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When it comes to niche marketing it only makes sense that you must have some way of connecting with your market. You can go out and actively get your site in front of them, or you can make it easy for them to find you when they are looking. The former is part of any good niche marketing plan, but we will look at one method of doing the latter in this article.

Online, people will most likely look for information on your niche by using a search engine. They will enter words into it and be given a choice of relevant sites to go to. That is a simplified explanation, but it is the words they use that will have the biggest impact. That’s where long tail keywords come in.

What are long tail keywords? Just as the name implies, they are search phrases that are made of several words. ‘Apples’ is an example of a general keyword, while ‘how to select the best apples for making cider’ is an example of a long tail keyword phrase.

There are two main reasons why incorporating long tail keywords into your site is better for a niche marketing campaign.

1. Targeting. While there may be fewer searches for longer key phrases, anyone who enters them has a good idea of what they are looking for. It’s a simple theory: the longer the search term, the more relevant the results. Relevance is what will make people check out what you have to offer - be sure to deliver on their expectations and your profits will rise accordingly.

2. Less competition. The majority of people will never take the time to do keyword research, and wonder why they fail. Then there are those who do some keyword research and think it is enough, they may not fail, but they won’t reach their full potential either. The key is to set up tracking on your site to learn what terms people are entering before finding your site. Google Analytics has that feature. Knowing exactly what people were searching for will help you optimize your site further, and tweak your sales message to match.

Basic niche research needs to be done. This includes targeting certain keywords, but don’t stop there. Find out what long tail keywords work for your niche, and your site specifically.

Trying to find these longer phrases can take time. It is vital for niche marketing success that the research is done, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to do the research. ProHotList is an example of a site that does research for you so you can spend more time on building a solid income.

Visit http://www.prohotlist.com now to take advantage of what the exclusive membership has to offer.

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If you are into internet marketing, you would have heard of the term ‘guru’ and probably know who they are. Now, most gurus are really nice people. Some aren’t, though. But even the good ones do these following things. If you know what they are, you will have a more realistic perspective of the offers gurus make to you.

Have you read lines like, “You can work only 2-3 hours a day…” in a sales letter? Actually, if you work only 2-3 hours a day right from the start of your internet marketing career, you won’t make much money. If you intend to make internet marketing merely a hobby, then 3 hours a day is fine. But if you’re serious about making it a career, 2-3 hours a day is a fallacy, at least at the beginning.

The problem is most gurus show you only the final result. They have the luxury of working so few hours a day because they have a support team doing the technical work, answering emails, manning their support desk, web-mastering and a host of other tedious tasks for them. But when they first started out, they worked their tails off, putting in hours and hours of work trying to understand and implement it all.

That’s the first guru tactic you must be aware of. They usually only show you the final result but don’t tell you how they got there. Here’s the second tactic.

Gurus, more often than not, leave out crucial parts of the puzzle. Every guru will tell you to write articles that link back to your website. So you find a bunch of articles from the Web, edit them and submit them to an article directory. After a week or so, you check your stats. A paltry 30 or 40 views. You wait another few days. The count increases to about 70 views. So few! You decide to write your own articles. “Original content will definitely do better,” is what you think. After a week you check your stats. This time, it’s about 50 views. What’s wrong? You thought article marketing was the panacea to all the ills of traffic generation. You look at the gurus and their articles (which are worse than yours) get thousands of views within a couple of weeks.

The thing is the gurus never told you the most crucial part about article marketing. Here it is…

Your articles must be keyword-laden, especially long-tail keyword-laden. THAT’S how you get lots of page views. Do you find gurus teaching you that in their coaching courses? Very few do.

Here’s the final guru tactic. They tell you half-truths. If you’ve come across claims like, “I made $68,495.57 in my first month in internet marketing…”, welcome to the club. Is such a statement true? Yes, it is. Is that all there is to it? Not on your life. The full truth is, “I made $68,495.57 in my first month in internet marketing…but I spent $5,892.97 in advertising, software, a coaching course, reports, recurring expenses etc.” Is spending $5,892.97 to earn $68,495.57 good R.O.I.? Of course, but what if you don’t have $5,892.97 to spend in one month when you’re first starting out?

