You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.

Blogs are quite often a one-person show. The owners maintain the blog, write the content and promote the site themselves. They switch between different roles whenever necessary and that’s the natural result of a DIY system where one is personally in charge of everything. Sometimes, we tend to see themselves more as writers and less as executive editors.
We are more occupied with the process of developing an article idea, writing the blog post and then doing some minor editing to correct inaccurate usage of grammar, spelling or punctuation. To us, editorial work mainly involves prepping a post for eventual publication.
For bloggers, the editorial and writing process is intertwined: an efficient setup that works tirelessly to churn out content. We are editing and writing at the same time, seamlessly transitioning from one role to another in a instinctual instant. This usually happens when both the writer and editor are the same person.
Ive been writing on this blog for over a year. The writer in me has matured, while I feel that my editorial vision remains limited to the usual adminstrative concerns involved in day-to-day publishing. Somehow I think I’m not living up to my full potential. Maybe its because I’m not thinking like an editor-in-chief, like someone with absolute power over doshdosh.com.
I can do anything I want with this blog. It is all mine. But yet here I am, still thinking like a freelance writer who finishes an article and leaves it at that. Where is the competitive development strategy? Where is the expansion plan? Where is the readership analysis?
I’m thinking like a foot soldier and not a general. I throw out article after article against the wall, hoping that some of them will stick. But I’m not strategizing or thinking in the long-term beyond the immediate present, beyond the comments I have to reply to and the emails I have to write. There’s something more to that. Perhaps I’m missing the executive perspective.

Image Credit: crazy autofocus
The editor-in-chief is the person who ultimately decides the content direction of the publication in the long run. Like a curator of some sort, the editor-in-chief determines what topics to cover in the editorial calendar and decides how content is arranged together in a way which coheres with the standards of the publication as well as its overall strategy/purpose.
The editor-in-chief is responsible for keeping up to date with reader needs, industry news and competitor publications. He/she is a specialist in analyzing and framing news sources in order to emphasize specific unique angles. This is the person who looks at a piece of writing, thinks beyond copy, and asks: How can I best use this to improve the publication as a whole?
What are you publishing? Does it differentiate you? What image are you trying to cultivate? Who are you trying to reach? What works for others and how can you learn from them? How do you repackage old information in new ways? Who can you collaborate with?
I’ve written many times about having a strategy when it comes to creating content. Too many times. Now I just need to remember that I’m not just a writer but an executive editor. Someone who’s actually in charge. Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget .

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How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (A Lesson on Writing)

The ability to write well is very useful for our personal and professional lives. It helps students, business people, politicians, writers,  bloggers, marketers and everyone who has ever needed to arrange words together to convey ideas or opinions. The written word has become an essential means of social communication: mastery of it helps you to enthrall and  persuade an audience that would look upon you favorably in return.
It goes without saying that learning how to create compelling content is a part of one’s success as an online publisher. Reading widely and deeply while consistently honing your writing skills helps a great deal in bettering your prose. Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to read a few stylebooks/essays on writing by professional teachers or authors.
One of these essays on writing is Paul McHenry Roberts’s How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words, a brilliantly humorous introduction on writing college compositions. I discovered this essay today and read though easily in one sitting, possibly because it was so well-written and entertaining. It’s a perfect example of the writing techniques listed within.
Here’s a quick summary of the 9 main points mentioned. I’ve extracted some of the key paragraphs from the text but be sure to read the full essay because these points are elaborated in much greater detail with some excellent examples.

