Blogging has been the way for people to get their information, ideas, and opinions out to the world. With journalism and traditional media changing so rapidly, blogging has filled the void and made it easier to be a part of the bigger picture.

You can start a blog very easily, and focus on your niche topic to attract visitors and prospects very quickly. You must decide if you will be blogging to simply express your opinions, or if you will be promoting a product or service in order to bring in revenue.

Once you have made this decision, blog every single day. I refer to this as power blogging, and look forward to seeing my blog steadily grow in popularity and search engine ranking on the largest search engines, such as Google.

You will want to read other blogs on your topic, to leave comments, get new ideas, and to connect with the owners of those blogs. You can search for blogs on your topic on Google or at Technorati, the world’s largest blogging directory.

Another service that will help you to get traffic quickly is StumbleUpon. If you have other people who will stumble your blog posts in return for you stumbling theirs, everyone will benefit from the surge in traffic.

Article writing and marketing will also drive traffic to your blog, although it will take longer than some other methods. Articles are good over the long run, especially because of the back links that will come from having your articles distributed all over the internet.

If you are looking for a way to get your message out to the world, look to blogging as your forum to connect to the world.

And now I invite you to join me for free weekly teleseminars by visiting http://www.EbookWritingandMarketingSecrets.com to learn how to write articles, blog, become involved in social networking and learn the technology needed to build a profitable online business. Connie Ragen Green has been online since 2005 and teaches people how to build their own online business in record time, offering free teleseminars weekly, as well as online courses in a workshop environment.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Connie_Ragen_Green

One of the big attractions of affiliate marketing is that somebody else (the product owner) does all of the product creation and customer support work, while you just get paid. That’s a great business model for you. But having your own site makes things easier and more profitable, because it allows you to build a list.

I’m going to show you how to set up a simple squeeze page, with minimal effort. In fact, I’ve boiled it down to a few steps that anyone can follow.

The purpose of a squeeze page is to collect the visitor’s email address. It’s called a “squeeze page” because there is only one course of action they can take on the page-opt in to your list. In other words, you’re squeezing an email address out of visitors who opt in.

The system that I’m about to show you is designed to maximize opt-in conversions and affiliate sales with the least amount of effort.

The Gatekeeper

The gatekeeper is a simple, fast-loading squeeze page that is perfect for direct response advertising. Basically, you use the merchant’s headline and bullet points to create your own squeeze page. When someone subscribes, you redirect him through your affiliate link straight to the affiliate product sales letter. Think about how elegant this is…you get to capture leads and make money, and you don’t have to offer a free item!

Tip: If the merchant has a squeeze page, use the squeeze page bypass trick in my “Covert Affiliate Tactics” report.

Your headline should come from the main benefit of the affiliate product you’re recommending. In almost all cases, you can find that in the main headline on the product sales page. Simply put your own slight angle on that headline and you’ll have the headline for your squeeze page.

Then add a line that says something like, “Get this amazing information within seconds from right now…”

Two small twists that can help conversions:

• Say the offer is available for a limited time only, which adds some urgency to sign up right away, and make the claim true when..
• You offer a “bonus” of “FREE marketing information, tips and resources”…which is your mailing list

When somebody signs up, redirect him straight to the merchant’s product sales page. Have your autoresponder give subscribers links back to merchant’s website, and remind them that they’ll be receiving lots of great information and tips from you.

The system is simple:

1.      Your visitors will enter their name and email address and submit the form to receive the free information. You can also set an affiliate cookie with an image tag (read my “Covert Affiliate Tactics” report).

2.     The new subscriber is added to your list and sent directly to the merchant’s salesletter. If they purchase the product, you get the commission.

3.     They will immediately receive your first email with your welcome letter and a link back to the sales letter of the product you are promoting.

This method works best if you’re NOT using verified opt-in because it appears to be the same website if you redirect prospects straight to the merchants sales page. If you’re sending highly targeted traffic to a Gatekeeper squeeze page, you should see high conversion rates both for opt-ins and affiliate sales.

The next step is to drive traffic to your squeeze page. Revealed in this book is a simple system used to turn a $97 investment into more than one thousand new leads and $10,000 in sales…

Click here to the make best investment you’ve ever made.

To your success!

Derrick VanDyke is the author of Affiliate Cash Secrets. You can download his affiliate marketing course at http://affiliatecashsecrets.com.