Many gurus’ coaching courses contain hidden costs which they don’t reveal in their sales letters. Well, unless you’ve got very deep pockets, you can’t keep up with the spending while you wait for your income to increase.

These are some of the tactics gurus use to get a response from you. Now that you know what they really mean, you have the correct perspective of what they are saying. Then you can respond more intelligently to what the gurus offer you.

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If you have not found out yet, some of the best money to be made now is through European affiliate marketing programs.  I say this because Europeans market has not been saturated as of yet with affiliate marketers trying to make a buck.  Their are still plenty of opportunities for visionary affiliate marketers to build large sites that can attract large amounts of traffic.  But enough about that.  Lets talk about my 3 best European affiliate marketing programs.

1.  eBay.co.uk

eBay continues to surprise me with the depth of markets that they are involved in.  Did you know that they have a auction site in almost all continents and you as an affiliate marketer can build sites to incorporate eBay as a money stream.  And with all the tools that eBay provides they make it easy to put up sites that potentially can make significant money the first day of use.  Payment wise eBay has put together a very unique program that has built in bonuses and significant payout for new bidders to the eBay system.  Currently their payout looks like this:

GBP 0.00 - GBP 999.99 30.00%
GBP 1,000.00 - GBP 4,999.99 32.50%
GBP 5,000.00 - GBP 24,999.99 35.00%
GBP 25,000.00 - GBP 49,999.99 40.00%
GBP 50,000.00 - GBP 99,999.99 45.00%
GBP 100,000.00 - GBP 499,999.99 50.00%
GBP 500,000.00+ 60.00%

These are the percentages that will be received for bidders that you send to eBay for winning bids.  Of course this is in pounds so just put this into a translation program and you will see the power of this system.  As for new bidders that you send to eBay here is the break down of those payouts:

0 - 24 GBP 8.00
25 - 249 GBP 9.00
250 - 499 GBP 10.00
500+ GBP 11.00

So, for each new ACRU that you send to eBay between 1 to 24 you could receive approx. 15.85 US dollars.  And that is just on the first tier.  That makes me very excited.  That I could participate in an international market and make good money sitting here in the US.  To sign up just go to www.ebaypartnernetwork.com and follow their online instructions.  I will probably take a couple of days to get a response back so be a little patient.  In that time start researching some keywords or something.

2.  Amazon.co.uk

Amazon has not missed out on the european action either.  They have a fully functional and decked out site that is just as powerful as their US site.  And all the tools that are accessible from the US affiliate program are also accessible to the UK affiliate program also.  Payout with this program varies.  You can with opt to have a percent per product or you can opt to participate on the tier bases were you have to produce volume to make more money.  I personally like the volume systems because you only have to get 10 products sold under your affiliate account to move up to the 2nd tier.  You start out with 4% return for anything that you sell on this program.  Their are no bonuses but amazon has a large array of products so you should be able to incorporate their affiliate program into any website that you could think of.  And if you can get the traffic up you definiatly will make some money.  To signup just go to amazon.co.uk and scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on join Join Associates.  Follow the instructions once you get their.

3.  Neverblueads.com

I just started using this affiliate network but they have a lot that you can recommend to european citizens.  And the great thing about most of the programs on neverblueads are that they free programs.  That means that you can recommend a program and just ask people to try a program free.  If people sign up you get paid.  These are called freebee programs and they have a lot of them to choose from.  Neverblueads also has a lot of other affiliate programs that could make any other site that you are thinking of starting.  Payout for these programs vary from program to program.

These are my top 3 European Affiliate Marketing Programs

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OK..  You should have signed up for the two article directories that I suggested now.  If you havn’t yet head over to Make Money Online - The Bum Marketing Way Part II and sign up today.  This next and last part of this bum marketing tutorial involves writing the articles that you will publish on these article directories.  I have to warn you.  Don’t go about this without a purpose.  What I mean by this is that with article marketing you are advertising (creating an article) that caters to either a keyword or a subset of keywords.  I have found people writing just to write.  That is fine, but were using this technique to make money.  Now, if your just looking to gain links with no traffic then by no means go ahead and just write a none directed article.

