How To Place Clickbank Hoplinks – A Tutorial

So you finally have made the plunge into affiliate marketing. You are dead set on working at home, no matter what it takes. You just want to tell your boss goodbye and you won’t stop at anything until you hit that goal. Well that’s all swell and sweet, but you need to be bringing in some cash first. Your first plan of action should be to join up with affiliate networks such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, AzoogleAds, and more. These are the “top dogs” of the scene right now. Other ones of interest include LinkShare, PayDotCom, PrimaryAds, and others.

This tutorial is a simple one, but quite useful for those of you who have never used Clickbank. Get ready to discover how to place Clickbank hoplinks onto your webpage. The hoplink system is the bread and butter of any affiliate marketer using Clickbank. Without this, you will not earn a dime. A hoplink, is a link created, specifically for your affiliate account, which in turn will credit you with commissions, if any visitors go through your link and end up buying a product. Excited yet? Ok let’s begin.

First things first – you need to have an account with Clickbank. If you do not have an account with them, get one here. The signup process is rather easy (check out a tutorial here)and you should be all set in no time. Once you have an account, you then should proceed to login. You can also create an affiliate link without logging in if you choose.

Click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of your screen and proceed to browse to any category of products. Under each product listing, you will see a link called “Create Hoplink”. When you click that, you get a screen that looks like this. All you do now is enter your nickname into the one box and click the “Create” button. You will then see your personalized affiliate link.

You can now copy and paste this link into your web design program, or link from your website to your hoplink. When someone ends up buying a product, you will make the commission. This is how Clickbank works and it works very well.

Clickbank Hoplink Shield

Ok, so being a full time affiliate marketer has its perks and downsides. What do you think about Clickbank’s new so called Hoplink Shield? Is it actually worth its salt? They say it decodes your affiliate link to prevent the common person from seeing your ID, yet at the same time they give the option to decode a link? What gives?

You can check out the new tool here.

They claim it keeps the promotional efforts of affiliates in tact and anonymous, but your affiliate code still has to show on the order form. So essentially what we have here, is a “worthless” tool. I put worthless in quotes, because it does serve a basic purpose which I touch on in a minute.

Does it really make that big of a difference if someone views your hoplink from within your article page or on the order form? Besides, there are plenty of scripts one can use, such as the php header redirection in order to properly mask affiliate links.

Which leads us to the whole topic of masking affiliate links. Does it work better for you? In my opinion, the only thing it helps with is making your site more professional to the untrained eye of a customer. Instead of your link being in the “hoplink” format, you could php redirect in the “site.com/directory/” format. This of course, raises credibility and helps with the people who scan down to that lower left side of the screen (status bar).

Now don’t get me wrong. On first glance, the tool isn’t bad. It will help people who do not know how to re-direct a link or hide it from looking “salesy”. Where is the option to completely remove the affiliate id from the order form though? This could be done with a hidden variable perhaps. That alone may even help with sales. With the rising popularity of affiliate marketing in today’s society, more and more people are beginning to understand what it is. This of course, causes some to feel like a marketer is ripping them off. End result? No purchase if they know it is an affiliate link.

Now of course this isn’t the case for everyone, but I can assure you that this happens a lot. Have you ever cleared your cache and bought through your own affiliate link before? Hmm…

PS: I like the new design over the old one. For some reason it looks a bit more “sleek”.

How To Market Your Internet Business

When it comes to working from home or working from the office, you need to know how to market your internet business. In fact, over 80% of the work – of making your business a long term successful outfit, is actually doing the research prior to building your website. Amazing isn’t it? Yet, most people never do this or never even log-in to a keyword research tool. So let’s get started with some helpful pointers.

An internet business is like any other kind of business, except that it is digital by nature. This means that your advertising mediums must be via the web for the best results (traditional advertising mediums such as newspapers can also be effective). They could be in the format of video, text, audio, or a combination of all three. With the sudden rise and popularity of video on the web, my vote goes towards video as the one item you should be using on your sales page. Even if it is just a welcome message with someone saying “hello”, it needs to be there. People feel an interaction and a connection with someone when they get to see them, hear them, and listen to them.

So, now that you know you must use video to market your web business properly in 2009, how do you get visitors to actually see the sales page you have? This question requires some thought and it would be best if you sit down for a while and begin to think of the target market that your business “talks” to. What kind of people are most likely to purchase your products or services? Are they teenagers, middle-aged, or elderly people? What is the average income (estimate) of someone who buys your products?

