HelpWithBlogging.com

Today I took off from work (my day job) to stay home and meet some contractors come to my home to change out my Internet connection.  I just received a phone call from a friend at work and she told me that my bosses were very unhappy that I decided to not be at work.  What kills me about it all is that I have many sick days available, and if I do not use them…I will lose them if and when I get fired or laid off.  I hate my day job!  I hate working for small-minded people and I sure hate the fact that I have to be so politically correct all of the time, just to keep my job.  The only reason I am saying all of this is because not going to work today affords me the opportunity to stay home and work on my affiliate marketing websites.  I truly hope that one day I will be able to do little more than stay home and earn a full-time income working from right here at home, in the new computer office that my wife and I set up.  If you are thinking of staying at home to earn an income let me provide you 6 tips to affiliate marketing that might help you get started.  By adhering to the six tips of affiliate marketing I have posted below, you will at least have a grounding point to get the entire thing in motion

Do not spend any money on some program to get you “ahead” of the crowd

All too often a new affiliate marketer wannabe will receive so many offers to get the latest project from some self-proclaimed “guru” that is doing little more than trying to sell you something that will make only the “guru” a ton of money.  What you will notice is that as a new person cruises around the Internet, they will see that the amount of offers are staggering.  Often those “offers” present the buyer with little more than an illusion of money being made.  The truth of the matter is that you really do not need any bang whiz program and you sure as heck do not need some program that is designed to “get over” on a search engine.  I will be the first to concede that there are ways to get over on search engines, but the long-term reality is that you will be just spinning your wheels for nothing.

Even if you were to trick the search engines with some product, it would only be a matter of time before the search engines caught you and wiped out your Internet house of cards.  Why would you want to build anything that will eventually be caught and dissected by the search engines?  Once those search bots came through and identified you as some scam, they will shut down any and all search results faster than you might believe.  Once you are shut down…you are dead and there is no coming back.  So…the original question still stands as to why you would spend some money on some scam website creation tool, and then spend countless hours perfecting it to only have all of your efforts shut down for eternity by the very same search engines that bring you potential customers?

To do anything more than stick to the basics is really going to be a tremendous waste of time.  If you need to know the basics they are as follows and I simply refer to them as my six (6) tips to getting started in affiliate marketing

1. Self-controlled server
2. Self-controlled domain name
3. Original content
4. Update content often, with original content
5. Patience
6. Passion to succeed

1) Self-Controlled Server
Even if you know how to create and use your own server…why would you want to do so?  If you were to use a company like HostGator they take all the work and all the worry for about $5.00 a month!  If you want to grow, they will grow with you.  I started off at $5.00 a month ($4.95 I think?) and after a while I needed more domains and more power, so I upgraded.  That upgrade costs me only $49.95 a month and now I have almost 50 websites and I pay the fee as a very small percentage of what I earn every month.  Why not use an organization that monitors my website server “stuff” because it is simply one less thing I have to deal with.  Their customer support has some issues, but at least they are in America and they answer the phone each and every time I call them.  Overall I really like HostGator.

What I mean by self-controlled server is that you become the king of your domain. (Pun intended)  By using a service such as HostGator you can control and write whatever the heck you want.  Granted I do not test the boundaries with porn or the like, but I do not have to worry about being shut down by some hosting company that retains control of the content.  By providing my own hosting service I really do keep a much greater control of NOT being shut down because I wrote something offensive.  This tip goes hand in hand with the next tip.

2) Self-Controlled Domain Name
When you venture out onto the web your domain name, or your URL, is extremely important.  The LAST thing you ever want to do is wrap your site into a URL that contains anything more than .com, .net or .org.  If your site URL contains anything like blogspot.com or myAOL.com…it is nothing more than a rank amateur website.  Rank amatuer websites do not rank well in affiliate marketing, by search engine design.  Also, what is more important is that if you do not pay (less than 10 bucks a YEAR) to register a domain name, you do not control the domain name.  If you use a URl that is “nested” within another URL (HelpWithBlogging.blogspot.com verses HelpWithBlogging.com) you will never really own the site and could be shut down FOREVER and there is nothing you could do about it.

Why would you ever want to spend your time creating a site and have the owner of the URL decide they do not like it and then have you shut down?  By going to an organization like GoDaddy you can pay a VERY small yearly fee and control the URL and not have a fear of having it “yanked” from under you.

You should NEVER start a website that does not allow you total control.  That means web hosting (HostGator) and domain name registration. (GoDaddy)  To do anything less is foolish and short-sighted.  Also you need to know that changing over domain URL’s drags your search engine rankings back to zero for the long haul.  If you change one simple letter in a web-page URL, it is back to zero for the search engines.  You need to understand right from the start that search engine algorithms are ruthless in their objectivity and you need to start off correctly.  To start correctly you need your own web hosting service and you need to register your own domain name.  To do all of this will cost you less than $20.00 to get started, and less than $5.00 a month…so why not do it right?

3) Original Content
Original content is king on the web!!!  Think about it for a moment.  A good affiliate marketer will get the bulk (if not all) of their sales from search engine referrals.  What that means is that the search engines will rank you if you are a good match for the information someone seeks.  You will receive the gift of being ranked on the results presented to the users of the search engines.  By writing articles about a specific subject, that are valid, true and correctly presented, the search engines are given what they seek.  Remember that the search engines are trying to please their customers and to please them they need to provide their searchers with the desired content they seek.  If you, the webmaster, are providing the Internet with relevant answers to the questions being asked, you fill the need of the search engines to remain relevant to the person seeking the information.

Original content needs to be what you wrote and be the first time on the web.  If you were to passionately approach a website with the idea to write one individual article for each and every aspect of a commissionable product, you will receive search engine rankings and “hits” from people looking for the information.  Those “hits” will become money in your bank account, which is what it is all about.

4) Update Often With Original Content
A blog, or a website that does not get updated at least a couple of times a week is a dead or slowly dying site that search engines start to disregard.  For you to get to the top of the rankings you will need to write articles that answer pointed questions and do so on a fairly frequent time-table.  At the same time you do not want to post articles too quickly and I would refrain from too much too fast.  Search engines look for slow, normal and sustained growth.  Too much too fast is worse than too little.  Search engines are looking for long-term sustained growth.  This leads us to our next topic, which is patience.

5) Patience
Building a successful site requires patience.  As stated above, it takes some time to grow and to earn any income.  The hardest part is at the very start.  Simply because of website propagation.  Most Internet newcomers do not realize that when a new site is created that it will take hours or even days before it can ever even exist on the Internet.  To disillusion you even more, it may take months before the search engines ever even pay any attention to you.  The reality is that you may write articles and post them for 3 to 6 months before you ever get your first visitor!  The sad truth is that most people who make a go of the Internet affiliate marketing give up before they allow the magic to happen.

Growing a profitable affiliate website, or blog, is not going to happen overnight and it will not be what saves your home from proceeding with an impending foreclosure.  The reality is that a person can make a tremendous amount of money, but it will take time to foster and nurture the growth of a website that search engines respect and trust enough to send visitors your way on a daily basis.  I recommend that you try what I say for at least 6 months and then start thinking about making any sort of profit worth mentioning.

6) A Passion To Succeed
Having a passion to succeed is where I will end this, which is essentially where I started the article.  My passion to succeed is deep-rooted in my desire to get the heck out of my day (big-box) retail job.  I Currently earn enough of an income to allow my wonderful wife to remain at home, but it was not always that way.  This goes back to my point about slow and steady growth because it is our dream to do nothing more than stay at home and earn an income by doing work on sites just like this one.  My passion has been to create websites that provide relevant information for people who seek that information. This site and specifically, this article, is proof that the plan is working.  You are here reading this and that was my desire.  By providing you, the seeker, with relevant information, the search engines reciprocated with presenting you with my website.  Presenting you with my website was the goal right from the start of creating this site.

The relevant and original content of 6 tips to start an affiliate marketing website must have worked…because you are here!  Sign up for the RSS feed at the bottom and stay posted because I will never lead you in a direction that will deceive you.  It is my goal to provide nothing but relevant information that works.  It is my goal to simply help you with blogging!