1. Avoid the obvious content.“Say the assignment is college football. Say that you’ve decided to be against it. Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list. If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else’s too. Be against college football for some reason or reasons of your own. If they are keen and perceptive ones, that’s splendid. But even if they are trivial or foolish or indefensible, you are still ahead so long as they are not everybody else’s reasons too.”
2. Take the less usual side. “One rather simple way of getting into your paper is to take the side of the argument that most of the citizens will want to avoid. They are intellectual exercises, and it is legitimate to argue now one way and now another, as debaters do in similar circumstances. Always take the that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side.”
3. Slip out of abstraction. “Look at the work of any professional writer and notice how constantly he is moving from the generality, the abstract statement, to the concrete example, the facts and figures, the illustrations. For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples. Don’t say, “Sororities teach girls the social graces.” Say, “Sorority life teaches a girl how to carry on a conversation while pouring tea, without sloshing the tea into the saucer.”
4. Get rid of obvious padding. “Instead of stuffing your sentences with straw, you must try steadily to get rid of the padding, to make your sentences lean and tough… You dig up more real content. Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate.”
5. Call a fool a fool. “If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with “in-my-opinion’s” and “it-seems-to-me’s” and “as-I-see-it’s” and “at-least-from-my-point-of-view’s” gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper. Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words. Writing in the modern world, you cannot altogether avoid modern jargon. But you can do much if you will mount guard against those roundabout phrases, those echoing polysyllables that tend to slip into your writing to rob it of its crispness and force.”
6. Beware of Pat Expressions. “Other things being equal, avoid phrases like “other things being equal.” Those sentences that come to you whole, or in two or three doughy lumps, are sure to be bad sentences. They are no creation of yours but pieces of common thought floating in the community soup… No writer avoids them altogether, but good writers avoid them more often than poor writers.”
7. Colorful Words. “Some words are what we call “colorful.” By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft. Thus, in place of “Her heart beat,” we may write, “her heart pounded, throbbed, fluttered, danced.” Instead of “He sat in his chair,” we may say, “he lounged, sprawled, coiled.”
8. Colored Words.. “When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before. The word mother, for example, has, for most people, agreeable associations. When you hear mother you probably think of home, safety, love, food, and various other pleasant things..The question of whether to use loaded words or not depends on what is being written.”
9. Colorless Words. “A pet example is nice, a word we would find it hard to dispense with in casual conversation but which is no longer capable of adding much to a description. Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing…Slang adjectives like cool (“That’s real cool”) tend to explode all over the language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and quickly die.”

Learning how to create content using concrete, lean, colorful and vivid prose with unique perspectives will help you to get more readers, customers and supporters. But bear in mind that its not just about writing in a fancy way to entertain. It’s also a conscientious way of differentiating yourself from thousands of similar writers/thinkers in the same field.

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Tell People What You Want Them to Do for You

In marketing and advertising, a ‘call to action’ is a message or statement which encourages the prospect to perform a specific action. Most of the time this involves buying a product, making a donation, subscribing to a newsletter or requesting for more information. The specific action to take is defined by the marketer in accordance with his/her goals.
If you think about it, call-to-actions are really a natural result of most human interactions. You call a friend to chit-chat and before you hang up, you ask her to have lunch together tomorrow. She thinks about her schedule for a moment and says “Sure, let’s do that”.
It’s just a way to conclude a moment of interaction. It’s telling the other party ‘what’s next’ and how to continue. If used alongside exceptional content, the call to action no longer becomes a gentle request but an imperative that requires your immediate commitment.
I often feel that way when I’m reading well written brochures from charity organizations. And it works the same way (sadly) for get-rich-quick scams that prey on the human desire for happiness, of which wealth is widely seen as the best means. If the message is overwhelming enough, people will generally do whatever it is you want them to do.
Even in day to day interactions, people react to call to actions that are coherent with what they are currently feeling or thinking. It flows on from an initial encounter: Here is how you can get even more of the same. Here is how you can continue down the path of success. Here is how you can share your love (or hate) for this brand.
We have a predilection for sharing information: We often tell people about our good or bad experiences with products or places, sometimes even if no one asks for our opinion. If you want someone to spread the word about your content or service, ask them directly. They will do it even if you don’t give them an incentive. This is what I believe from experience.
Modesty and pride are usually the main obstacles. You don’t want to come off as too conceited and you’re too proud to beg. So you publish free content and give away free tools without asking for anything in return. Maybe its just a hobby for you and you don’t care. That’s cool. But if you’re interested in reputation or revenue, this won’t help you at all.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Asking for Help

I’ve been using Ozh’s Admin Drop Down Menu, a Wordpress plugin that arranges the current admin area menus in a horizontal, instead of a vertical format. This is a great feature that helps me work faster and better with Wordpress websites.
In the settings menu for this plugin, you’ll find a series of call to actions:

