How To Make Money With Articles by Becoming An Affiliate

How To Make Money With Articles by Becoming An Affiliate
Copyright © Monique Hawkins

http://moniquerh.3stepsecret.com

If you can either write articles or have the promotion and marketing knowledge to publicize articles that others write, becoming an affiliate for several companies may be a great way for you to generate a good income so you can work from home. You can do this by receiving part of the revenue off of sales that the company gets from people who “click through” from your website via the company’s links that are placed on your pages.

With any work from home business, you need to make sure you will be promoting a product or service t o a hot and hungry market; you will need a killer sales pitch and website content to get your readers interested in the product. You will also need to convince them that they cannot live without the product, and to keep them coming back to your website time and time again for more recommendations and your useful content.
Although many affiliate companies only give you money off of the first sale you make from each customer, you have the option of promoting a good range of companies so that you can still make a profit off of your returning customers.

If you cannot write this kind of content of your own, there are many ways to pick up free or paid content to place on your work from home affiliate website. There are many reasons why paying for such articles would be to your advantage. First, you will be able to tell the writer exactly what you want, what product you are trying to sell, and what direction they can go in to keep your readers interested and informed. On the other hand, when you search for free content, you are limited to what is already out there. Secondly, you will own the copyright to this content. That means that no one else can reuse it without your consent. If you opt for free content, you will be sharing that content with an unknown amount of other affiliate websites, plus the original author will be able to place their byline at the bottom of the article that could result in them stealing your traffic.

There are many products that have nice affiliate commission rates for those who know how to pre-sale their product and deliver click through customers who are ready to buy. As long as you choose to promote a product or service that can be very useful to a wide variety of people, then pre-selling your chosen company may not be that hard at all. The key in this situation may likely be getting those customers to your website so that they have a chance to see your recommendations and click on your affiliate links.

About the Author
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:

http://moniquerh.3stepsecret.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Meet the Click Quality team

Over the past year, we’ve written about invalid clicks to let you know about the new invalid clicks report and provide answers to some of the most frequently asked invalid click questions. Now, we want to introduce you to the Click Quality team, who investigates your invalid click concerns. This team has been around for over three years and they provide protection in addition to our automated filters, which proactively identify invalid clicks and discard them before they make it into your account. Today, Julian from the Click Quality team joins us to let you know how you can request an invalid clicks investigation and shares some of the common suspicious click concerns that his team sees and how you can monitor them:

Working on the Click Quality team, I’m one of a number of people who investigate suspicious traffic to determine if invalid click activity has occurred. These thorough investigations analyze a number of factors, including IP address, duplicate clicks, and various other clicking patterns. It is rare that invalid clicks are not detected by our automatic filters, but when we find them we immediately credit the advertiser's account. If you'd like us to investigate suspicious activity in your account, please fill out this form. If and when you do, providing detailed information, such as your web logs, will greatly assist with our investigation, so we ask that you include any reports indicating suspicious IP addresses, referrers, or requests. Our team will respond to you as soon as we complete our investigation of your account. And, please be patient, as a thorough investigation can take 3-5 business days.

Our job is to look into advertiser concerns and complaints and we’re happy to answer any questions you have. However, before submitting an investigation request, you may want to do a little checking on your own because, over the years, we've found that in many cases the activity that the advertiser has pointed out isn't actually due to click fraud. I've provided a list of some of the more common concerns below, along with tips and tools to help you better understand and monitor suspicious activity in your account.

Concern: I’ve seen huge fluctuations in my spend, traffic, or ROI.

• Review your account to see if you’ve made recent changes to your daily budget, maximum CPCs, or ad distribution preferences. Making changes to any of these can increase your reach and change your conversion rate as new visitors may have different buying patterns.
• Traffic on the Google content network can also fluctuate from day to day as your ads match new sites. To better control your spend on the content network, make sure that you implement content bids or set up a separate campaign that is targeted just to the content network.
• If you're not currently tracking your conversions, we recommend that you use a conversion tracking tool, such as Google conversion tracking or Google Analytics, in order to monitor your ROI.
  

Concern: There are discrepancies in my web logs.

