You can use Wordpress plugins to due just about anything you want on your blog.

But…

Be Careful What You Do!

Recently a Wordpress plugin that can do you more harm than good became available to the masses.  The plugin claimed you could “Get Credit For Sales Without The Person Ever Clicking On Your Affiliate Link… They Just Have To Visit Your Blog.”

Now according to the sales page for this plugin all you had to do was paste your Clickbank affiliate link for the product you wanted to promote and select a page or post. Then when someone visited your page or post your affiliate information was stored in your visitor’s browser even though they never clicked your affiliate link and you would earn the affiliate commission if they ever purchased the product.

This quick and easy way to make affiliate commissions has a name, cookie stuffing. And cookie stuffing is unethical, illegal and can get you in some real trouble. You can read an article about what happened to a couple of people who are accused of cookie stuffing their ebay affiliate link here.

Now I happen to own a copy of that Clickbank cookie stuffing plugin but never used it on any of my blogs because I thought it looked like trouble. If you happen to own this or any other cookie stuffing plugin my advice to you is… Don’t use it!

On a brighter note:

Yesterday I was reading someone’s blog and while their article was just OK, I really liked the social bookmarking plugin they were using. It took me several hours to find it since it’s name, SexyBookmarks, through me off.

Anyway,  I’ve put it on 3 of my Wordpress blogs and you can see this blogs version of it below. (It comes with at least 6 wording images and lots of social bookmarking sites to chose from.)

And for those of you using Blogger I found the directions for getting it on a Blogger blog along with a free download of the images here.

If you’re not interested in this particular plugin you can use another of the most popular social bookmarking plugins on Wordpress.org and get simpler instructions for a Blogger social bookmarking button at addthis.com.

To Your Success,
Susan

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• 6 Best Social Bookmarking and Sharing Plugins for WordPress (tipsblogger.com)
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If you ask any internet marketing guru what the fastest and easiest way they make money is, chances are their answer will be…affiliate marketing.

And while it’s true that once you’ve figured out how to successfully do affiliate marketing, most new affiliate marketers still have 1 big problem to solve. And that problem is… surviving until you reach your affiliate commission payout amount and get your affiliate payment.

Fortunately there are now ways to sell affiliate products and get paid instantly. Every day more product owners are offering their products through either the $7 Secrets script or the Rapid Action Profits script. Both scripts allow product owners to quickly and easily set up an affiliate program. And both allow affiliate commissions to be paid instantly to the affiliates’ Paypal account.

If you’re an affiliate marketer who wants to receive instant payments your only problem is finding the instant commission affiliate programs.
Now there is an easy way to solve that problem too.

I’d like to give you a free report that lists over 200 sales sites that pay instant affiliate commissions. Plus I’ll even tell you about 1 site where you can get your affiliate links for more than 550 instant commission internet marketing and niche products.

To get the free report and information about the site that lists over 550 niche and internet marketing products simply fill out the form below.

To Your Success,
Susan

Today I received the following email from Ewin Chia:

x

Hi Susan,

This is a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT…

Watch the video here to get trained by me for *free* to be a top-selling super affiliate:

==> http://su.pr/1pQX85

This is for serious people who wants to
succeed so don’t join if you aren’t one.

There’s nothing for sale, no catches,
no one-time offers!

I’m doing this to HELP my subscribers.

However it’s only reserved for the first
*500* so grab your spot immediately:

==> http://su.pr/1pQX85

Take care!

- Ewen

PS. Watch my video for the full details
and ACT ON THIS NOW:

==> http://su.pr/1pQX85

———————-

Now in case you aren’t familiar with who Ewen Chia is, he’s a very successful internet marketer who has created some extremely profitable products like Secret Affiliate Weapon, Super Affiliate Inner Circle and Internet Wealth System.  I’ve purchased some of his products and found they provide good, useful and simple to implement information.

And since I have some of his products and am 1 of his affiliates I decided to accept his offer of free training.

However, I wasn’t prepared for what I found inside his training center!

Let me explain.

When you go inside the training center the first time you are shown an offer. OK, that’s pretty standard any more for private sites. And as most people do, I said “no thanks” and moved on.

On the home page you see only 4 menu items:  Introduction | Training Lessons | Make Commissions! | Submit Testimonial. Clean and simple, just what I would have expected from Ewen.

There’s also some content explaining who he is and why he set up this site. Here’s a direct quote about why he’s offering this free training:

“Here’s the simple reason why – I want you to promote my products as an affiliate and your success is my success…
If you make a lot of money promoting my products, I make money too. It’s a “win-win”!”

“While I’m training you to sell MY products, what you learn here is absolutely PRICELESS.
You can use this knowledge to promote ANY products in any niche…”

After his brief introduction you see his simple 3 step plan:
x

x
Want to know what type of training videos Ewen is making available?

The Super Affiliate Training Center videos are:

• Lesson #1: INTRODUCTION
  - What is affiliate marketing
  - Why affiliate marketing
  - Front end and backend affiliate income
  - Why these video lessons?
  - How your 7 day affiliate system works
  - And more!

• Lesson #2: AFFILIATE BASICS
  - How to get the super affiliate mindset
  - Types of affiliate programs
  - How to get your affiliate link
  - How to hide and track your affiliate links
  - How to get domain name and hosting (optional)
  - How to set up autoresponder service (optional)

• Lesson #3: DAY 1 – TOPIC
  - How to find a truly profitable topic
  - Why not all topics are profitable
  - Niche-centric approach
  - Product-centric approach
  - Problem-centric approach
  - And more!

• Lesson #4: DAY 2 – PRODUCT
  - How to find profitable affiliate products
  - Why not all products are profitable for you
  - Secrets to choosing the right affiliate products
  - Exactly what you should look out for
  - Targeting your affiliate promotions to your niche
  - And more

• Lesson #5: DAY 3 – KEYWORDS
  - The right keywords is crucial to making money
  - How to build your keyword list
  - How to dominate the search engines EASILY
  - What types of keywords are best for promotion
  - How many keywords should you have?
  - And more

• Lesson #6: DAY 4 – CONVERSION
  - Getting maximum conversion for your promotions
  - The #1 secret to conversion revealed
  - The #2 secret to conversion revealed
  - The #3 secret to conversion revealed
  - The #4 secret to conversion revealed
  - Plus more!

• Lesson #7: DAY 5 – PRESENTATION
  - How to present your affiliate promotion effectively
  - How to make affiliate commissions 24/7
  - Method #1: Direct linking
  - Method #2: Blog
  - Method #3: Squeeze page
  - Article, review and presell pages

• Lesson #8: DAY 6 – PROMOTION (FREE)
  - How to promote affiliate products for free
  - How to set up your own promotion plan
  - Keyword article marketing
  - Keyword press release
  - Keyword video marketing
  - Plus much more!

• Lesson #9: DAY 7 – PROMOTION (PAID)
  - Secrets of paid traffic exposed
  - Why and when to use paid traffic
  - Pay per click (search networks)
  - Pay per click (content networks)
  - Pay per view
  - Social network advertising

• Lesson #10: CONCLUSION – CONGRATULATIONS!
  - How to track your results
  - Testing different conversion techniques
  - Replicating your success
  - How to have multiple streams of affiliate income
  - Setting up an affiliate empire
  - What next?

And for beginning affiliates who are starting from scratch and don’t know the basics he’s added the following 18 videos:

1. 11. Basic internet skills – zip files, PDF, images
2. 12. Basic internet skills – creating audio files
3. 13. Basic internet skills – uploading files, Paypal
4. 14. Basic internet skills – using Clickbank
5. 15. Registering domain name
6. 16. Web hosting – part one
7. 17. Web hosting – part two
8. 18. Creating squeeze page with free templates
9. 19. Adding video and audio to your website
10. 10. Creating slide in box and download page
11. 11. Creating redirect page
12. 12. Setting up your autoresponder
13. 13. Setting up Blogger blog – part one
14. 14. Setting up Blogger blog – part two
15. 15. Setting up Blogger blog – part three
16. 16. Setting up Wordpress blog – part one
17. 17. Setting up Wordpress blog – part two
18. 18. Setting up Wordpress blog – part three

Now to be totally honest with you I haven’t had a chance to view all the videos available in the training center however I have watched a few. And from what I’ve seen so far the videos provide good easy to understand information and they are not selling anything.

