t want that from an affiliate program. If they don’t pay on time, get out and find one that does.

3. Offer support when needed. Affiliate manages will know which offers are converting and which ones aren’t. Talk to them when in doubt.

4. Promote the highest payouts. Why settle for less than you deserve? A good affiliate program will pay you the most that they can reasonably afford to. If you find an identical offer with two different payouts, something is up.

Honesty is the best policy when it comes to affiliate marketing simply because the industry itself is not well known for its trustworthiness. Every day I read horror stories from affiliates that are owed thousands of dollars in commissions and are never paid. Don’t become one of them; promote affiliate networks that have an established reputation for being reliable.

The affiliate landscape today is the most competitive, hard-to-get-into, and complicated that it’s ever been.  Because of that, damn near anyone can make a few bucks online.  There are thousands of people out there clearing $500 easily.  Hell, I know people that clear $10,000 in a day without even breaking a sweat, and it always comes down to the same six elements.  You know, the same six elements that hang over any business, affiliate marketing included.

1. Determine your market - Your website should be focused around a market that you’re trying to target.  If you are trying to promote offers to 19-29 year old men, for example, your website needs to look the part.  This is the single most important part of your success is going to come from targeting (which this site has written about on numerous occasions).  Promote offers applicable to your target market, because doing so will ensure that the market responds favorably and that your conversions stay consistent.
2. Assess your approach - Will you make a site designed around making a sale, or will you shoot for high quality content and rely on passive conversions?  Determining how you want to address your market will determine how your site will be built.  In the end, there’s no “right” and “wrong” way to build a site, there is simply the fact that a site needs to be built.  It comes down to your personality type, so go with the approach that feels the most natural to you.
3. Tailor to your traffic - If you plan on sending PPC traffic to your website, tailor your site so that it reacts best to PPC traffic.  If you are planning on long term SEO, make sure the website is designed to be as optimized as possible while offering the user as much value as it can.  Make sure that you know the characteristics of your traffic (which bring us to our next point)…
4. Know your traffic - Know how your traffic thinks, feels, reacts, acts, eats, sleeps, dreams, and poops.  You want to know everything about it when it hits your website: where does it click, what pages does it stick around on, how long does it hang around, does it come back, what ads does it click, etc.  This is CRUCIAL if you ever expect to make a black cent online.  Don’t forget this, ever.  If you aren’t making money, it’s likely because of this.
5. Monetize - Display offers your traffic will want to see.  If you’re running PPC traffic, send the traffic to landing pages relevant to the ad text.  Make sure that the traffic knows exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, when, and why.  You do not want people clicking around because they don’t know what to do, and you do not want that traffic leaving your site without making you money somehow.
6. Re-monetize - So what someone has converted for you?  Try to catch them again!  Get their e-mail address, hit them up with another offer, and potential double their value to you.  This one is a literal no brainer.

Read those six points?  Good- a step by step guide to making it big on the internet.  No go do it!

Chances are that you aren’t realizing the success that you dream about. You may be making money, but you know that there are thousands of other affiliates out there making tens of thousands of dollars more than you are. It sucks, but that’s just how it is, right?

Wrong. Those other affiliates aren’t geniuses, and they sure aren’t anything that you’re not. If they can do it, so can you.

It probably has nothing to do with the the offers that you’re promoting or the design of your website. Chances are good that you aren’t getting the kind of success that you want because of the things that you aren’t doing.

1. You don’t innovate, create, or even submit. If you spend the majority of your time thinking about new business ideas or marketing methods, yet you never seem to get any of them going, you’re wasting your time. Yes, you need good ideas to become successful, but you also need to focus on these ideas and get them going. If you have more ideas than you no what to do with, do what I do: register a domain related to the idea, write a quick blurb about the idea, and put in a folder where you can get back to it later when you have time. Focus on your current projects, finish them, and then expand.
2. You don’t have a plan. Making money on the internet quickly transforms from a personal hobby to a full fledged business. How do you plan to succeed? If you don’t have a business plan written down and memorized, don’t bother wasting your time until you do. If you don’t have a plan, someone else will, and they’re likely to become more successful than you simply because they’re going to follow it.
3. You don’t “just do”. All of the successful affiliates will tell you that they’re successful simply because they “just do”, as opposed to sitting around and dreaming about doing it. If you have an idea, pursue it. Buy a domain, make a site, and get the wheels in motion.
4. You don’t allow success. What I mean by this is that you don’t allow yourself the possibility to fully realize your successes. If you jump when you get a conversion, or spend every cent that you earn, you’re limiting yourself.Expand your business, and live off of the run-off. Don’t spend every cent that you earn- reinvest, grow, expand.

This is a good thing.

On Friday, I put in a 3 week notice at my current day job.  Over the past 2 months, I’ve seen what can be accomplished with affiliate marketing and I want to devote more time to it.

I’ll be at Affiliate Summit West next week in Vegas so feel free to drop me a line if you want to meet up.  I’m interested in meeting new affiliate managers, networks, and pretty much anyone in the biz since I’ll be doing this full-time.  I’m excited to ramp up an already decent revenue stream to only-dream-about levels.

The online economy is hot, and many people are making millions of dollars every year on the internet. These people are relatively new entrepreneurs, and they probably aren’t that much smarter than you. So, how come they’re making the big bucks and you aren’t?

There are a lot of reasons for this. A lot of reasons, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why one business will fail while another (seemingly identical) business succeeds. There are so many variables to a business (even online ones) that it’s impossible to say without analyzing every aspect of it. However, I did come to realize that one of the main reasons that online businesses fail to take off is because the owners of those businesses fail to accept and abide by a few simple truths:

1. Making money online is not easy. In fact, many people describe it as one of the hardest things that they have ever done. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but it also holds some truth.Anyone who expects to open an online business (be it affiliate, eCommerce, or otherwise) without a solid business plan and a method of attack will probably fail. It has nothing to do with luck or chance, but rather competition from other marketers who do have a plan and a method. Do your homework, make a plan, and work it.
2. People don’t mind shopping online. The myth that the majority of people don’t like shopping online is paramount, and it’s not even true. The internet is a multi-billion dollar per year economy, and you are losing money if you think that you can’t tap into some of that.
3. Advertising is big business €“ You may not even need to sell an actual product. Providing contextual or relevant ad space on your website can be quite profitable in its own right. However, in order to become valuable, you will need to have a website that logs frequent visits from unique users. Once you have that, you have an instant income stream.
   
4. A person is still a person. Regardless of who that person is, they are still just a person. Many affiliates forget this when they make their sites and frustrate themselves when their conversions are low. Do yourself a favor and remind yourself of this fact every single day.Ask yourself questions about the product you are promoting as you create your advertisement, landing site, or ad creative. Would I buy from an ad/site like this? What does this offer me as a user? The more intuitive you make your marketing, the higher your conversions will be.
5. Affiliate Marketing is need driven. By promoting a product, you are filling a need in the market. If the market is saturated before you enter it, your landing site and advertising will have to be exceptional; the market isn’t going to grow in size, but the number of people trying to serve it will.Get around this by finding markets that are in demand yer under served. It sounds daunting, but there are millions of markets like this.

If any of that made sense to you, congratulations! Understaning and accepting those truths is important in finding success. Looking at the affiliate industry with a myopic point of view will only hurt your success, not help it, so keep your mind open.