If you write a review, provide an affiliate link especially for programs that you highly recommend.

You can always link to an affiliate merchant site for more information or let readers purchase the products. There are many ways to sprinkle affiliate links throughout your content without raising alerts in visitors’ mind.

Learn how to do it right, and people are more likely to click on the link.

As an online publisher, you need to concentrate on content instead of selling directly.

If you are using a blog, it is time to add AdSense code into the template. If you are building a site using a web template, find suitable places for AdSense ads and try to at least modify the color and format so they blend in with the whole layout of your site.

Changing AdSense codes in a blog template is easy, but not in a traditional website, where you need to modify the code in every page the code resides.

If you ever consider to take it one step further, try offering information products. Don’t recommend something lousy, because you risk reputation. You want the product to be really good and consists of premium content not available anywhere else or at least hard to find and assemble.

Other ideas to for content monetization include creating your own info products, re-purpose your content and add more personality by podcasting, and starting your own email newsletter.

If you are passionate about the topic, that is not hard to do.

Alternatively, you can hire ghostwriter to write for you. Elance and RentACoder are just two marketplaces where you can post projects and let project takers bid for them.

Care should be taken when hiring authors. You want them to write interesting content. Notify them up front that you need the articles to be keyword rich. Not in a way that you stuff keywords all over the place, but enough to let search engine spiders know that the page is about a keyword or keyphrase.

I recommend against an exact keyword density. Just write naturally while keep in mind about your primary keyword. Don’t forget to insert some synonyms or related keywords as secondary keywords.

Basically, just focus on your readers. Search engine crawlers will adapt. We begin to see that happening now.

Content writing is a huge topic. Don’t limit yourself but keep exploring. There are private label content that you can based your content idea on (not copy and paste!). Other sources of content include public domain materials, free articles, viral content, and so on.

Take all the time you need.

But remember, you can also proceed to the next day while still building your site. For instance, if your plan includes building a 200-page site, you can start your link campaign soon before you reach that number.

You also can start inserting some affiliate links or AdSense code on your pages.

Back to planning and building a site.

What kind of site do you want to build? That which you want to come back and wish you had found in the first place back then when you wanted to find information about the topic.

Many website publishers fail because they think building any site will do. Far from it, you want a useful, interesting and unique website that will add value to the topic you are publishing in. Remember, search engines want something unique, not just another site that is just a duplicate of other site’s content.

Nowadays, you can build traffic through many ways. Having people link to you and talk about your site or content is also key.

While you can build a traditional site with articles and other information, consider starting a blog.

You can get your readers interact with you through a blog and build a community that way. You can also establish yourself as an authority in that topic by writing directly in a more interactive way than through article writing.

A blog also allows readers to subscribe to your content through web feed (RSS feed) so you can hook them with your engaging content and drive them back again and again.

As a blogger myself, I can’t stress how much time a blog has saved me over the years. Not only that you can publish and manage your content easily, but also you benefit from the consistency of layout across pages on your site or blog. Tinkering a bit with the software, you should be able to get exactly the structure you want as with a conventional site, but with lots of features like content management, automatic archive, commenting, pinging and so on.

Focus on the content instead of how to build a site properly. A blog helps you with that.

There are more you can do with your site though. Because it is yours, you can find out what people in the niche want and give them exactly that. This is when you can offer related products or services directly instead of just selling ads.

Do a research to see if there are suitable affiliate products for your topic. Again, if you are passionate about the topic, you already know what products and services people want. It turns the process into fun things to do.

You can start in affiliate networks like Commission Junction, LinkShare, and potentially others. For digital products — most of them information products — use ClickBank.

Make notes on ideas and bookmark interesting sites while researching so you keep track on them.

In this step, if you still have more than one profitable niche, it’s time to decide on just one you are going to carry on and proceed to the next step.

Don’t worry though, you can just grab the second niche and run with it after you build a successful site with the first. Just that we want to concentrate on one topic at a time. It will keep you sane and achieve results faster.

Please don’t rush because you are planning a business.