All of these kinds of questions are vital when you are forming your business blueprint. From the answers you write down, you can then formulate a plan that meets the needs of your target market in terms of:

• website design
• advertising strategy
• “lingo” of the market
• proper price to charge
• emotional “triggers” to use
• and more…

Website Design

Website design is an obvious one. If you view any childrens’ websites, you will see that they are colorful and full of fun shapes. They include talking characters, animations, and everything that attracts a young person’s eye. Now go ahead and do a search for luxury yachts. Are you going to see an animated duck talking about the specifications of the twin-engine diesel yacht? No, absolutely not. This is what I mean by the website design cooperating with the target market.

Advertising Strategies

The next point is advertising strategy. This is where you decide how you are going to get those visitors to your website. With all due respect to the other types of advertising, there are only two or three main ways of driving traffic on the web. They include:

• Pay Per Click
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media

You can pay for each individual visitor that comes to your site, by placing relevant ads on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You set the price you want to pay per click and then measure your adspend vs sales. This type of advertising is quite effective, fast, and a great way to “test the waters” of any potential market, IF you have the money to spend. I say “IF”, because many people burn a hole in their wallet before they even have a chance to log into their pay per click account the next day. So tread carefully if you are new to PPC.

Second on the plate is search engine optimization or “SEO”. Now I don’t care who you are, what your budget is, or what your level of skill is in regards to marketing online. You SHOULD be using search engine strategies for your website promotion. This method is a long and patient one, but well worth it. Essentially, you are trading your time for money by utilizing the process of structuring your website, so that in a few months it can appear in the results of searches on the web. The payoff is loads of free, targeted traffic.

Last but not least we have video. Now at the present time, there is very limited knowledge in the way of ranking your videos on the search engines, so millions of people can see them, BUT you can still create useful videos and post them to sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe. These sites are viewed by millions of people a day and in turn, offer a great way for you to get the word out there about your business.

Market Lingo

The lingo of the market is also very important. What is this lingo you speak of Marcus? Well what I mean by this, is the common language used by the people that are involved in your market. For example, let’s look at  the saltwater fish hobby. I am involved with this hobby so I can assure you there is an “in-market lingo” used that is not used elsewhere. You will have terms being used such as calcium reactor, sump, siphon hole, live rock, aragonite, phosphorous, and other things that may confuse the average person. However, to an avid hobbyist, these words make perfect sense. So it’s all about getting the right “words” out there and making yourself an authority within the market.

Proper Price

Although somewhat obvious, this may be an overlooked item on the checklist for success. I can’t tell you how many people have a product or service they are promoting, and create a price for it out of thin air. At the very least, you should be doing SOME competition browsing and taking notes of what other people are charging for a similar service. If all of the used car dealers in your area were selling 1996 used vans for $6,000 dollars, would you go out then and sell your 1996 van for $15,000 dollars?

Emotional Triggers

This is a very important step when selling or pre-selling your product. Depending on whether or not you are an affiliate or a merchant, this may vary a bit but the principles are the same. Visitors that come to your site are not statistics, they are human beings with needs and wants. They have problems and they want a solution to their problem. As long as you offer a moral viable solution to their issue, you can effectively use known emotional triggers to help get a response out of them, such as buying your product or signing up to your membership or whatever it is that you do.

Hopefully these tips can help you focus your marketing strategies a bit more, and as always, if you want some free lessons like the one offered here, make sure you sign up to my free lessons via email.

AffiloBlueprint Review

What’s all the hulla-balloo about this AffiloBlueprint thing? Is it worth your time to even read the sales page or is it a joke? To start off, I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ling and I can say the man knows his stuff. Out of all of the marketers ‘out there’ in cyberspace, he takes the time to work with his students and to me that’s a big bonus. I hated the feeling of being snubbed off and not even being responded too, AFTER I bought a product from some guru. So Mark’s products and his nature of helping, is different.

The next question that runs through peoples’ minds is whether or not this course is right for them.  It’s a fair question to ask since it comes at a price tag of $197. I have a unique way of looking at this. Not only can you use this expense as a tax deduction, but it also becomes invaluable for the amount of information you receive. What Mark has basically done is record himself in over 40 videos (don’t hold me to that number, I think it’s over 40) working on his computer.

