Making Money with Articles: The Importance of Keywords

By , March 27, 2010

Keyword density and placement are important parts of optimizing your articles for search engines. Search engine spiders scan a page in a way that makes it important to place your keywords where they will be detected and recognized as a keyword, so that your article will come up when someone searches for that keyword.

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word that is going to be placed in your article several times, not just once as that would make every word a keyword. When a spider sees that you have a word placed several times in an article, it will determine that your page may be useful to users that search for such a keyword.

Over Optimizing Your Articles

It is important to note that there is also such a thing as over optimizing your articles for particular words, this is known as “keyword stuffing”. When you stuff keywords in an article a spider will detect that you are trying to trick it into placing your article high in the search engine results for that word, and will instead penalize your site and your page for doing such. This may even affect the rankings of your other pages or get your site blacklisted from a particular search engine if you are found keyword stuffing too many times.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is how many times your keyword is placed in your article. Most use a percentage to determine how many times they will put a keyword in an article. For instance, if you have a 500 word article and want to achieve a keyword density of 5%, then you will need to have the keyword in your article exactly 25 times. You can find hundreds of resources and guides recommending one keyword density over another and the reasons behind the logic, however, in the end you will have to determine which density is more profitable for your articles. Each webmaster as their own density that they like to achieve based on past results. As long as you don’t over optimize and you are making sufficient profit from your rankings, then you can choose whatever keyword density you like.

The Right Density

No matter what exact density you choose, it is important to place keywords so that there are more at the beginning and end to produce an hour glass effect. Having the right keyword density in your article makes it more likely that you will make money off of that article because it will rise in the search engine results and be seen by more people.

Making Money with Articles: The Importance of Picking a Catchy URL

By , March 26, 2010

One of the first things you will need to do, or possibly last if you need some inspiration, after you pick your niche topic is to pick a catchy URL. You want it to be one that will stand out and that will be easy to remember for those who plan on being return visitors.

To get some ideas and inspiration, take a look at the various keywords that you have singled out for your niche to see if any of those have a catchy ring. You want it to be kind of “used car salesman” sounding, rather than something that is boring or does not have an original sound to it. For example, if your niche is “blah”, you could try “MegaBlah”, “Blah4u”, “HouseofBlah”, or “BlahKingdom”. These will all be original, explain what you niche is, and, most importantly, will be easy to remember.

How easy your URL is to remember is the most important so that your visitors will not have any trouble returning and clicking on more affiliate links!

Hits and Earn: Hit per Sale Ratio Affiliate Program Decisions

By , March 24, 2010

Congratulations! You have gone through the grueling task of deciding whether or not to try your luck with affiliate marketing, choosing the products you would be promoting, and establishing your affiliate marketing sites. The first few dollars have managed to come marching in, and you think it is enough. I know you are fed up with decision making and would rather just wait for the money to flow, but in order for you to succeed more, you have to make more decisions: that is what businesses are all about.

One of the best tools you can use to aid you in your affiliate program decisions is the hit per sale ratio. What is hit per sale ratio? Everyday, a number of unique individuals visit your site. Each unique individual is called a “click.” However, out of the hundreds, nay, thousands who visit your site, only a handful end up purchasing your product. This handful of people is called your “sales.” A hit per sale ratio is the number of hits you must get in order to get one sale. To calculate, simply divide all of the hits you get in a day by the number of sales you get in a day, and voila! You have the hit per sale ratio of your affiliate marketing sites!

But how, you ask, do you get anything important out of a simple number? Well, knowing your hit per sale ratio and making informed affiliate program decisions based on that is one of the best things you could ever do to elevate your affiliate marketing enterprise. You might find yourself wishing you had a higher hit per sale ratio by either having more hits everyday, or having more sales out of your current hits. You could actually choose from a million solutions out there, but in this article, the liberty has been taken to discuss two of the most logical affiliate program decisions you can make and to which a lot of other affiliate marketers can attest to.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Ads are great if you simply want increased hits, which can lead to increased sales, everyday. You should take note, however, that since you are working on increasing your profit, you should never shell out more cash than you can afford (you might especially be tempted to bet all or more than your earnings when you discover that the ads you pay for are significantly raising your profits). Do a simple computation of how much money you can spend on these advertisements, and base your decisions on these.

For example, if you have a total of 300 hits per day, to which only 5 are ending up in sales, which means it takes 60 hits before you could establish sales (this is your hit per sale ratio). And if each sale gives you a profit of $25, it means you are earning $225 per day. This is the maximum amount you can spend on advertisements. To play it safe, pay for something that is significantly lower than your current profit so that when your ads prove to be worthless, you still have a bit of cash to take home.