People have a few options of what to do after installing and using the plugin. Two of them involves increasing its social proof (rating and sharing the plugin) and one is a revenue generator (donations). Generally, people are more willing to part with compliments (free) than money (cost involved) so I would imagine that most would pick the first two options.
The plugin has a perfect 5 star score (with 316 ratings) at the Wordpress plugin directory, which as some will know, is a rare feat for any plugin that has over 100 ratings. Impressive stuff, although part of its success is also due to the simplicity of the plugin itself.
This is a free tool. Some would have just installed it and forgot about sharing if they were not prompted to do so. We have things on our mind, goals to fulfill, people to meet and jobs to do. Call to actions break through the clutter and say ‘do this now’. Don’t let your prospect’s interest or satisfaction fade beneath the noise of other things that demand their attention.
If you give away free content, you should not only ask why you are doing so but learn to embed call to actions in some of them. Don’t be too modest or proud to tell someone what you want them to do for you. And never underestimate the power of reciprocity. It’s an influential social norm that you can use to your advantage when marketing online.

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Affiliate Blogging and The Art of Slow Cooking

I’ve been researching on how blogs can be used as a means to promote affiliate programs because I’m pretty interested in how blogs seem to have some natural potential for building stable and long-term relationships between the affiliate and the customer.
Blogs grow over time and their accumulated content is a gold-mine for search engines and the targeted traffic they bring. While contextual Ad networks like Adsense are effective, passive ways of earning money from a blog, I think affiliate programs are superior in many aspects, particularly in terms of long-term profit.
Here are some reasons why.

• Higher earning potential – doesn’t only depend on ad impressions and clicks
• Better integration with a blog’s niche/content- No matter how you blend contextual ads, they won’t fit in completely.
• Earnings do not entirely depend on a blog’s popularity, Page Rank or number of readers
• Variety – There are a large range of products to suit every website niche.

Organic Blogs and Affiliate Marketing
In a recent post, Shoemoney offers an answer to the question of how to choose a CPA affiliate:

My approach is to build organic traffic to a niche and test different affiliates. Then when I find something that works I will put a lot of PPC money behind it. This is not the popular way to do it though because a lot of people will not put in the time and effort that it takes to build a organic site that will stand the test of time (not spammed to crap) and they want overnight millions. it just is not so.

Some background information. CPA affiliates or Cost-Per-Action affiliates refer to ad networks, retailers or companies that will pay you commission for every visitor you refer to their website, who fulfills a specific action such as subscribing to a newsletter or opening a new account. The more popular CPA affiliates include loan consolidation services and cellphone providers but are not limited to these categories.
When we relate Shoemoney’s advice to the area of blogs, this does suggest that real blogs with search-engine friendly content can be a effective long-term way to promote specific affiliate programs. I think the emphasis on an organic site (one that receives most of its traffic from search engines) is accurate because such a site continues to receive highly targeted traffic over time and doesn’t solely depend on ad campaigns for traffic.
Here are a few other reasons why I think organic blogs are an excellent ways to make money from affiliate marketing.
You can only milk so much out of a static squeeze page. Once a consumer has seen and dismissed it, there’s very little chance of them making a repeat visit. On the other hand, blogs can offer a variety of updated information and are a persuasive means that will eventually convert doubtful consumers into willing referrals.
A prime example of how blogs are rapidly used to promote affiliate programs can be seen in the massive number of blogs created to solely promote Agloco, a program that pays you to surf the internet. I ran a search on Google for ‘Agloco‘ and easily found several blogs in the top 20 search results. If you take a look at these blogs, you’ll notice that they update relatively regularly to generate buzz and dispel doubts, while actively calling for sign-ups.
Blogs are like slow-cookers. They work by gradually cajoling a visitor into action, while seeking to diffuse all misconceptions or hesitation surrounding a specific product. Blogs can also be persistent in a non-intrusive way. One page ads hammer the consumer with benefits and testimonials while the well developed blog makes friends with the consumer, saying “Here’s all I know about the product. Let me know if you need more help.”
Some thoughts on the Ideal Affiliate Blog
I’m planning to set up some blogs for some specific affiliate programs and so came up with a list of axioms I wanted to follow:

• The blog should use unique content as much as possible. Good for both search engines and readers.
• The blog must have a very strong niche that relates to the affiliate program in question.
• The blog must provide easy access to information that is perceived as authentic or even ‘objective’
• The blog should not run too many ads. Consumers tend to see over-monetization as profit > value.
• The blog must be up-to-date on the trends surrounding the niche. Outdated news doesn’t reflect well.
• The blog should practice invisibility. The consumer should not know that you are doing affiliate marketing, i.e. getting a cut of the product sold. Debatable.
• The blog should evolve seamlessly to include other product or market trends.
• The blog should have a personality and opinion. In the end, it’s a person-to-person recommendation that does the trick.

While not exhaustive, I think these points can help to determine the effectiveness of a blog that is solely monetized by affiliate commissions. While traffic is important for contextual programs like Adsense and Page Rank is vital for link selling, affiliate blogs need to focus more on persuasive copy writing, effective search engine optimization and most importantly, issues of trust between the customer and the affiliate.
Affiliate marketing with blogs is a fascinating topic for me, because blogs just seem to have so much natural advantage when it comes to building a consistent consumer base for affiliate programs. More on this topic to come.
If you’re interested in participating in a little affiliate experiment, please visit my post on how to make money with Pageflakes.

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Affiliate Marketing Tip: Use Unique Brand Names to Increase Conversion Rates.

I was checking my Gmail account when I noticed an interesting ad near the top of the screen. It was from a recruitment team that was seeking to hire professionals with an interest in marketing guru, Seth Godin’s work.
The copy for the ad read:

If you Read Seth I Want U: If you are reading Seth Godin’s blog I want to hire you!
The main reason why I clicked on the ad was because I am a regular reader of Seth Godin’s blog. After clicking on the ad, I was taken to a webpage which immediately requested for my resume and credentials. Talk about super targeted Adwords traffic!
Here’s a screen shot of the Seth Godin Ad. Click for a better view:

The advertiser got exactly what he wanted:

• A perfect candidate that is interested in Seth Godin’s work.
• A visitor that is looking for information related to Seth Godin.
• A visitor that is ready to consume any product or sales pitch concerning Seth Godin.

The advertiser could be trying to sell me Seth Godin T-shirts and I might even buy some if there was a convincing sales copy and offer price.
Why? Because the advertiser is appealing to me through a subject (Seth Godin) that I’m already familiar with and is of interest to me.
This proves what most expert affiliate marketers already know: that unique brand names or phrases are effective ways to presell a product or service through Pay Per Click Campaigns.
If you’re an affiliate marketer running a PPC program, you want value-for-money clicks that lead to conversions and not poorly targeted traffic that disappear when they find that your product or website is different from what they expected.

How Unique Brand Names Can Be Used in PPC Campaigns: An Example

Here’s an example. Let’s assume that I want to promote subscriptions to a popular independent rock music magazine.
Instead of using generic promotional terms like “Coolest Indie Rock Magazine Ever” I could try using unique related brand names or phrases to get targeted traffic.
For instance, I might use the phrase “Sonic Youth loves our indie rock mag“.
By doing this, I’m preselling the subscription through a unique brand name (the band, Sonic Youth), one that not only appeals to indie rock fans but will only be appreciated or understood by indie rock fans.
This ensures a very high conversion rate and allows you to get the best results from your Pay Per Click campaigns.

Another benefit of using unique names is that they tend to attract curiosity clicks. For example, If I didn’t know who Seth Godin or Sonic Youth was, I might still click on the ad just to find out more about the person behind the brand name.
This can be useful when you are primarily using Pay Per Click campaigns to generate awareness for your product, service or website.
Learning how to use unique brand names is a beginner’s trick that has helped me consistently in all of my affiliate campaigns.
Researching on relevant brand names can help you to maximize your Pay Per Click campaign potential while ensuring that you’ll only attract the most targeted and willing consumers.
Seeing the Seth Godin Ad just reminded me of this affiliate marketing tip and I thought I should share it with you all out there.
Have fun optimizing your PPC campaigns!

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Pre-empting the Buyer: How to Increase Affiliate Conversions and Advertising Sales

I recently signed up as an affiliate for Aaron Wall’s SEO Book (aff) and took a good look at the salesletter, which was apparently rewrote by Brian Clark late last year. The copy for the new sales letter was well done and I think the main improvement was the reduction in its length as well as the strategic insertions of recommendations from notable personalities like Seth Godin and Wharton Professor J Michael Steel.
A more subtle but equally powerful change was moving the specific call to query or feedback all the way down to the bottom of the page. Here’s a side by side comparison of the old (left) and new (right) sales letter.

The old newsletter puts a list of additional recommendations and reviews below the call to query and potential buyers who are as yet undecided might be swayed to click on them instead of the designated query link.
This is a bad move because these links point to reviews or webpages that may not be effective in taking advantage of the buyer’s interest in SEO Book. It also assumes that the buyer requires more detailed information or sales pitches when this might not be the case all the time.
On the other hand, the new sales letter removes all the external links and leaves the call to query right at the bottom. This is more professional and gives the effect that all information has been duly presented and laid out before the buyer.
Having had the impression of perusing all there is to know about the SEOBook, the buyer will be persuaded that clicking on the link is the final option available.
Here is a screenshot of what shows up when you click on the “if you aren’t ready to buy, click here” link:

Collecting feedback from your potential buyers or advertisers is a tremendously important process because it allows you to customize your product price or ad offering to suit their needs.
Implementing the Call-to-Query on your own Blog or Affiliate Landing Page
Here are two very quick and simple steps you can undertake in order to increase the likelihood of affiliate conversions and advertiser signups

1. Create a short one-liner that pre-empts the potential customer by suggesting that they are still indecisive about buying a product or committing to an arrangement. Include this at the bottom of your sales page or Advertising options page on your blog.
2. Develop a customized feedback page and point the link in the one-liner to it. For bloggers, I would suggest creating another Contact page with a customized message for advertisers. Something like Aaron’s feedback box would be ideal.

And you’re all set. Potential customers and advertisers can be rather hesitant when it comes to spending money and this little trick allows them to directly communicate all concerns they might have with you one-on-one.
This feedback loop also allows you to enter into a two-way negotiation process which ultimately gives you more willing and long-term buyers or advertisers.

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Six Powerful Blog Strategies that will Rapidly Increase Your Affiliate Referrals

Imagine this scenario. You’ve just came across an amazing website which offers a lucrative affiliate program. You signed up instantly as an affiliate and are itching to promote your referral link to as many people you know.
You hook up a new thread in a forum and insert your referral link after a short pitch, perhaps you’ll also leave a few comments on a few blogs with the referral link as the URL or signature.
You might even publish a short blog post which consists of nothing but a short opener, an excerpt from the website in question and your big fat affiliate referral link.
You sit back and eagerly check your referral stats. How many people signed up? How much am I earning? You set plans for tommorrow: maybe send some emails to people you know and create a banner or button for your blog. You probably think you’ve done a good job and are guaranteed a cashcow that will give you recurring earnings. Right?
Wrong. Promoting your affiliate link goes beyond the above steps, which are really promotional spurts directed at short-term gains. If the affiliate program offers recurring commission earnings, creating a focused, long term promotional strategy is of vital importance.
Six Key Strategies to Boost your Affiliate Referrals
Here are a collection of six points which anyone can use to increase their number of referrals for any affiliate program or website. These points apply across various industries and emphasize on long-term over short-term referral gains.
Note that they mainly apply to blogs, though they could easily be applied to other general websites.

1. Early Search Result Listings are Essential – Get Ranked Fast.
Being one of the first few people to write about a specific website or affiliate scheme will allow you to easily get ranked within the top 10 for most search engines. This is because there is very little competition for the specific term or keyphrase.
Another benefit of getting listed early is that people will usually do a search for a specific website because they need more details about it. You should aim to fill that information need because they’ll very likely sign up through your link if there are no other or very little sources available.
I’ve gotten over 1,000 Agloco referrals just because I’ve written a review of Agloco when it was just released a few months back.
I’ve not even bothered to update the review with fresh information and I’ve done absolutely nothing to increase my referrals. No forum spamming, no blog post pitches, no PPC campaigns, no email marketing, no article submissions. Nada. Nothing.
This was largely because I was ranked number one on Google for ‘Agloco Review‘ for some time. In fact, my post is still listed in the Top 5 results at the moment. This has allowed me to receive consistent search traffic everyday for several months.
Dosh Dosh also has strong result rankings for dozens of unique keywords, which ensures that I continue to make money through affiliate recommendations, even though my blog is completely free of contextual or banner ads.

