• It is really easy to build nice looking websites with full functionality
• Vast selection of great looking Themes for every kind of website – free and paid
• Vast selection of really useful Plugins library – free and paid
• No need to learn coding to make great looking websites
• Support is readily available at WordPress.org and various forums

The reason I want to build a WordPress Website Template is that with a template, I can deploy a website within an hour. The amount of time that it takes to configure a WordPress website so that it is ready for content is quite significant (2-4 hours). Imagine if you want to build 5 to 10 websites in a month, and each time you had to spend 2 – 4 hours, just to get your WordPress website configured. This is a great time-saver.

I will divide the template building into following posts/topics.

• Installing WordPress Manually
• Adding select plugins, configuring them, and explaining what they do
• Adding basic website pages
• Configuring WordPress – Menus, Pages, Posts etc.
• Saving the WordPress Template and cloning/duplicating it to another domain/account

I might add some more posts to the above list. This will be a sort of living document where it will evolve as I write a post for each topic and discover new things and techniques. I will detail all the steps with screen-shots. This will not only benefit anyone who wants to rapidly build WordPress based websites for Affiliate Marketing or monetizing/income earning, but it will also server as a document for me. I hope you will enjoy this series as I am really excited to start building tons of really neat income generating websites.

Use FREEZE149 for New COM, CA, US, BIZ, NET, ORG, CO.UK, IN at $1.49 + ICANN Fees

Valid for only one domain for the first year. I hope it still works for you. Seems like that have increased the $1 code. I will be doing these domain codes regularly, so be sure to be on the lookout. This is a great way to save on new domain registrations, domain renewals and transfers. Godaddy is pretty good in coming out with these discount codes. There is always a Godaddy discount code available when you need one. I will try to post as soon as I find out a new code. Let me know what you are specifically looking for, and I will try to find it for you. Now register away…

The concept behind affiliate marketing is quite simple. You build a website and on that website, advertise for merchants. When visitors click through to their website, and possibly purchase something, the merchant will pay you a commission. The commission may seem small at first, but consider the millions of people on the internet everyday. You goal then, as a marketer, is to get as many people as possible to visit your website and click throught the affiliate links you have provided.

The four most important elements of affiliate marketing are website, content, keywords and links. It is necessary to build a website, continuously updating it with keyword targeted content and fresh links to and from your website. These four elemnts all feed into one another, and each is neccessary for a fully functioning website. The more quality content you have on your site, utilizing targeted keywords, the more traffic you will generate and the more likely you are to generate money.

The next step is to join affiliate marketing campaigns that are relevant to the traffic you expect to have. This means that if your website is going to be about movies, choose affiliates that are related to movies. For example, movie tickets, DVD/Bluray and electonics. Be aware that there are some very lucrative affiliates, who pay well. But there will be a lot of competition for you to overcome. Other, less competitve programs may have less competition, but will pay out significantly less. You need to make the decision as to what type of campaigns you want to include on your site.

Once your site is complete and yor affiliate marketing programs are up and running, it time to talk about enhancing your site. There are tons of programs that analyze you site ans traffic, showing you where you traffic is coming from and what keywords are generating the most hits. Armed with this information, you can make the appropiate changes to your site to optimize its performance. Affiliate marketing websites are an ongoing project that need to maintained and updated.

Thinking of affiliate marketing as a get-rich-quick-scheme is not the poroper approach. It will take time and dedication to build a profitable website, so be patient. The great thing is that once you have built the site and you have taken the steps to make it generate mpney, you can build more sites the same way, until you have network of affiliate markrting sites that are generating money.

So many internet marketers talk about PPC, or pay per click, and the reason is that it works. However, there are a large number of marketers who fail to maximize its potential. Here are some ways that pay per click will make you money.

1. Target a precise demographic

By utilizing PPC, you are specifically marketing towards a certain group of people. Using carefully chosen keywords will allow you to appeal to the customer base you are trying to attract. When people are searching the internet for keyworded information, and come across you pay per click ad, they are more likely to investigate because it is an exact match.

2. Increase your online presence

With the number of people using search engines to find information, PPC makes you and/or your company visible to everyone making those searches. The more you choose to bid for your ranking, the better results you will have.