So let’s say you made the decision to spend $100 bucks on ads. That leaves you $125 assured take-home money, which isn’t half as bad as taking home nothing. Let’s say your $100 ad doubled your total hits per day, and thus, doubling your sales (from 5 sales to 10 sales). That would mean that you have a $450 figure as your total sales. Subtract the amount of the ad, and you have yourself a total profit of $350. Not bad, eh?

PAY PER CLICK PROGRAMS

Pay per click programs are programs you could establish with search engines for your products to appear on top of searches. You are bidding per click here (for the keywords you have chosen), and this means those who bid highest find themselves on the top of the food chain. This is a relatively tricky business, so don’t get caught up in false hopes.

Now, to our calculations. Supposing you have a hit per sale ratio of 60, and a profit of $25 per sale, like the last example. In order to know the total amount you can risk on bidding, simply divide your profit per sale by your hit per sale ratio. That leaves you with a $0.40 figure. Again, do not risk this entire amount into bidding. You would do well to bid half of your safe value just so you can still be reassured of a bit of profit even if this program does not work out. A $0.20 bid per click shouldn’t be bad enough.

You would find some affiliate marketing enterprises bidding dollars for each click. DO NOT DO THE MISTAKE OF FOLLOWING THEIR STEPS. Instead, find a way around them by bidding on different keywords. Always keep your profits in mind.

However, in the world of affiliate marketing, increasing your profits isn’t as easy as simple arithmetic. You have to weigh your options well, and no one could ever teach you that as good as experience can. Try your different options as well as you can, make smart and informed decisions, and if you work hard enough, you might find yourself singing happily all the way to the bank.

Articles your affiliate marketing sites should have

By , March 21, 2010

…if you want to increase your sales, that is

The past few decades have bore witness to the internet being one of the best ways to earn money. Improved communication and safer money transfers make it easier for both the sellers and the buyers to indulge themselves in the act of buying online. Thus, the boom of Affiliate Marketing. The main reason why affiliate marketing has become so popular lies on the simple fact that all you have to do is apply for an affiliate program, pay for the program’s fees (if there are any), establish your pre-seller site, and write away. Simple, isn’t it?

Not quite. A number of affiliate marketers do not witness success (or any sales at all) because of the part where they “write away.” Writing for your affiliate marketing site does not require the skills of a Pulitzer Prize winner, but those of a smart affiliate marketer. Your articles need to have certain qualities that would utilize online resources best, and, of course, turn prospects into closed sales. This article brings you five types of articles your affiliate marketing site should have, if you want to increase your sales (which I know you do!).

REVIEWS

People want information. Small is the probability of having a person enter your site and establishing a sale the first time around. They probably didn’t even notice the “sales pitches” you have placed all over your site in the first place-the main thing that must have been going through their minds is that they need the product, and fast! Generally, people hate hard core sales pitches.

They want to know more about the product. So give your prospects what they want. Give them honest and sincere information on your affiliate marketing site in the form of reviews. Be honest with your reviews. Place any cons that might come in buying the product. And since this is an affiliate marketing program, market your product as well. Do so in a way that “promotes” the product and not “sell” it.

BENEFITS

Prospects want to know the features of a product the first time they get around to wanting to buy it. If the features of your products are to their liking, they would want to know more about the products. Let them know more of the benefits, instead of features, that come in buying your product. Your product is not the only one in the market, and it probably has other competition out there that have as good, or even better, features than the one you’re selling. But if you can provide your prospects with more benefits than the competition can, the more likely will these register as sales increase.

COMPARE

If you are confident of your product’s ability to sell in the market, do product comparisons. Also, do so in the fairest way possible. Do not highlight all the cons of the competition while highlighting your own product’s benefits. Highlight the benefits of the other product, then compare in such a way that your product comes out on top. Be smart in selecting which benefits of the competitor’s product you are going to highlight.

If the competitor’s product has qualities that yours can’t beat, then opt to ‘overlook’ that quality, and focus instead on the other product’s benefits which your product can beat. Make sure sales come your way, and not the competitor’s.

TESTIMONIALS

Your prospects need to know that real people are using your products. Find people who can attest to the benefits of your products in the real word. You might want to keep the contact information from previous sales. It would be good if your previous customers can provide you with photos of themselves, alongside the products if possible. Once you can convince your prospects that your products are good enough for real people, your sales have nothing else to do but increase.

NEWS BRIEFS

Keep your affiliate marketing site fresh with news briefs. You might want to include promos, developments, and previously unknown information regarding the product (such as “studies show that this product (benefits of the product)” or “Top Marketing groups regard this product as one of the most revolutionary products of the 21st century”). Keep your news briefs concise-do not bombard it with too much information. If you happen to have a dozen new information regarding your product, post them on your affiliate marketing site as a week’s worth of news briefs.

These types of articles can be used all at once, or in a combination. Choose what best works for your affiliate marketing program, or product, and you can be on your way to claim sales commissions that just keep on increasing.

OfficeFolders theme by Themocracy