People pay thousands of dollars to attend seminars where the gurus speak.  You are getting a much more personal help from the affiliate master himself, at a price tag that costs 1/10th of what a seminar does. So if you are on the fence about this kind of price tag, think of it in terms of positive value and lifelong knowledge. In my opinion, he should of charged $300+ for it easy. But, it’s his decision not mine…

Anyways I also want to point out that in my opinion, this course should be purchased by beginners new to affiliate marketing. It is priceless for one reason – it contains a checklist of steps that you must follow in  order to be successful. Yep, it’s just like the days of pre-school where you colored by number. Except now it’s make money by number.

Affiloblueprint

Affiloblueprint is something that not everyone will take advantage of. It isn’t very often that a marketer decides to share his personal help with the world, and that’s probably the reason this course is only going to be for sale for 7 days. After one week I THINK the doors will be shut. So it would probably be in your best interest to hop on the bandwagon before it takes off for the gold rush.

One last thing which I think is important…. Mark records himself live, starting with a blank website, and shows beginners how to get to $1,000 a week in profits, and THEN shows them the profits as proof. This course was done for a live audience and that’s the reason it is solid gold. It isn’t a theory – it is the truth.

Managing Pay Per Click Keywords

When it comes to search engine marketing and paid advertising, a lot of people have trouble managing pay per click keywords. For one reason or another, many people seem to fall into a certain school of thought. In beginners especially, this way of thinking leads people to believe that pay per click advertising is one giant mystery. It doesn’t have to be. When you are first getting started with pay per click marketing, you should be focusing your efforts on niche markets and niche adgroups. If you don’t know what those are, you really have a lot of reading to do regarding paid advertising, before you start throwing money down the tubes.

The way you go about managing your pay per click keywords, is to organize the words you are advertising on into appropriate groups. These groups are known as adgroups. Within each adgroup you will have a set of words that is somewhat related. Let’s take for example the dog training market. Now if you wanted to advertise on dog barking keywords and dog biting keywords, you should put all of the phrases that contain the word biting, into the biting adgroup. Next, all of the phrases that contain the word barking, into the barking adgroup.

The reason for this is quite simple. When designing your landing pages to send the visitors too, you want your page to be as relevant as possible. Now, the bigger your adgroup becomes, the less possible it is for your landing page to be relevant to that user. If you were only using one landing page to send all of your visitor traffic through from dog barking, to biting, whining, scratching, etc… it wouldn’t be nearly be as targeted as if you were to send them each to their own landing page. By specific targeting, you could talk about the one problem those people were having.

Managing pay per click keywords is all about organization and theme relevance. This in turn will get you a higher return on your investment, a lower cost per click on your advertising, and a better business overall. If sales do not increase after you have grouped your keyphrases accordingly, then you need to begin looking at other factors. Is the design of your website adequate? What about the words you are advertising on?

Are the words you are advertising on relevant to your topic? Just because you have appropriately categorized your particular keyphrases, doens’t mean you will make money. You need to make sure those words will actually produce sales. Are they phrases where people are looking to purchase? Do they have buyer intent? These are the things you should be looking for when creating your pay per click campaigns.

What Does SEO Stand For?

What does SEO stand for anyways? Let’s cut to the nitty gritty shall we? SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process by which you take a series of steps in order to optimize your website. The final result you hope to achieve is world domination (just kidding). What you want to achieve is a well written website that naturally ranks in the major search engines. This action of ranking well, will then attract hundreds if not thousands of visitors to your site each and every month. It is up to you to monetize that traffic and produce an income for yourself and/or your family.

So what are the basics of SEO? How does one go about getting their website to rank well? Believe it or not, the algorithms that the search engines use have not changed much over the years, regardless of what you may think. Sure duplicate content has been scraped out, “thin” sites have been washed away, and I could go on forever. The important thing to realize is that the fundamental basics have and will probably be the same for a long time to come. What gets you ranking well?

The first is content. You need content, unique content, and lots of it. Write about what pleases you if it is a hobby site. Write as much as you can. If that isn’t your cup of tea, then outsource it. No matter what market or niche you are in, you should have a well written website that is somewhat “large” in scale. Now I put large in quotes because it is a relative term. When scoping out your competition, you should analyze the top 5 results for the keywords of your choice. Upon doing so, see how many pages make up that site. You can do this by doing a “site:url.com” search in Google.

This should bring back the number of pages that site contains, or at least a rough estimate. If all of the websites in this market only have 100-200 pages, then you should strive to make yours 230 pages. You don’t want to overdue it though and go and create 2,000 pages – unless of course, you want to get a lot of long tail traffic. The point is, try and maintain a consistent look for your website, that is on par with the rest of the market but taking it a simple step further and going that extra mile.

The second factor that will not change “much” is links. The more the merrier (in quality and relevance of course). You want to get other websites linking to you that contain the phrase you want to rank for. It’s really as simple as that. If you own a site about horse racing, then make sure to get other horse racing websites to link over to you. If they are quality too, then you can return the favor. Keep in mind that you do not want to link to shady neighborhoods, as this will negatively affect your ranking. So in short, get that content going and get those links churning.

Brad Callen

Online business continues to attract thousands of entrants every day, who are looking to make some quick money on the web. However, most of them often feel the deficiency of a resource that could guide them into this complex world of online business, where trends and technologies change by the day. One name that has gained recognition, as an authentic resource for providing direction towards the most useful online marketing strategies is Brad Callen.

Brad Callen is regarded as the most reputed and unargued name in the highly-competitive world of internet marketing. He has written many journals, e-books and created some of the highest-selling e-guides related to this subject. However, he is best known for one of the most landmark books about earning through the Internet, based on the Google platform, called ‘AdWords Made Easy’.

Along with this title, Brad Callen authored another famous book called ‘SEO Made Easy’ which takes readers from the very founding concepts of SEO techniques, to the most contemporary scenarios and even gives a glimpse into some devious SEO strategies.

Tracing his initiation into online marketing however, few people realize that before he made it big with his publications and SEO offerings, Callen was involved with the weight loss or as it is called, the ‘fitness’ industry in the US. He had written an e-book called ‘Ultimate Weight Loss Revealed’ and the somewhat phenomenal success of this e-book gave Callen the confidence to go ahead with his online endeavors. The success of this online venture made him realize that he had the ability to manipulate the content and use ground-breaking techniques to drive unimaginable volumes of online traffic towards his e-book.

A Young Entrepreneur, in January 2003, Brad Callen founded Bryxen Software, a company that has been focused on offering the most innovative internet marketing tools and tips. Due to his personal experience of having started with limited means, the company is dedicated more towards helping out the medium-sized or smaller businesses in generating greater online traffic towards their respective websites. Bryxen Software has been successful in offering budgeted and user-friendly internet marketing solutions to such businesses.

Some of Brad Cullen’s most famous offerings include:

Affiliate Elite — centered on creating an affiliate network, starting with the basics, i.e. choosing the appropriate affiliate merchandise.

It combines a number of tools like

• How to understand Google Organic Results?
• How to scrutinize the competitors’ AdWords?
• How to recognize top-performing Affiliates?

SEO Elite — it focuses on the off-page optimization, helping your website appear higher on the SERP of search engines. This is regarded as one of the most comprehensive SEO softwares. It performs:

• Link analysis
• Keyword density analysis
• Link density analysis

Keyword Elite — the simplest and the most effective software to create your list of the most productive keywords. It even provides guidance about the smartest keyword-usage strategies.

What sets apart Brad Callen from other young and successful contemporaries is that despite his immense success and fame, he continues to remain a grounded individual. He is still regarded as one of the most accessible and humble entrepreneurs, known for taking the time to personally answer as many e-mails as he can, on a daily basis.

Vincent James

If the idea of a convicted felon making millions (in fact, making a hundred million Dollars) within a few months is too good to be true, then you need to know more about Vincent James. Vincent James is probably the most unusual internet marketer of our times. Having exploded his bank balance like hell, he is out to teach the secrets he learned, and to share with everyone who is interested in learning the tips, tricks and secrets to become filthy rich within a few months. His courses have generated some of the most religious followers that a marketing giant has seen in the last decade or so.

Vincent’s product “The Twelfth Month Millionaire” is selling like mad in the online world. Even as we speak, Vincent is probably making a ton of money selling his marketing secrets online. So, what is it that distinguishes Vincent from the crowd of copywriters and marketers in the market today? It is his simple lucid style and his no BS ways of putting his point across the table that make him a loved tutor, all around.

Another thing that makes him different is that he is someone who had almost lost $50 million in a law suit, was facing a 10 year long jail term and broke all hell loose when he conceptualized and brought to practice his idea of making money. His simple ideas revolutionarized his way of living and the almost-homeless convict earns more than CEOs of some of the biggest companies and organizations in the world today. What is even more intriguing is the fact that this kid got from zero to a whopping $100 million in just a short span of 10 years, since the time he has been into internet marketing.