3. Easy management

Pay per click advertising is extremely user friendly. You have the freedom to change your campaign at any time. If you notice that you are not getting the results you desire for your latest advertisement, change the keywords to adapt. As well, you can monitor the success of the promotion with real time results.

4. You pay for what you get

Payment for the advertisement is due when someone clicks through. This method of advertising gives you the edge over competitors, because it will put your online company in the forefront of the results page, again making you the most visible. You only pay for the people who click through to your site.
These are just a few ways that pay per click can give you the market advantage. It is a beneficial tool to use in order to bring more traffic to your site. Not only can you track your progress on any promotion, but you can also adjust the ad to achieve better results. Remember to do your research to be sure this strategy will work for you. Now get out there and get noticed.

Green hosting is when the service is provided through environmental means.  There are many ways that a company can make green initiatives.  Some companies use renewable energy like solar panels, to power their operations.  Others are avidly involved in research of new efficiencies for environmental preservation.

For a web hosting company to be considered green, they regularly update their equipment with newer, energy efficient models. This way, they require less energy to operate and multiple pieces can be replaced with one.

Other equipment like cooling devices and back-up power should be replaced with environmentally friendly alternatives.  There are more and more web hosting providers investing time and money into green initiatives; like tree planting or a paperless workplace.

More and more companies are taking responsibility for the environment and its preservation.  By doing a little bit of research, you can find web hosting services that are not detrimental to the environment.

These days, we all need to work together to ensure that we are taking the best care of our world.  What better way than to support companies who are taking the initiative to find solutions and do what they can?  In addition, while you’re investigating the “greenness” of your web hosting, take the time to see what kind of steps your affiliates are taking to shrink their carbon footprint.

• Compared to offline business, affiliate marketing businesses require almost zero overhead.  One can operate a successful affiliate marketing set up with a lap top, printer, phone line, Paypal account and registered business name.  Setting up a home office is an easy task, and often requires very little investment to create a productive environment.  No liability insurance, commercial lease of employees required.
• Affiliate marketing doesn’t require you to maintain a stock of products.  Not having to store physical products translates into ridding your business of pesky fees involved with leasing storage space, man hours to log the inventory and associated shipping costs.
• You are not tied to one single market.  While many can argue that you can have several offline businesses in various markets, the odds that one person can effectively manage those businesses is highly unlikely; their expenses would be through the roof!  With affiliate marketing you can hop from niche to niche, test the waters, accumulate statistical data and launch your “store front” for free.  The only cost is time and maybe a few domain names.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to convince someone of the many benefits presented with affiliate marketing.  If you have the desire to quit your job, work for yourself, spend more time with your family and ultimately live a more fulfilling life – than affiliate marketing might be what you’ve been looking for!  Just keep in mind that making things “work” will take time, sweat, money and sleepless nights, but the rewards are plentiful if you stick with it.

The very first step is to decide what the subject of your site is going to be.  It is a good idea to choose areas that you are interested in, to ensure that you stay motivated to maintain it.  For example, if you are a movie buff, consider a website focusing on movies, reviews and paraphernalia.  Once you have decided on a topic, start researching affiliate offers revolving around movie tickets, DVD’s, Blu-ray or electronics.  Try to choose campaigns that are directly related to the subject of you site and avoid ones that have no obvious link.

On the same token, ensure that you content is relevant to the subject.  Visitors to your site will lose faith in your authority on movies if you are posting content about kittens.  Keep you content as current as possible.  This may mean posting new content often, even once or twice a week.  By updating your content, you are ensuring that your visitors keep coming back for new information. 

Also, make sure that you are optimizing the search engines by using keywords related to your topic. This ensures that the search engines recognize your website when someone enters a specific search term.  The more new content you can add that has current keywords in it, the faster your page will rank.  Of course the goal is to have your site rank on the first page of the search engine results.  In addition, be aware that not only do search engines like audio and video, but so will your visitors.  So try to include audio and video posts.

In order to satisfy your visitors, make certain that you are hosting your site with a reliable source.  Unreliable hosting will frustrate visitors and prevent them from returning.  Similarly, keep your site clean and easy to navigate.  Although it may be tempting, refrain from overloading the site with too many affiliate marketing campaigns.  This is overwhelming to the visitor and again decreases your authority.

A great looking, easy to navigate website will exponentially increase your traffic.  By increasing the traffic to your site, you are encouraging people to click through your affiliate marketing campaigns..  Remember that visitors are most likely to trust you and your site when you are the authority on one topic and your site is designed with their convenience in mind.

A lot of people make 6 figure incomes strictly off of utilizing pay per click advertising methods to drive traffic to the vendor-supplied or home made landing pages.  One issue that’s always been at the forefront of the Clickbank community is link cloaking.

Previously, Clickbank generated horrendous links with all sorts of ugly characters which aren’t SEO friendly or encouraging to the potential buyer.  Though they have implemented a built in link cloaking tool, many hackers and dark side marketers are still able to hijack your Clickbank affiliate links, input their user ID and steal your profits.

With the advent of social networking and real time micro-blogging sites like Twitter, url shortening services are becoming quite popular among the affiliate marketing industry.  After all, 99% of them are absolutely free with zero strings attached!  The top 3 url shortener services available are provided by Doiop, TinyURL and ReadThisUrl.  Url shortening services are effective and reliable – with the only true issue being complete control over the appearance and tracking of your affiliate links.

While using a simple chunk of html can easily accomplish the same end result, there is really no point to figuring it out if you have never done it before.  Equally enough, if you want to cloak and protect your Clickbank links, there are also several paid services available, which if you can afford, will present you with the most options.  Sometimes your tools can make or break your business, so remember to streamline your efforts and become a well oiled Clickbank profit machine!

With regards to making money with affiliate marketing, bum marketing is essentially the technique of utilizing free resources to get organic search engine placement and backlinks pointing to the product you are promoting. Bum marketing is not as effective in high competition niches, but if you get a little bit more specific with your keywords it shouldn’t be too hard to gain that number one spot on Google for a handful of your primary keywords.

Article marketing is probably the most talked about method of bum marketing. Websites, such as EzineArticles.com, provide publishers with a 100% free platform to post niche articles. The real power comes in the ability to add links in what’s known as a resource or author box. This has two benefits to the everyday affiliate marketer:

1. Article directories tend to have a high page rank, which means that if your content is optimized correctly with keywords, your articles have a good chance of gaining top spot in the search engines. Top spot equals tons of free traffic to that page.
2. Because of the link in your resource box, article directories also provide a means to building high ranking, one-way links which point to your website or affiliate offer. This means a better ranking for your site, and a potential for it to have a first page ranking as well.

It’s definitely not unheard of for someone to have the top two spots on Google for a particular keyword, one being their website and the other being a related article which points to their website. Creating this occurrence across multiple targeted keywords is how successful affiliate marketers take full advantage of organic search engine placement and how it directly relates to bum marketing.

Bum marketing is not immediate, and despite popular belief, it requires a fair amount of planning and patience to effectively get the most out of it. Ask any affiliate marketer and they will tell you the same thing: it takes patience and versatility to survive in this business. Bum marketers know this first hand.

There are several different social media outlets which you can leverage to promote and profit from affiliate offers. It is important to note that each of these social networks have unique features which set them apart from each other. Equally enough, they also have similarities such as creating profiles; adding friends and private messaging/message board functions.

Below is a list of the most popular social networks and how affiliates use them to generate traffic:

• Twitter – Probably the most popular and profitable social networking platform available for affiliate marketers. Having a tightly knit network of followers, sometimes across multiple Twitter accounts, can generate massive leads when used correctly. As an affiliate marketer you can blast useful links via your Twitter account to your followers, who will then click the link and hopefully head to the affiliate offer page.
• Facebook – In a very close second place, Facebook is used by affiliate marketers to create networks focused around a particular niche or interest. With the ability to create groups and even promote events, Facebook has a lot more options, but also requires a bit more work to get the traffic heading in the right direction. Once mastered, it can be quite lucrative.
• Forums – While some wouldn’t consider forums to be social networks, I beg to differ. In actuality, they are the original social network. Becoming and authority in a niche related forum can bring laser-targeted traffic to your links; which would typically be placed in the “signature” or footer of your individual publically viewed profile and threads.

While many top earning affiliate marketers will stick to more immediate methods of generating traffic, such as Google Adwords, The risks with social media marketing are much less harmful. By integrated social networking into your affiliate promotions, you will be up to date and on point with the latest and greatest source of traffic and prospective leads. Be patient and it will pay off.