White Paper Summit Any Online Affiliate Marketer Should Read

One way to make money with online affiliate marketing is utilizing White Papers. White papers provide readers with valuable information. White papers can be used to market other programs and/or sold to raise money. In her “About Freelance Writing” blog Anne wrote, “White Paper Success Summit 2010 is the only major online event dedicated to helping businesses succeed with white paper marketing. Hundreds of your peers have already signed up (making this our biggest white paper event ever!).

Presenters include bestselling authors and marketing experts such as Michael Stelzner – that’s me – (author, Writing White Papers), Bob Bly (author, White Paper Marketing Handbook), John Jantsch (author, Duct Tape Marketing), Brian J. Carroll (author, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale), Jill Konrath (author, Selling to Big Companies), Roger C. Parker (author, White Paper Design that Sells), Ardath Albee (author, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale), Joe Pulizzi (author, Get Content Get Customers), Jonathan Kantor (author, Crafting White Paper 2.0) and many others!” Read more at About Freelance Writing.

Today’s Tip for Freelance Writers: Minimizing Distractions

In November, I quit my full time job. Many people told this was a stupid thing to do, in a recession. Part of the reason I quit my job was to pursue a career as a freelance writer. Over the last year, I have published articles on Associated Content, Helium, and Triond. A large part of my career, as a freelance writer, is continuing my personal education. Education is a large part of becoming a better writer. As a freelance writer, one of my goals is to learn one new writing tip per day. I have decided to share my daily freelance writing tips with you. Today’s freelance writing tip comes from the About Freelance Writing blog. The About Freelance Writing blog is dedicated to helping freelance writers increase their income. About Freelance Writing recently posted 7 Tips For Dealing With Distractions.

Almost every freelance writer deals with distractions. Many freelance writers are working from home. Working from home can produce distractions from your spouse, family, friends, and many other sources. Freelance writers may be tempted to turn on the TV, walk the dog, or do a number of things. When a freelance writer is experiencing writer’s block then the temptation only grows. It is crucial that every freelance writer minimizes these distractions.

About Freelance Writing blog provides multiple strategies for minimizing distractions including, “Distinguish between writing for clients and writing for yourself. Schedule time to write for clients and to do the writing you want to do. Schedule the time to start and the time to end. Turn off the phone when it’s time to write. Turn off the radio when it’s time to write. Bookend if you’re having any trouble at all. Realize life brings changes and be flexible without giving up.” About Freelance Writing’s strategies are much more specific than those offered from other blogs. It is well worth your time to head on over and read the full 7 Tips For Dealing With Distractions article.

5 Tips for Beginning Freelance Writers

Online freelance writing is a hard job, and many writers don’t realize how much work succeeding in the business can take. If you’re a new freelance writer, then you’re probably still searching for good tips and advice in order to get moving. This article will provide five quality tips to help you get going on your career goals.

My first tip for beginning writers is to get started right away. While there is a lot you need to learn, it’s easy to get information overload. Learn as you go, but find a place to start writing right away!

Second, make sure to research all the jobs and opportunities available to you online. Most beginning writers are amazed by the sheer number of possibilities available to them online. A key part of succeeding in this business is doing great research to line yourself up with the best online set ups.

My third tip is to diversify. Instead of trying to concentrate on just one website, take a look at a few. Many of these places have very diverse requirements for articles, which makes writing less repetitive and more fun in addition to creating many different streams of income.

Fourth, you need to have drive and solid self-confidence. Freelance writing is a tough gig, and one that can come under a lot of ridicule from other people. To deal with the insults, rough patches, and general hardships that can come with a writing career, you need to have confidence in yourself.

The fifth bit of advice is good for any entrepreneur: under promise & over deliver. Sometimes half of performance is perception. If you promise 50 articles in two days, but it takes three, then you’ve hurt your reputation. But what if you promise 50 articles in five days and deliver in three? Then you look amazing even though the work took the same amount of time. That’s the key.

The advice in this article isn’t the end all, be all, of freelance writing, but should give beginning writers a good jump start on their careers. Following these tips will help speed up the process of getting to where you want to really be with your career.

This article is only the beginning. There are many amazing freelance writing resources online that every writer should take advantage of. Follow the information gladly offered by authors who have already been through the process and you’ll be glad you did!

Article Marketing Creates Tremendous Traffic to Your Website

The submission of articles to the article banks is a well known method of generating traffic. While you may not accomplish much in the near future by learning how to write and submit articles, knowing how can serve you for a long time and is well worth the effort of learning and using to your greatest benefit. Though you may not feel up to writing Moby Dick because you don’t have any writing ability but you are likely wrong. You can provide information about your website and your products because you know exactly what they are. All that is necessary is that you know the rules for effective article writing. Of most importance is the headline or title. This MUST have key words relating to your website and your products. The first thing that eZine publishers or other website owners look at when deciding to publish your article are the key words in the title because they know that the search engines look at those.

* Note: Search engines are used by people looking for information or products on the internet. They type “key words” in the search box and click submit. An example might be “planting tomatoes” or “growing tomatoes”. What the search engine returns is based on whatever key words were entered into the search box.

Your article title or headline MUST grab the reader’s attention. Simply using a title of “Making Money” probably won’t do. The title must grab the reader by the throat and not let him go. It must make the reader want to keep reading. “Making Money Online”… well, not very good either. How about “Making Money Online in Your Houseshoes” or “Making a Bundle Online Before Breakfast”. Something to capture the reader’s attention if they are interested in making money on the internet.

After the title, the next most important words in your article are in the first line. Experienced internet surfers are well known for having a short attention span and rarely read anything word for word unless it is information that they think will meet their needs, solve a problem they have or make life better for them. So…the title…and the first line become the bait and the hook that is used to lure the reader to truly read the complete article. If the first line contains the key words it must also be be attention getting. “The customers were begging for more tips after the first line!” If you were an internet marketer, wouldn’t you keep reading?

The article banks want short articles. Brief, in fact! The longest an article should be is 400 words but closer to 300 is better. You can get carried away and end up with an article that is 1000 words or more when discussing a subject in which you are interested and know a lot about. If you wind up with a long wordy article just break it down into three or four short articles.

Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Remember that short attention span that we talked about? Don’t use big words and don’t use run-on sentences. Make your article easy to read.

Take it easy on those exclamation points. One exclamation point is all that is necessary to indicate importance or excitement… half a dozen are just rude.

Your resource box at the end of the article is the part that is most important to you. Other website owners or E-zine publishers who download and reproduce your article are required to include your resource box. This box needs to contain your full name, your contact information and, most importantly, a link to your website. That link is the little thing that is going to help increase traffic for you.

Warning! Do NOT word-wrap your url! It must be typed out in full, http://www.whatever.com. Not all E-zine editors send out their newsletters and E-zines using email programs that support word-wrapped links so it is possible to ruin your own purpose by word-wrapping your website url.

Submitting Articles: Once you have found article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search using your favorite search engine it is time to submit your articles. Every site has their own guidelines for accepting articles which you must follow or risk rejection.

Software is available for use in automatically submitting articles to the article repositories and banks. The problem here is that most of the larger, more effective repositories and banks will not publish automated submissions. So even though this software can save time when submitting to smaller sites, this doesn’t help much with the bigger more well known sites.

Submitting articles can be time consuming and boring, but it is work that will provide a lot of targeted traffic to your site. Every person who reads an article you’ve written is also exposed to your URL. If they like the article because it provides good information for them, they will visit your site. Once there, they may buy something you are selling or maybe opt-in for your mailing list… or possibly even do both. There are services available to submit your articles for you. You do have to pay for this service.

The best solution and one I use is Unique Article Wizard. UAW can submit unique articles to hundreds of eZine publishers at the push of a button. Spend a few hours creating your article, Push Submit, sit back, and watch the traffic to your site increase astronomically.

Author Porfirio G Krasternak uses theUnique Article Wizard to make sure each article submitted is unique. For more information on how you can submit unique articles to all the article publishers, go toUnique Article Wizard.

Work From Home: Make Money as a Highly Paid Copywriter

Over the last few years, America’s economy has made some drastic changes. We are quickly moving from an industrial to a service based economy. Being able to stand at a machine for hours per day is a dwindling commodity. Providing for your family and achieving financial independence is predicated by the knowledge that you have and how you apply that knowledge. This sounds dreary but there is hope. If you are willing to cultivate the knowledge and learn how to apply it, it is possible to freelance almost any skill. If you have a passion for blogging, you can work from home as a highly paid copywriter.

Chrisg.com describes a resource for learning how to be a highly paid copywriter, “My friend and white paper mentor Mike Stelzner has just launched his “Copywriting Success Summit 2009” which I am going to be presenting at. My session will be about building your freelance copywriting business using blogging. It will be awesome” (Want to Know How to be a Highly Paid Copywriter?, 2009).

Copywriting Success Summit is just one of the resources that ChrisG.com provides. ChrisG continues with, “Mike just put out a great round up of advice from his copywriting guru friends (and me), that you can find here. ChrisG links to 10 Ways to Make More Money as a Freelance Writer.”

Today, we have more opportunities to Work From Home than ever before. Working from home requires deciding upon a business and pursuing your goals. Copywriting is just one option to work from home. However, if you enjoy writing then ChrisG.com should be an addition to your blogroll.

Social Networking May Overcome Keywords In Online Affiliate Marketing

Thousands of blogs, books, e-books, and forums are dedicated to Search Engine Optimication (SEO). Successful online affiliate marketing has required learning how to optimize your webpages for search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) required looking at what keywords you are targeting, how many times they are used, and building pages that agreed with the search engine algorithms. Rumblings indicate that social networking may make keywords irrelevant for successful online affiliate marketing.

Google wants to make keywords irrelevant for all advertisers, including online affiliate marketing. Rebecca Lieb recently reported on a speech given by the head of Google Adwords, Nikki Fox. Lieb reported, “That’s right: Google wants to build your ads for you. Are we looking at a world with no more keyword bidding, no more Excel spreadsheets with keyword and keyword phrase groups, no more bid management? Possibly” (Keywords Out, Networks In, 2009). A very interesting concept. It would take some work to ensure that corporate and online affiliate marketing advertisers would be fairly represented.

Social media guru Charlene Li also spoke at Search Engine Strategies. She also spoke about the potential for keywords to take a much smaller role in search engines.  Lieb reports, “Li’s view of the future is one in which social networks are “like air,” and search becomes inextricably coupled with what she calls social-graphic targeting, which is based on your behavior with the other people in your network. (Social network analysis is another not-far-off term for this method of targeting.)” (Keywords Out, Networks In, 2009)

Charlene Li’s statements enforce a statement made by sales guru Zig Ziglar, “people buy from people they trust”. Keyword based online affiliate marketing created sales by generating large amounts of traffic from search engines. Eventually, you would find someone willing to buy. Highly successful online affiliate marketers have long recognized the importance of trust. Many successful bloggers found that large incomes required email lists, offering free products, or giving away ebooks that linked back to their sites. These are all forms of building trust with potential customers of your online affiliate marketing products.

Death of keyword based searches may not spell the end of online affiliate marketing. On the contrary, it may offer individuals an advantage in online affiliate marketing. Social networking is being recognized by corporations. However, corporations are still a faceless entity. Building lasting trusts requires putting a face and a name in front of potential customers. Online affiliate marketing allows individuals to recommend products and focus their branding around themselves. One these individual online affiliate marketers are seen as authorities then people will trust their recommendations and buy from them. Success in online affiliate marketing may require spending less time on Search Engine Optimization and more time building your social networks.

Other articles related to the changing importance of kewords to online affiliate marketing:
The Death of Keywords?
Webmaster Radio published a podcast by Andrew Goldman on the potential death of keyword in online affiliate marketing. Webmaster Radio describes the podcast as, “Andrew Goodman discuss the possible changes of keywords in PPC Campaigns, based on comments made during the keynote of Nicholas Fox at SES San Jose 2009, plus some blog posts written by Goodman stating The keyword long tail is dead.”