Of course an affiliate training center wouldn’t be complete if there were no affiliate products available. And right now there are 15. The lowest affiliate commission offered is 50% for 1 of the products however the rest offer 60%, 70% or 75%.

I give Ewen Chia’s new Super Affiliate Trainer a 5 star recommendation. He’s provided many excellent affiliate marketing training videos and high conversion products.

Whether you’re trying to sell internet marketing affiliate products or you’re in another niche you owe it to yourself to check Ewen Chia’s Super Affiliate Trainer.

Recently 1 of my subscribers, Nita of NitaHelpingHand.net, asked me to share my results with Viral Ebook Explosion.

Now I have already shared my results with her and today I would like to share them with you.

However before I share my results let me explain what Viral Ebook Explosion is and how I have and do use it.

Viral Ebook Explosion is 1 of Jeff Dedrick’s membership sites where he provides useful marketing tools to his members. Inside the member area you can:

• Select informational ebooks that you brand with your own affiliate link to sell or give away.
• Create download pages.
• Create opt-in pages.

And as a member I have selected some of the ebooks like “List Building for Beginners”, “3 Volumes of Internet Marketing Tips” and “404 Secrets” and given them away to my readers while I’ve used other like “30 Days to Create a Product” and  “How to Bookmark for FREE Traffic” in giveaway events.

So when Nita asked about my results I was unsure about how to answer.

The answer I did give was probably not the 1 she was looking for because I told her that if she was asking about my affiliate commissions for Viral Ebook Explosion then I had to say they weren’t that good since I’ve earned less than $100 as an affiliate.

However I also told her that the affiliate commissions were not why I was a member or why I recommended this membership site. As I just mentioned, I use the resources provided inside Viral Ebook Explosion because even though the ebooks do recommend products they also provide useful free information. And having access to informational products that I can give away and allow others to give away is a good thing especially for those of us who don’t have the time to create our own.

As an affiliate marketer you sometimes have to look beyond how much you earn promoting a product or service as an affiliate. For instance, I also use and recommend Aweber and Hostgator. I don’t recommend them because I am affiliate but because as a user I think they are excellent tools. And that’s why Viral Ebook Explosion is on my list of recommendations.

As for why I’m not earning much as a Viral Ebook Explosion affiliate that’s my fault and not theirs. While I do give away the branded viral products occasionally and have mentioned it to my FriendsWhoCare readers, I don’t promote it aggressively. In fact, if you look at the promotions on this page you won’t see it mentioned.

Wonder why I don’t promote Viral Ebook Explosion more aggressively?

There are 2 answers. First, I belong to quite a few membership sites that provide tools for internet marketing and many of them are excellent. Second, I don’t want to clutter my sites with tons of ads and recommendations. I have however now added a new page, Resources, to this blog using another of Jeff Dedrick’s membership sites. As you can see Viral Ebook Explosion has been included as a recommended resource.

So here’s my question.

What is more important to you, providing recommendations to make money or providing recommendations that offer something of value?

If you think I should stop recommending products and services that provide something of value and don’t make me lots of money as an affiliate please let me know.

To Your Success,
Susan

Every day hundreds, maybe thousands, of people decide to try to make money online through affiliate marketing. And the sad fact is more than 95% of these people will fall.

And you know why they fail?

Because they believe what all affiliate programs say…

“We’ve done the hard part and created a product, written the sales copy and created a web page.”

Now I’m not saying these things are easy. They’re not.

Creating a quality product, writing sales copy that sells and developing a professional sales page are 3 of the hardest parts of internet marketing. That’s why affiliate programs are so popular.

However there is 1 more part that is just as hard…

Finding customers

Now the owners of affiliate programs knows these 4 tasks are difficult and usually hire professionals to do some or all of the first 3. And then they create an affiliate program so others can find the customers and sell the product.

Now in a totally fair world all affiliates would have an equal chance to sell the product and make money. However we don’t live in a totally fair world.

In the real world there are already many successful affiliates. And no matter what niche market you’ve selected, you should know that some of these successful affiliates will also be in the affiliate program you’ve joined.

So when you’re starting from scratch and join an affiliate program you’ve got a handicap. And that handicap is that you’re competing against some who have already chosen a successful selling model and have the resources in place to implement that model for the affiliate product.

So how does you compete against those affiliates who are already making money selling affiliate products when you’re starting from scratch?

The first 2 things you must do when you’re first starting are:

1. Choose your selling model to promote your affiliate product. Some of the ways include pay-per-click (PAC), ezine advertising, blog and forum comments and emailing your own email list.

2. Understand that you probably aren’t going to be making thousands of dollars as promised by the affiliate program. Unless you are already an established expert at PPC advertising and have the budget to pay for it, or have a name recognized on blogs and forums or have your own mailing list you aren’t going to make many sales.

Now 1 of the secrets successful affiliate marketers continually share is that having your own list is considered to be the most important assets to having a successful online business. However new affiliate marketers and especially new affiliate marketers outside of the internet marketing niche often think this step is either impossible, not necessary or both.

And you know what?

It’s true you do not have to have a list. You can promote your affiliate products many ways and get some sales.

However when you don’t have a list you are limiting your business and making it harder to succeed.

How?

When you promote affiliate products and don’t build a list in your niche market you have to continually find potential customers for every affiliate product you want to sell. And that limits your business in 3 ways:

1. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche but not sure they want the particular product you’re promoting.

2. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche but don’t want the particular product your promoting.

3. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche and bought the product you promoted.

By not being able to contact those 3 groups of people you’ve lost the ability to do follow up emails which is the least expensive and most effective form of online advertising. So when you don’t have a list of those interested in your niche market you can’t send follow-up emails telling them how good a product really is. And even more importantly you’ve lost the ability to contact this group in your targeted niche market to make offers for additional niche related products.

Now if you think building a list in a niche market outside of internet marketing is impossible because you have nothing to offer to entice people to join your list, you’re wrong. There may already be free ebooks and reports that you can give away and you can always create 1 of your own.

To find free give away products for your niche you can do a search for give away products using your favorite search engine. I will warn you that you will have to sign up to find out what products are available and to get access to most of these sites. However there is at least 1 site, SurefireWealth, that offers give away products that allows you to see all the free downloadable products before joining.

I did a quick search for give away products available as free member downloads at SurefireWealth and found there were 35 pages of products. After going through just 6 of these pages I was able to identify the following niche products:

* Choose Your Next MP3 Player
* New Years Resolutions Help
* Freelance From Home – The 7 Things You Must Know Before Freelancing From Home
* How To Choose And Get A College Degree
* Simply Christmas
* 7 Steps to Job Search Success

In addition I found there were several niche plr products that included give away rights.
Knowing you can either find or create a report or ebook to offer people in your niche market here are first 4 things you must do when you’re first starting:

1. Choose your selling model to promote your affiliate product.

2. Get a free report or ebook to offer your potential customers.

3. Put a signup form on your page or blog to capture the names and emails of those interested in your niche before sending them to your affiliate page.

4. Understand that you probably aren’t going to be making thousands of dollars as promised by the affiliate program however you will get some names and email address of those interested in your niche so you can contact them.

Always remember these 3 important facts about online marketing:

1. More than 50% of those who buy affiliate products don’t buy them the first time they see the sales page.

2. Most of the people buying affiliate products aren’t looking to buy anything. They are looking for free information.

3. People don’t like buying things from strangers. They prefer to buy from someone they know and trust.

These 3 statements are true for every niche market and they are even more true for those niches outside of internet marketing. So see if you can find a give away product for your niche at SurefireWealth, make a form to collect names and email addresses for an autoresponder, and put that form on your web page or blog you promote.

To Your Success,
Susan