If you don’t know what referrals are, just visit the websites of these popular bloggers:

Dosh Dosh (http://www.doshdosh.com)

Caroline Middlebrook (http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com)

Daily Blog Tips (http://www.dailyblogtips.com)

Problogger (http://www.problogger.net)

Notice the 150 x 150 pixel square ads usually located at the right site of these blogs? These are known as referral ads. Working similar like Google Adsense ads, you get paid for each click you refer to the sites that these square ads link to.

Personally, I’m not entirely a big fan of referrals. People may notice them, and they may consider them, but they don’t get a whole lot of clicks. In fact, I get fewer clicks on referral ads, than on Google Adsense. However, with their attractive designs and animation, they do help to make your site or blog look more interesting.

In the end, referral ads do not help you make a lot of money online, but they can help to supplement your blog or site income if you happen to have a lot of traffic. Here’s a list of sites with referral programs, and my thoughts for some of them:

Read the rest of this entry »

After reading Thoughts on Forced Continuity and Similar Scams from Caroline Middlebrook’s blog, I’m taking the opportunity to digress from my Internet Business Ideas Guide series and blog on the sincerity of sales pitches.Internet Marketers in general, have always been successful in painting a very convincing picture of the success of their business. More often than not, they are associated with overselling, and at times, delivering products that turn out to be less than spectacular. Truly, their “solutions to all your problems” often turn out to be disappointing to many buyers.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post – Using Google Adwords to Sell Online – I reviewed some of the ways you can use Google Adwords to make money online.

While it may seem pretty elementary to advertise with Google Adwords, the right strategies have to be used for a successful campaign. Stiff competition from other Adwords advertisers has given reason for Google to set high ranking standards.

Factors such as Quality Score and your Click-Through-Rate are used as parameters in calculating your ad ranking. However, many new Google Adwords users have been led to believe that only the Cost per Click counts in ad rankings. In addition, Google also increases the minimum Cost per Click (CPC) during periods of heavy web traffic.

Inherently, minimum CPC levels are also influenced by the Quality Score of your ad. This means, you get charged a lower minimum CPC, if your ad meets gets a higher Quality Score. Finally, Quality Score and CTR also affect the number of impressions your ad is getting.

The Solution: Learn how to achieve high Quality Score for optimum ad rank position

  Read the rest of this entry »

Google Adwords has become synonymous with online advertising till the point that Google has complete freedom to customize their business model to their advantage. The Google Adwords algorithm has been refined again and again, creating a competitive ad ranking environment. With this, only advertisers adhering to Google’s stringent standards would stand a chance at getting top rankings. And, it’s not always that the highest bid wins.

Amidst these challenges, Google Adwords still manages to retain its popularity amongst advertisers. This is largely due to the large footprint of Google Adsense users spreading across millions of blogs and websites. If you play your cards right with Adwords, this tool has the potential to help generate income for your internet business.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a frequent visitor of What-Sells-Online.com, you’d immediately notice the change in the look and feel of this blog. What is most apparent would be the new header. I wanted to create something that looked flashy, interesting and attractive. Perhaps, the shopping bags of the old blog didn’t have that much of an appeal. I also wanted my blog design to immediately grasp the attention of stumblers. I only have several seconds each time to make a positive (and hopefully, lasting) impression!

The New What Sells Online banner

The Old What Sells Online Banner

Why did I stop using Typepad?

Typepad is a great blogging service to start with. It provided some flexibility needed for a commercial blog, an easy-to-use interface, and most importantly, short descriptions of each section. Typepad gave me a whole lot of hand-holding I needed in starting my first commercial blog. For instance, I could easily add widgets, customize my own header and have it on my own domain.

Read the rest of this entry »

(The Internet Business Ideas Guide #3 (Part 2))

My previous post on Google Adsense explained how anyone can set up a website for the purpose of generating income from Google Adsense. Through my experience, the more web traffic you get, the greater number of clicks you’ll have on your Adsense ads.

Another factor that affects your profits with Google Adsense is the value of the ads displayed on your site. Ads driven by keywords with high demand will likely have higher Cost-Per-Clicks as compared to keywords with little or no demand. Thus, to optimize on your Adsense profits, you’ll need to identify keywords that attract a significant number of advertisers, with an average or low number of Adsense publishers.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third chapter of the Internet Business Ideas Guide from What Sells Online!.

Placing ads from Google Adsense lets you earn some cash from your blogs or websites. You get paid each time someone clicks on these ads. Google has an algorithm that searches through the text on your site and displays ads that are relevant to your content.

Essentially, people, small businesses or corporations who join the Google Adwords program will have their advertisements featured in websites that are enrolled in the Google Adsense program.

So, what do you need to generate profits from Google Adsense?

1. Traffic, traffic, traffic

The number of clicks on your ad correlates with website traffic. The greater the number of people visiting your website, the higher the chances will be for your ad to be clicked.

Therefore, if you want to make money with Google Adsense, you first need to work on getting your traffic up.

Using the right Search Engine Optimization techniques, Picking the Right Keywords and Finding the Right Niche are all important elements in generating traffic.

2. The Right Keywords

If you are relying on top search engine rankings for traffic, then optimizing the right niche keywords would be essential. Some popular keywords are way too competitive, and therefore you need to pick long tail keywords that isn’t too competitive, but with a substantial demand volume.

Here are some quick steps to pick the right keywords:

Read the rest of this entry »

A Review of Affiliate Network sites

In this third installment of Affiliate Marketing with Digital Products, I’ve decided to share my personal experience on affiliate network sites.

1. Affiliate Scout

This is a directory of affiliate networks. Basically, you should start with this if you are new to affiliate marketing, and aren’t sure about your affiliate network options.

With Affiliatescout.com, you can easily obtain lists of affiliate networks according to various categories and product types. This is an easy way to look at all available affiliate networks and explore them from one location.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Part 1 of this post, I focused on two major elements – how to find your niche, and how to identify profitable affiliate products to sell. I’ve also recently read a pretty interesting post by Yaro Starak on Using Paypal stores to find hot selling products.

This may be a good place to seek for affiliate product ideas. However, internet marketers also need to bear in mind that these areas may already be competitive, and they need to implement strong traffic generation strategies to obtain the same results.

How to test Affiliate Products?

The best way to know if a product sells is to test it out in the market. The good news is that you can promote it easily, quickly and for free with blogs. Personally, I like to use Blogspot.com as it’s owned by Google, which seems to give it a preference in terms of getting listed on search engines rapidly.

Here are 5 essential steps in setting up your blog for affiliate product testing:

Read the rest of this entry »

In this 2-part post of the Internet Business Ideas Guide, I will explore one of the most common ventures that new internet marketers go into - Affiliate Marketing. It is fairly common for new internet marketers to look at affiliates as their first possible business venture. If you have bought those self-help books along the lines of How to Make Money Online, it’s highly likely that affiliate marketing would be an area of focus. There are several reasons for this:

1. As an affiliate, you won’t have to develop your own products. This saves you time and money.
2. With affiliate products, you are able to test out a product, without incurring development costs
3. Affiliates are rewarded with huge commissions (usually between 25% and 75%)
4. Usually in digital form, affiliate products incur no inventory and are downloaded automatically once a purchase is made.
5. You are able to promote several products online at the same time.
6. You have a huge pool of affiliate products to choose from.

How to choose an affiliate product?

Read the rest of this entry »