It is important that you don’t fall into one of these traps:

1. Rush through to get started. I’ve seen people do it all the time. They impatiently want to start building their first website. As the result, they unscrupulously choose a niche that they think was either cool, or just follow the crowd.
2. Choose an overcrowded and competitive niche. Given enough resources in time, budget and people, you can possibly dominate any niche. But, if you are to start a business doing it mostly by yourself on a shoestring, you want to choose a topic that is not only less competitive but also easy to write about. Don’t get me wrong. Competition is good, just you don’t want an overly competitive niche when you start.
3. Not something you are passionate or interested in. Some might argue that you can start an online publishing business in any kind of niche. I somewhat disagree. Often in the process you are going to be very tempted to stop what you are doing and quit. There could be a new opportunity waiting that you can not resist. If what you are doing right now is not something you like to do, chances are slim you will persist in this business. Consider yourself warned. Follow your passion, with the right keyword research and a bit of luck, you might be able to do it while chasing the money at the same time. On the other hand, other people have succeed pursuing niches they have no passion in. Just the process is not so exciting. Given the choices, I would go for the former any time.
4. Not something profitable. You might be passionate about smoking. The thing is if you plan to sell your website space by joining advertising network like Google AdSense, you will not be able to place AdSense ads on your site because some topics are against Google AdSense policies. You also want a niche where people in it are regularly buy stuff online. There should be some lucrative affiliate program that could fit in your site’s theme.

A free tool to check keywords and valuable keywords or key phrases is Overture. As a guideline, you want keywords that advertisers are paying at least 30 cents per click for the top position. Of course, the higher the better.

Getting into the right niche often takes you on the right path, if not guarantees your success online. It is the difference between success and otherwise. So, take your time to ponder and do some actual research before deciding.

• For those of you linking from your website to your aStore rather than embedding it, we have added the capability to put a link back to your website in the store navigation.
• Advanced users can now remove both the header and category navigation when embedding the aStore within existing websites.
• The custom product description length has been extended, allowing you to say more about the products you recommend to your customers.
• Product detail pages now display a “crossed-out” list price followed by the Amazon.com price.
• The page title in the browser now displays the name of the aStore combined with the category name or product name, making aStore more search-engine friendly.

We could expect many updates before it actually gets out of beta.

• Build and maintain multiple aStores using a single Associate ID
• Specify products to feature on Category and Sub-Category pages
• Create multiple instances of individual categories and sub-categories (e.g. Beatles Music and Rolling Stones Music)
• Feature up to 54 products on the front page of your store rather than the current limit of nine
• Write longer custom product descriptions
• Better control the layout and design for use in frames by providing the capability to remove the store header and category navigation

Seems like they are actually listening to their associates. Limiting a handful products on the front page is quite annoying. With 54 products, that might be a bit too much but I am sure as flexibility kicks in, Amazon associates are more creative in creating their own aStore.

Since 2001, Commission Junction has been powering eBay’s affiliate program. With this launch, eBay is going to host their own links on their own domain (rover.ebay.com).

But no, they are not leaving CJ. According to an email from eBay published by Scott Jangro, Project Rover has been designed to work seamlessly with the Commission Junction interface.

Here are some of the benefits of the new link structure:

• Reduced Ad / Cookie Blocking: Rover decreases the potential for Ad / Cookie Blocking by utilizing an eBay hosted domain.
• Limited Redirects: Rover will use fewer redirects reducing the risk of user drop off and improving speed and performance.
• Global Infrastructure Improvements: Rover will enable eBay and Commission Junction to develop increased global tracking capabilities, allowing for more seamless international affiliate promotions.

eBay anticipates a few things with Project Rover. First this technology assured affiliates that CJ’s Link Management Initiative would not affect them. The cookie washing and ad blocking problems have been solved too because cookie washers obviously can’t delete cookies from ebay.com.

Scott has more information and also explanation of the Rover link structure.

[Scott Jangro]

Seems like CJ is changing its thought about the controversial Link Management Initiative. An announcement titled Upcoming Changes in Getting Links said than on August 30th, 2006 publishers will notice changes in getting links in the CJ Account Manager.

The change will make it easier for publishrs to choose either HTML or JavaScript links. To reitrate there are no plans to remove support for HTML links. Looks like the community effort to sign the petition was successful.

LinkShare talks about cookies

Wayne Porter has an interview with Steve Denton, President of LinkShare, talking about the affiliate network’s cookieless system. In short, LinkShare do use cookies, but not to track initial sales and commission information. Deleted cookies do affect return days tracking.

For advertisers, it is a tremendous branding opportunity while for publishers, we have accesses to product catalog and link search. Here are the full features currently available to both:

Available advertiser APIs

• Branded sign-up and confirmation email.
• Branded login.
• Publisher look up.

Available publisher APIs

• Product catalog access in real-time. The APIs enable keyword searches as well as item-specific searches by UPC, manufacturer, model number, advertiser and SKU.
• Link search functionality. Include information like their relationship status and link code that can be used to capture publisher referrals.
• Advertiser search functionality. Return advertiser results that include information such as their relationship status and program terms with the advertiser.

In order to access the services, a publisher will need a developer key. The service is available for free as of now.

[webservices.cj.com]