• You may have noticed that the clicks in your web logs are different than the number of clicks that are reported in your account. If you find that there are fewer clicks reported in your web logs than in your account, we suggest that you run an invalid clicks report because many of your clicks may have been automatically filtered.
• If you've seen more clicks in your account than in your web logs, make sure that your tracking software is counting clicks from the Google Network. You can can make sure your tracking URLs are set up correctly here. Or, you can use auto-tagging to more easily identify AdWords clicks in your web logs.
  

Concern: I have multiple clicks coming from the same IP address.

• There are several legitimate reasons that you may see multiple clicks from a single IP address in your web logs. For example, if a user refreshes their browser after clicking on your ad, this may appear as multiple ad clicks in your logs, however, you are only charged for one click. Also, some service providers, such as AOL, assign the same IP address to a large number of users, so multiple users visiting your page may appear as a single IP (or a few very similar IPs).
• In order to determine if clicks from the same IP address are unique, you can use auto-tagging. Auto-tagging will show you if multiple clicks were the result of a user refreshing their browser or if they represent a new click on your ad.
  

Concern: My competitors are clicking on my ads.

• Our filters are able to recognize the vast majority of invalid clicks that come from a competitor who is repeatedly clicking on your ads. These clicks should be filtered out before they reach your account so you will not be charged.
• To determine the number of clicks that we've automatically filtered from your account, you can run an invalid clicks report.
  

I hope this list will help you better determine if suspicious clicks in your account are legitimate, or invalid. As I mentioned earlier, if, at any point, you'd like us to investigate suspicious activity in your account or have any questions, please get in touch with us.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

How to Make Money By Writing Articles About Your Home Business

If you have a home-based business, one of the best ways to be viewed as an expert and to drive targeted traffic to your home biz webiste is by writing articles.

Writing articles is a great free tool that you can use. Here is one strategy you can use.

Making Money with Articles: Article Directories

Article directories are websites that house free articles. These articles are usually put there by whoever owns the copyright to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owners byline placed under it so that those who eventually read the article will know who wrote it (or at least who owns it) and will be able to get in contact with or visit their website for further information.

Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you money. By using this method, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even if you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject on which you are promoting (for example for you run an affiliate website), you can always hire a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be expensive up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit.

Let’s take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working from home. You write an article on an accounting topic and place it on various article directories. Those who are looking for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is needed to do a job for them, and visit your website or contact you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new client who may use your services regularly, but will definitely give you a nice profit at least once.

Furthermore, since you have posted it on a free article directory, others who have affiliate websites about accounting will inevitably use your article for their website. Since they must attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This because you will be benefiting of off the traffic that they get to their website.

There are numerous article directories out there for you to utilize. Your bet best is to put a copy of each of your articles on every one for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring more traffic and customers to your website, which will lead to new orders and more profit.

New pricing structure for referrals

Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we've just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:

AdSense Referrals:

• When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
  
• When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
  
• If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).
  

AdWords Referrals:

• When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
  
• When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
  
• If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).
  

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

Finally, please keep in mind that publishers may not click on their own referral ads and will not be paid for referring themselves for any product. For more information about referrals, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman - AdSense Product Marketing

On groundhogs and "predicting" your AdWords performance

Earlier this morning, Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog didn't see his shadow and determined that winter would soon be ending. While we are fans of tradition here at Inside AdWords, we're happy that forecasting your AdWords performance doesn't require assistance from any furry pals or an early morning wake-up call. Instead you can look to various resources located right in the AdWords interface to help you determine how to better manage your account. Here are a couple of tools to check out:

The custom date range filter in the Report Center allows you to compare performance from any period of your choice. For example, if you run an online flower shop and you're interested in seeing how your Valentine's Days ads perform year-over-year, you could benchmark against last year by running a report for February 2006. Or, perhaps you own a bed and breakfast and would like to see how traffic to your site fluctuates with the seasons; to do that, you could create a report for all of 2006.

Google Analytics is another great tool to help you view past performance and compare different time periods. The handy date range comparison feature allows you to specify two different date ranges. Once selected, your reports will update, showing differences between the two date ranges. The % change column shows the change in values between your two selected date ranges.

While there may not be one single best way to "predict" how your AdWords ads will perform, one thing is certain: using the tracking and reporting resources within your AdWords account will give you more information and insight to guide your future decisions. It's also a lot easier to access and a tad more scientific than consulting your favorite groundhog. That said, we look forward to the end of winter and spring just around the corner -- thanks, Phil!


Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew