We all know that blogging is one of the fastest and most effective ways for you to have your voice heard. However, blogging is also one of the slowest methods for generating money online.

Not only do you have to establish yourself or your blog, but you also need traffic, readers that interact, and a blog that people actually want to read.

Once you have established your blog, it’s time to focus on increasing the overall value. I recommend you implement the following tips for instantly increasing your blog’s revenue month over month.

Stop Making the Middle Man Rich

There is no reason why you should be giving up 30% or more to a middle man ad serving company. Take advantage of direct sales on your blog and you can rapidly increase your income.

You know what type of advertisers your readers have an interest in. Do not wait for advertisers to contact you, contact them and make a deal.

Residual Income is Awesome

There is nothing better than residual income. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the harder affiliate programs to come by.

If you can generate leads from your blog that will earn you residual income, you will rapidly see a wave of increasing dollars in your pocket every month.

You Must Have a Newsletter

I cannot stress how important it is to have your own newsletter. The majority of your blog visitors will probably come to your Web site once, and most likely will never come back again.

If you can get them to subscribe to your mailing list, not only can you provide them with exclusive content, but they will also receive a notification every time you write a new post. It’s never too early to start building your newsletter list.

Give Your Readers Something Free

An excellent way to make your blog stand out from the competition is to offer a free ebook or service to your readers. You are most likely already writing a blog about a niche topic you know very well, so why not offer your readers a free ebook in exchange for joining your newsletter?

I’m sure you have seen many of these tips before. The difference is that you may not have implemented them yet.

Now that you have finished reading this article, go to your computer right now and make the necessary changes to improve your bottom line.

Zac Johnson is the President and CEO of MoneyReign, Inc. You can read his blog at ZacJohnson.com.

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There’s a perception that blogging is just a platform for creating affiliate sites and generating profits with them, which may not be totally undeserved.

A well-maintained blog features frequent and new content, compared to traditional article style websites. Search engines happily send visitors seeking niche relevant content by featuring blogs high in their results.

However, blogging can be much more than just another quick way to create a Web site and pump it full of advertising and embedding affiliate links in the post. That’s just scratching a blog’s potential.

The big money comes when you establish a brand and THEN bank on your brand.

The Power of Branding

In a study conducted by a retailer which manufactured their own lines of car batteries, it found that one product line consistently outsold the others many times over.

This was despite the fact that the batteries had the same specifications and performed the same.

The difference? The brand.

One brand carried the retailer’s name, while the other product line was labeled Die Hard batteries.

The Die Hards flew off the shelves, outselling the ones carrying the retailer’s name many times over.

How does this relate to Internet marketing?

Think about your niche for a moment. Is there a particular influencer or opinion leader that almost everyone listens to?

Is there an Oprah or Martha or Larry King who talks and causes everyone else to listen?

With the power of blogging, you don’t need to have a million dollar budget to achieve the same effect.

Here are some tips to help you break apart from the millions of blogger out there:

• Integrity: Honesty and reputation are two of the highest valued attributes when people were surveyed about role models they admire and respect. The personality and character outclassed even physical appearance and wealth.

Integrity in the blogging context means you’re objective in your posts, it may even mean choosing not to promote affiliate products with high payouts, simply because you don’t agree with the ethics of the industry or the manner in which it is projected.

• See things in a different light: You may have your favorite news channels, which sounds strange because all broadcasters have access to the same news source. What makes it different is the way in which it’s presented.

Being able to understand how everyone else is doing things, and consciously choosing an approach that reflects your personality and gives a fresh perspective to your audience will have them thanking you for your efforts.

Studying some of your favorite blogs and analyzing their style and techniques will give you ideas for enhancing your blogging style.

While establishing a brand with your blog takes more effort than merely publishing keyword-loaded posts, it can generate huge dividends for your profits and your business.

Andrew Wee is the creator of the SecretBlogWeapon.com blogging system and blogs at http://WhoIsAndrewWee.com

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One of the keys to running a fruitful affiliate program lies in understanding that not only should there be a robust affiliate recruitment strategy in place, but also a continuous activation of the recruited affiliates into becoming producing affiliates.

Affiliate activation is one of the most frequently overlooked components of affiliate program management, especially by newly launched programs.

Sooner or later, every merchant realizes that success is not measured by the numbers of recruited affiliates, but rather by the numbers of those whom are truly active.

Over the years of experimenting with different ways of motivating affiliates, I have realized that the best way to activate affiliates is to expose them to activation offers in each step of their interaction with the affiliate program.

Just as banners with a clear call to action outperform those that do not, affiliate programs with a compelling call to activation outshine other affiliate programs.

There are three phases of affiliate engagement… the recruitment phase, welcoming phase, and routine phase.

Recruitment Phase

Here you want to motivate affiliates to not only join your program, but also to put up your links and refer their first orders/leads. This can be done by remunerating the desired actions with a tangible bonus or a commission increase.

This should be practiced throughout the recruitment process – from the outgoing e-mails soliciting affiliates to join the affiliate program, to the very text of the program description on the merchant’s website.

Welcoming Phase

Stop your reading here and take a new look at the application approval e-mail that you are currently sending. Do you sound motivating enough for them to set aside their other projects and put up a few links for you? Does it inspire them to start a few new paid search campaigns to generate a couple of orders for your program within an X number of days after signing up?

Convincing calls to activation in the text of the welcome e-mails are like seeds falling on fertile soil. It is evident just from their application that they have intentions of promoting you. They applied, and you approved their application.

Don’t just send them a “welcome-aboard-you’ll-love-working-with-us” message. Offer them a reason to jump right on it, or you may well be put at the very end of that endless merchants-to-develop queue.

Routine Phase

It is the routine that has “an unbelievable power to waste and destroy” (cf Henri de Lubac). Do not waste your affiliates’ time with predictable monthly newsletters. Turn this part of your routine into fun for them. Run especially aggressive monthly activation campaigns for the affiliates that are already in your program, but are not yet performing.

The market of affiliate programs will only continue to grow more and more competitive. If you want your program to succeed, make it stand out, and weave the calls to activation into the very structure of it.

Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AM Navigator, and author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes.”

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Imagine the following scenario… You open up your cellular telephone bill and you have been charged an astonishing $10,000 for last month’s activity. Convinced that there must be an error, you contact customer service to question the charges.

When you request a copy of the calls made to achieve those charges, the customer service representative tells you they cannot make that available to you because it would compromise the security of their platform.

What?! Sound hard to believe?

Unfortunately, incidents like this occur quite regularly in the pay per click industry.

Customers who once wholeheartedly put their faith in online advertising are beginning to question the integrity of a system riddled with fraud, corruption and corporate spin experts.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the pay per click model is prone to illicit monetization opportunities that often are very difficult to detect or stop. Over the past few years, a prosperous underground click-fraud community has arisen where members are compensated to click on the advertisements of other members Web sites.

These “paid to read” or “paid to click” rings are comprised of tens of thousands of members who earn income for fraudulently clicking on advertisements.

In many instances, participants from Virginia to Bangladesh speak of earning as little as $10 to several thousand per month. This is income they could never have earned if the pay per click search engines were as successful at stopping click fraud as they claim.

The crux of the matter lies in the huge discrepancies between private click fraud companies and the pay per click search engines themselves.

For example, Click Forensics, a leading click fraud monitoring platform, routinely reports a pay per click fraud rate in between 16-27 percent. Google, on the other hand, claims that the actual level is closer to .2 percent.

When you stop and ponder the fact that Google generated $17 billion dollars in profits over the last twelve months, you can certainly understand how a 16 percent fraud rate would be enough to rattle the foundations of e-commerce online.

Somebody’s got some serious ’splainin to do!

A few years ago, Google dropped a lawsuit and settled out of court with a leading developer of a ‘clickbot.’ These clickbots are software designed to hide and rotate a computer’s specific numerical identification, or IP address.

The unique characteristic of a clickbot is that it can space clicks minutes apart to make them appear much less conspicuous. Observers of the case reasoned that settling it kept the embarrassing news off the front pages and out of sight of online advertisers.

The question I ask is: Where is the outrage?

I cannot think of another industry where such an illicit wealth transfer can occur so quickly and undetected.

How large is the global market for evil? If this issue continues unresolved, I can assure you that the pay per click model will be replaced by something less prone to fraud, corruption and spin.

Harald Anderson is a passionate pay per click marketing expert and the Director of Search Engine Marketing at Clickbooth.com.

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Between the current financial climate and the holidays having just passed us, consumers are going to be less likely to make purchases. So affiliates should be considering what kinds of promotions to focus on in the coming months.

The obvious answer is to promote online savings, but with so many ways to provide consumers savings, affiliates have to decide what kind of savings to focus on offering.

Well, the numbers prior and leading up to the holidays offer some insight into the savings that consumers look for online during a recession, and coupons seem to represent a great affiliate opportunity.

Coupons on the Rise
Months before the credit crisis peaked, both comScore and Hitwise noticed that coupons were one of the leading ways that consumers were saving on their purchases. In fact, if they were going to spend, there was a good chance they were going to look for a coupon first.

For instance, Hitwise reported that during the week ending May 3, 2008, visits to coupon sites were up 85% year-over-year for that week. Consumers were also spending 39% more time on these sites that they did the previous year. Similarly, searches for the term “coupons” were up 45% year-over-year for that same week.

If consumers were seeking out coupons online before the economic slowdown turned into a full-blown recession, then coupons should persist as a very strong opportunity for some time to come.

Focusing on Coupons
If coupon offers are a promising recession opportunity, then affiliates need to understand who is downloading them and what they are using them to save on. All indicators suggest that the majority of coupon users are women, and that family-related coupons are the most popular.

When it comes to ecommerce activities, women seem overwhelmingly focused on family savings. In October, for instance, the Marketing to Moms Coalition found that some of the most popular online activities for women were shopping for their children and downloading coupons.

By focusing on promoting family-related coupons, then, affiliates can help insulate themselves against reduced consumer spending. Family-related coupons not only target the kinds of products that consumers look for in a recession, but especially the demographic that is most actively searching for them.

Opportunity Knocking
A change in the economy does not mean a lost opportunity. Rather, it means a changed one. Consumers may have tightened budgets, but that only means they will alter how they buy. Their family budgets will have to go further, but there are some things they will always need, so there is considerable opportunity for affiliates who can help them save on such items.

By promoting coupons, affiliates can attract not only consumers looking for coupons, but the full spectrum of consumers looking to save – which will be most of them. Coupon promotions, therefore provide affiliates an opportunity to profit from helping families make ends meet.

Nicky Senyard is the founder and CEO of ShareResults.com, a relationship-focused affiliate network.

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In October 2008, Affiliate Summit had a niche one day show at Baruch College in New York City focused on the different aspects of social media in affiliate marketing.

Lots of exciting buzz around Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and making videos but how can you make money from them? How can you use social media effectively within your business? How do you get started? The keynote and breakout sessions tackled these topics head on and gave the attendees lots of useful tips and ideas.

Don Crowther, social media guru and blogging expert, delivered the day’s keynote setting the tone with electrifying energy. He captivated the audience with stats, tips and ideas. This is definitely a session you can watch multiple times and learn something new each time.

Kudos to Kukral. Jim kept the show moving along as the Emcee and panel moderator. He did an excellent job engaging the speakers, keeping them on their toes and on task. Shawn Collins and various other tweeters kept everyone connected with live twittering throughout the show up on the big screen. Good stuff!

The first panel of the day was Gain Friends and Influence, With Video featuring Steve Rosenbaum, CEO/Founder, Magnify.net and Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com. They concentrated on tailoring videos to your audience and selecting the right content while using lots of first-rate examples.
Next up was Social Media Case Studies, presented by Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage; James Keating, VP of Marketing, ShopWiki; and Jivan Manhas, President, Advaliant. These gentlemen detailed the fundamentals of their own successes with social media – how they got started and what makes them profitable.

The third session was Making Social Media Make Money featuring Larry Bailin, CEO, Single Throw Internet Marketing; Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami, Network Solutions; and Jay Berkowitz, CEO, Ten Golden Rules. They addressed what blogs and podcasts you should be following, as well as increasing return visitors and how to make them want more.

The last session Leveraging Social Networks with Sachin Agarwal, President/CEO, Dawdle.com; Zac Johnson, President/CEO, MoneyReign, Inc.; and Adam Alter, Head of Network Management at Epic Advertising. They talked about setting up ad campaigns, custom banners and creating landing pages. The panel also discussed how to find what works for your site and building profitable relationships.
Thanks to Platform-A for sponsoring the cocktail hour. It was a nice way to wrap up a fruitful conference day.

To cap the night off, folks headed over to Room Service NY for a party hosted by ShareASale to continue networking. What a terrific venue.

I encourage you to check out the videotaped sessions from the show. Don’s keynote and all of the panels are available on AffiliateSummit.tv.

A special thanks to all of our sponsors, including oneNetworkDirect (Platinum Sponsor) and NextWeb Media (Gold Sponsor).

Thanks to everyone that attended, we appreciate you coming out. It was a lot of fun to have a smaller focused show with attendance capped at 300 and only one track of sessions. Next up… Vegas!

Amy Rodriguez is the Conference Director at Affiliate Summit.

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Using someone else’s trademarks for marketing purposes can pose legal risks for affiliates. Many trademark owners claim that such use is prohibited. However, it is not that simple. Affiliates can use another’s trademarks under certain conditions.

The central issue is whether the trademark use is likely to confuse consumers into believing that the trademark user is related to or authorized by the trademark owner. If the use is likely to cause confusion, the use is prohibited.

Put another way, an affiliate can use another’s trademark in a keyword, metatag or Web site content if that use is not likely to cause confusion.

Even if there is no likelihood of confusion, there are limits. Under the legal doctrine known as “nominative fair use,” an affiliate can use another’s trademark only if (i) the trademark owner’s product or service cannot be readily identified without the use of the trademark; and (ii) the trademark is used only to the extent necessary to identify the trademarked product or service.

An affiliate must also have a good faith reason to be using the trademark. For example, an affiliate can purchase the trademark as a keyword or place it an email if the affiliate is offering the genuine trademarked product.

They can also use a trademark to make a legitimate comparison to the trademarked product or to inform consumers that a merchant is offering a generic version of that product.

On the other hand, if the affiliate is not offering the trademarked product and either purchases the trademark as a keyword in order to drive traffic to their Web site or uses it in Web site content in order to obtain an organic listing that use will likely be problematic.

When affiliates find themselves on the wrong side of a cease and desist letter, it is often because the limits of nominative fair use have been exceeded. This frequently happens when an affiliate calls undue attention to the trademark.

For example, nominative fair use only permits the use of a trademark in block letters. Using a trademark in its stylized logo form or in font that is more prominent than the surrounding text is impermissible. Gift card offers are often problematic.

While it may be permissible for an affiliate to offer a Starbucks gift card, the bounds of fair use are exceeded if the affiliate uses an image of an actual Starbucks gift card (which may also constitute copyright infringement) or displays a mock gift card with the word Starbucks in a large and/or bold font.

Similarly, a permitted use of a trademark can become infringing when the trademark is used with text which creates the impression that the trademark owner authorized or is sponsoring the affiliate’s offer.

While this may simply be a result of sloppy drafting, for trademark infringement liability, intent is irrelevant. All that matters is whether there is a likelihood of confusion.

By using another’s trademarks for the right reason and in a proper manner, you can avoid trademark disputes.

Mark J. Rosenberg is an attorney with Sills Cummis & Gross P.C. in New York City and can be reached at 212-643-7000.

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Back in the late nineties, it was not unusual to attend an affiliate marketing event (or any online marketing event for that matter) and see very few women in the room.

Fast-forward ten years later and you’ll find that the opposite is true. Affiliate marketing is overflowing with women who are leaders in their fields or bright, up-and-coming innovators.

The following are self-submitted brief bios and wisdom from the women who make up this great talent pool of affiliate marketers.

The women of affiliate marketing were asked to share one tip they would give to a new affiliate getting into the industry and where they see the industry one year from today.

Let’s hear it for the ladies!

To see which ladies participated and what they contributed, please see visit the whole FeedFront margazine link below:

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One of the most frustrating exercises for an Internet marketer can be the task of picking the right niche.

In general, there are two ways to go about deciding on a niche for a Web site or blog, depending on the reason that the site was created.

For example, a blog that is focused on a particular topic or interest has a self-defined niche and shapes up much differently than a Web site created for the sole purpose of making money.

Those looking to blog about a particular subject, meet others with similar interests, and make a little money, should consider the following:

• Passion matters. Antique watch fanatics might choose to create a blog about the mechanics of antique watches, as well as other aspects of watch collecting, but Web sites and blogs require frequent updating. Passing interests do not make for an effective affiliate niche.

• Expertise matters. It is not enough to enjoy a particular topic and to have a surface knowledge about the subject matter at hand. Readers will see through the façade and comment on any misinformation. Having credibility is important when trying to establish visitor loyalty.

The criteria changes if the purpose of the Web site is strictly to make money. Finding a revenue producing niche requires keen observation, plenty of research and persistence.

• The main objective for this type of site is to sell what is hot. Therefore, publishers that belong to a network should contact their affiliate manager, who can usually offer input on the best performing verticals and their best converting offers.

• Tools like WordTracker and Google Trends assist in determining search volumes. When using them, it is important to make sure that the search volume of a particular keyword is not the only criteria. Publishers should pay attention to the depth of the results to see how many keywords can effectively be used to target traffic.

• Trends in the media, particularly magazines and television, can assist in determining a niche. Publishers should embrace the newest fads and know how important it is to be on the cutting edge of what is “now”. Promoting a product or service for as long as it is profitable is key, but looking for the next big thing will lead to a constant revenue stream.

• Spy on the competition. Do a search with niche keywords and see what the organic results are doing. This is a great way to get new ideas for content and to spot trends in the niche.

Picking the right niche is often a challenging task, but it becomes easier once a publisher understands the objective of the Web site or blog in question.

Yet, regardless of the focus, launching a successful Web site or blog relies on quality content, an eye for new trends and a desire to have fun.

Lisa Caraffi is Affiliate Network Manager for Kowabunga!, a leading provider of interactive performance-based advertising networks and technology platforms.

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With an ever growing number of publishers and bustling campaigns, affiliate managers are certainly busy people. Amongst the affiliate manager’s long list of concerns is affiliate fraud. Both click and CPA fraud are continual concerns in the affiliate marketing industry.

Recent estimates indicate average fraud in the CPA segment to be as high as 8%, with some offers/industries experiencing fraud ranging upward toward 22%.

In this competitive marketplace, there’s little room for fraud, which hurts honest publishers, merchants, and networks.

Evolution of Fraud
Fraud is on the rise today, due to the sophistication of cutting-edge tactics used by fraudulent publishers. Many affiliate managers used to be able to spot almost all fraud with the naked eye by monitoring a publisher’s conversion rates, referring URL’s, and IP addresses.

The most sophisticated fraudsters today are using automated systems to complete multiple offers with real information that is stolen/borrowed to create a “profile”. This profile consists of a working virtual phone number with a matching voicemail, a valid email, and a new IP address for each offer.

Sometimes, these fraudulent publishers will even have someone answer the phone and tell the merchant they are no longer interested in the offer because they have already purchased the product/service elsewhere. This tactic is all in an effort to make the conversion look legitimate to the merchant.

The main problem is that increasingly complex schemes used by publishers today are becoming much more difficult to identify without access to data that is typically unavailable to the affiliate manager.

What Else Does Fraud Affect Besides ROI?
Unfortunately, fraud affects many other aspects of the advertisers business. Fraud against advertisers that require the use of a credit card to complete an offer can result in the cancellation of their merchant account due to a high amount of chargeback’s or use of stolen credit cards.

For advertisers tying to generate quality sales leads, it can really affect the morale and productivity of the sales force, resulting in many wasted phone calls and emails to potential clients who don’t exist, or who did not and will never have an interest in using their product/service.

Is Affiliate Fraud Illegal?
In short – yes. Affiliate fraud is stealing. It is not just a way to outsmart the system or to get back at the networks, as some publishers choose to believe.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Cyber Crimes division is spending more and more time investigating affiliate fraud due to its volume and potential to provide hard to track funds for devious uses.

The industry will likely see more attention from the FBI in the future if the growth of fraud in this area goes unchecked.

Tyler Allen is Executive Director of the Cyber Crimes Field Agency (CCFA).

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