Do the research:

Before starting to write your article make sure you do the research.  That means going out to your favorite keyword research tool and looking over some keywords.  Checking there search volume and deciding how those keywords relate to the topic that you are going to link to later on.  Try to find keywords that will not take a lot to get to the top of the search results.  These keywords will have high search volume but low competition.  Competition is how many people have writen content for the subject. 

Once you have gathered they keywords it is now time to write the article.  Most article directories don’t allow for a lot of keyword dropping (using the keyword excessively).  So this is my formula.  Mention the keyword twice in the first paragraph.  In the second paragraph mention the keyword once and a variation of the keyword.  For the rest of the article spinkle in all the other related keywords.  Try to make the wording flow as if the keyword really belongs in the paragraph.  Don’t use bold text or itialize to emphasize the keyword.  The directories will grip about that.  Don’t throw any links into your body, they will not accept that.

Now that you have the article body complete now you need to setup the resource box at the bottom of the article.  In the box write a inviting message with the link to you website.  Do not link directly to a affiliate site the article will not get accepted.  You have to link to a site or redirect from a top level site domain.  Redirects from a subdirectory are not acceptable.  For example, www.yoursite.com is acceptable.  www.yoursite.com/aff is not acceptable.  At least with ezinearticles it is not acceptable.  One note: please read the rules of each site that you decide to post articles to.  Some will let you do a lot more than most.  In this case ezinearticles.com is very strict with their content providers so they will not accept most of the tricks that most affiliate marketers use.

Once the resource box is complete your done.  Proof read and publish the article and wait to see if it has been accepted.  If accepted then start checking the serps for the article and see how your ranked.  If the ranking is not to your liking you can always start linking to the article to help the serps.  If the article is not accepted, work to correct the errors and if you don’t understand ask questions.  Most directories will get back to you promptly.  That is it and good luck… 

Learn More About Bum Marketing

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I guess to start this off I need to define what Bum Marketing is.  Well, Bum marketing is essentially article marketing.  Article marketing is a means of targeting niche keywords with articles.  The articles are posted on article directories for free.  That is why this technique is call Bum Marketing.  It does not require a website or even website development tools.  If your using a PC the only tool you need is notepad.  If you want to get fancy with it, I would recommend microsoft word.  To make money with this technique it envolves volume.  Creating a number of articles that cover one niche with very targeted keywords. 

Now that we have the definition out of the way, tody I want to concentrate on getting you accepted to some of the most popular article directories.  Although, there are plenty of directories out there, there are only a few of them that the major search engines trust.  By trust I mean, the articles that are published in these trusted directories usually are listed automatically.  So, if the title of the article is a true niche keyword, expect the article to show up on the search engines near the top of the search results.

I only use two trusted article directories and each one targets a certain search engine.  First off Google.  I have not found a article directory as powerful for getting listed in Google as American Chronicle.  American Chronicle is a nationwide news portal that reaches a very large audience.  The people that read this portal take the information very seriously, so be careful in what you write.  In order to publish your post on this portal you will first need to get accepted.  Getting accepted is about giving an example of your writing.  If it is good your in.  Visit this page and follow the direction on how to get accepted.  Expect that they may take a day or two before getting back with you with your login credentials.

The next article directory that I use is ezine articles.  This directory targets every other search engine and google also.  Some article will do better in this directory than in American Chronicle or vice versa.  Once again in order to post to this portal you will have to get accepted.  Warning, ezine articles has very strict rules that they enforce to a tee.  Don’t try to get over on them or you will lose all your right to posting with this directory.  That said, here is a link to there membership page.  Signing up is very easy and only should take a day to get accepted.

There are plenty of other directories out there that other swear by, but I have gotten the best results with just these two sites.  I think this is enough for today.  Just getting through these two directories will take take you a day.  Plus, my baby boy is waking up and I need to devote my time to him.  We will pick this back up tomorrow and I will also list out some of the other directories that I have personally used over the years.  If you have any question please don’t hesitate to leave a message.

Learn More About Bum Marketing

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