2. Project Authenticity, Personality and Objectivity through Your Blog
Visitors who arrive your blog looking for specific information do not need another sales pitch. They’ve very likely been pre-sold, meaning that they’ve been persuaded to some extent by the website or business in question.
What they want is personal recommendations. Strive for objectivity and honesty when you are writing your review about the specific product. This means giving both good and bad points about a specific product.
Your review will be even better if you can include your personal experiences with the product in question. My Gangster Greed review is a good example of how I try to inculcate all these points.

3. Strive for Content Depth, Breadth and Uniqueness
Always try to surpass the other blogger that writes about the same topic by coming up with a review of far greater depth and detail. Explore questions which have not been addressed and link to sources which the other bloggers have missed.
Being unique and meticulous makes you a reference point and authority on the topic. This builds incoming links which will eventually help you rank well in the long run.
An example of this is my post on Adsense Wordpress Themes. The amount of material covered and the uniqueness of it (no one has ever done it before) has led a very large number of natural incoming links over time and has allowed me to consistently rank in the top five for several keywords.
Put yourself in the potential linker’s shoe. Would you rather send your reader to a short blog post with only 100 words on a product/website or you prefer to send them to a well-written 1000 word article which thoroughly examines the subject in question?
4. Optimize your Blog Post for Search Traffic
Writing with search engines in mind can make the whole article feel stunted and so I’ve never emphasized on stuffing keywords or phrases in specific sections of content. Don’t do it. It’s a waste of time and may degrade the overall quality of your post.
Demonstrating a personality that others can relate too is far more important when you are planning to increase affiliate referrals.
The only place where its absolutely essential to include your keyword or phrase is within the title of your blog post. Adjusting your post-slug and permalink to include the keyword structure is also helpful and can help to reduce the length of the URL as a whole.
However, pleasing the reader or potential referral is of utmost importance. Always try to target niche phrases that fit nicely within your article and if you really want to, buy or get others to include keyword links to your article.

5. Use Trackbacks Effectively to Generate Exposure
Don’t just come across a specific item and write about it as if you were the one discovering it. By referencing the original news breaker, a relevant link to your post will be listed beneath their original article in the form of a trackback.
This is a great way to get very targeted traffic because readers might need more information on the specific website/program. If your article is good enough, the blogger in question might even update the original post and include a link to it.
The trick to trackbacking is to reference as many relevant and high traffic blogs as possible. To keep on top of popular news from other high profile blogs, I suggest using content aggregators or meme trackers which allow you easily reference several blogs at once.

6. Leech Traffic from Relevant Blogs
This is a method that I have used for a while. Say you’ve just written a great article on a specific website or program and included your affiliate links. The next step is to promote your article through relevant niche blogs.
How do you do this? Use Google Alerts to set up notifications when bloggers write a post about the specific topic in question. This sends an automated email to your inbox every day or once a week.
You can then visit specific blogs and leave a relevant comment while discreetly mentioning your review. This is a great way to acquire potential referrals who are commitment-phobic and need more information.
Depending on the traffic level for each blog, you’ll tend to get a few visitors who will be interested enough to visit your website. Just remember to deeplink to the specific post and not your blog homepage.
This method also has the benefit of allowing you to easily stay in touch with the latest news concerning the specific program, which allows you to update your blog or website accordingly.
Another way to do this is to hang out at social websites like Digg or Reddit and visit blogs that are very likely to hit the homepage. Leaving an interesting comment will induce visitors to your blog. This is far less targeted than using Google Alerts but can lead to greater traffic flow.

Key Point Summary – A Checklist to Follow

• Write a blog post after you sign up for an affiliate program. Pick keywords or keyphrases that are likely to receive more search volume.
• Check if you are making a personal recommendation and come across as authentic/objective.
• Is your review detailed and unique enough? Does it cover new ground or offer new perspectives?
• Optimize your Blog post. Are the keywords in the title?
• Remember to use references and send trackbacks.
• Keep track of articles from other bloggers on the same topic. Have you set up a Google Alert or found a way to keep up with news on a specific topic?

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