Another important aspect of his course is that Vincent honestly proclaims that he is not a good author; neither is he a great man. He also goes on to say that he has lost almost all his money being stupid. His generosity in sharing his weaknesses with his audience connects him to their inner selves and this is exactly what makes Vincent James a league apart from all the other internet marketers- who not only look utterly professional, but talk perfectly! Finally, his promise to teach his students, readers and fellow marketers how to safeguard the income they would generate, rather than squandering it away for nothing, makes this self-confessional monk of the internet a hot favorite!

Joel Comm

Do you know that the man behind Yahoo! Games was not someone from the Yahoo Family, but a rather unknown (or well known) internet marketer- Joel Comm? Yes, Joel, and Edmond – OK based internet entrepreneur had sold his online gaming site- Classic games to Yahoo during the late1990s. Having been involved with the online business model, Joel Comm is one of the very few internet marketers who earns a decent living from their family friendly websites. His sites are designed in such a way that almost every member of the family has something in it for reference.

The man behind Worldvillage.com, Joel is known to be the man who strongly believes in making clean websites for everyone in the family to sit together and enjoy. World village is also Joel’s first internet venture, which he had launched way back in 1995. World village is a testament to his conviction and a strong belief in family values. The site enjoys thousands of unique hits each day, even today. After his successful stint with other ventures, Joel got into online marketing full time in 1997.

His company- InfoMedia inc. has created a number of sites since then. Some of them have been held by Joel himself, while some have been sold off to potential customers. Some sites were tailor made for specific clients, while others have just been developed keeping in mind the latest trends in internet marketing. Some of the most common niches in which InfoMedia inc. has forayed include online shopping, site reviewing, free stuff sites and many more.

Apart from being a successful online entrepreneur and having made a fortune flipping sites, Joel is known best as the author of the New York Time’s bestselling title- The AdSense code. Joel still gets a 5 figure check every month from Google AdSense and is known to possess in-depth knowledge of the way AdSense works. It is for this very reason that Joel is a prominent figure at all conferences and gatherings pertaining to online marketing and Google AdSense in particular. A father figure in most circles of internet marketers, Joel is looked upon as one of the pioneers of website flipping and niche site creation.

His latest stint is Joelcomm.com, which not only discusses the latest that Joel has to offer, but also contains excerpts form his personal life. It is one of the most vivid interfaces between newbies at internet marketing and the experienced veteran that Joel is. Joel also runs a number of online courses, pertaining to internet marketing in general and Google AdSense in particular.

Armand Morin

If you are even remotely associated to internet marketing, then chances are that you would have come across Armand Morin in some way or the other. His books, students, teachings and his own site are some of the ways in which you can come across the stirring marketing ideas that this veteran internet marketer has up his sleeve. Having started his own online marketing business back in 1996, Morin has come a long way. From a handful of Dollars to combined revenue of $35,000,000 in a decade, Armand’s online venture has struck riches for him and a whole bunch of his students.

Apart from promoting his services online, Armand is a voracious speaker and also runs several courses to teach budding internet marketers a trick or two about the trade. His students are said to have generated millions of Dollars online, following the tips and tricks laid down by Armand. Armand’s name appears on almost half a million websites on the internet, which is a testimony to his growing popularity in the virtual business arena.

Another thing that tempts people into hiring Armand and availing his proprietary services is the fact that his strategies and internet marketing principles have worked wonders for all the businesses that have implemented them in totality to date.

There has been no one as successful as Armand when it comes to making online business plans and suggesting proposals for businesses supposed to be launched online. An uncrowned king of internet marketing, Armand has a new idea for almost every new client that avails his services. Tailor made business solution for each and every client not only ensures that the client in perspective gets a sure shot impetus with his online sales, but also ensures that his other clients are not affected by the entry of a new competitor.

One thing that sets Armand apart is the fact that his model has worked time and again, without fail for almost any type of online business. His guarantee to flip any defunct business upside down within a matter of just 90 minutes has skyrocketed Armand’s popularity worldwide. He is a sought after speaker at public business meetings, not only in the US, but also in the UK, Singapore, Australia and even New Zealand. Apart from his tailor made business plans, Armand has launched several software packages which can be used to automate and replicate businesses worldwide (acegenerator is one such example).

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