Blog Posts


02. March 2010:

Free SEO Software Downloads

Free SEO Software Downloads - Top Choices

SEO is a vital part of driving traffic to your websites and blogs and there are plenty of resources on the internet that can help you improve your SEO knowledge and skills.

As far as websites go, no-one should be without a bookmark in their browser to Aaron Wall's SEOBook.com. This is one of my favorites and it's well worth subscribing for useful tips and advice on getting the best results in terms of rankings. However, even if you prefer not to add another email subscription to your inbox, an RSS subscription or at least a bookmark in your browser should be considered.

This post is about SEO software however, and you will find some great free tools at the SEOBook site but in this post I wanted to mention three software suites that have all been around for some time and offer free versions for everyone.

Over the years I have used all three but I have to confess that I don't like SEO and find it tedious, even though I know full well that the potential increased rewards are undeniable. The following three software packages all offer a range of analytical tools and will offer suggested improvements that can be made to any site in order to achieve higher SERPS positions for given keywords. In all honesty, which you prefer will probably depend on a variety of factors but suffice to say, all are very good tools.

1) SEO Power Suite - I love the look and feel of this software and it delivers information in a clear and easy to understand manner. Of the three software suites listed here I have to say it is my favorite. The free version is fully functional but you are unable to save your projects and other data. This does not make it any less useful but if you are intending to engage in long term SEO work, the upgrade is worth it. Try the free version and I think you will be convinced if you are serious about your SEO.The company also offers a range of other SEO Tools geared towards specific tasks such as link building.

2) IBP (Internet Business Promoter) - This software has been around for many years and I have used both the free and paid versions in the past. Again. very comprehensive reporting and analysis on offer, even in the free version but naturally, paying for a licence gives you access to even greater power.

3) WebCEO - I have not used WebCEO for a number of years but you will find the free version an extremely useful and revealing piece of software that can offer analysis and suggested improvement steps for your websites and blogs. 

My preference for SEO Power Suite is purely personal - my recommendation would be to download all three of these programs and have a play around with each - you will soon come to a decision regarding your own favorite.

You might also like to consider Traffic Travis whose free version offers some easy to understand and implement checks on your sites to improve your position for given keywords etc. It may not be as comprehensive as some of the other offerings, but it is pretty good and, as they say, sometimes less is more. You can grab the free version by clicking the ad below.

If you are a Wordpress user and want to learn the best way to optimize your Wordpress installations our 40 video series and accompanying book Wordpress SEO Secrets will give you everything you need to know and all the free tools you will require to put yourself ahead of the vast number of Wordpress users.

TCH



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caymanhost  Search Engines  2 Comments  
03. February 2010:

TCH Free Internet Marketing Article Directory Update

I recently launched a new article directory, specifically for internet marketing related content and have been making some improvements over the last few days, to ensure that signing up and posting your content is a worthwhile exercise.

So, here's the good news.

Using a variety of plugins and tools, all articles posted on the directory will now be automatically disseminated to a variety of social networking sites on the web. This increases the exposure of your content immensely as posts will now be syndicated on places such as MSN Live Spaces, Multiply, SPNBabble, Posterous and Xanga with more to come in the future, including several micro blogging sites such as Plurk, Identica, Jaiku, YouAre and Twitter. Integration with MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog is also in hand.

Registering as an author is free and submitting a blog post/article is just the same as posting on any Wordpress blog. Once your post is approved it will be published on the site and also syndicated to all the above mentioned services. All this is done for you, all you need to do is register and submit your content.

The directory is internet marketing focused, so if you write about internet marketing, affiliate marketing, niche marketing and blogging, SEO, social networking etc. there is a place for your articles and they won't get lost in a flood of unrelated posts about fishing, cooking, golf, mortgages etc. etc.

A further benefit is that the site feed is syndicated on our marketing toolbar so all users will have access to your articles right from their browser if they have the bar installed. The toolbar itself provides some great functionality, and even if you are using Firefox with a selection of add ons you will still probably find some useful features in the bar - Internet Explorer users will probably benefit even more from the webmaster tools I've included.

You can even be notified direct to your desktop when new content is added to any of our sites, including the article directory. Just download our instant desktop notifier application and every time there is new content an alert will pop up to let you know. 

I am open to suggestions for additions to the bar, whether it be blog feeds, products or services, or links to specific sites, either yours or others - if they are relevant to our theme and you think it would be a worthwhile addition, use the contact form to let me know about it. 

TCH 



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caymanhost  Internet Marketing  2 Comments  
30. January 2010:

Marketing Toolbar Updates - TCH Toolbar Facelift

Some time ago I created a marketing toolbar and have to admit that I let it slide a little during the course of the past twelve months. 

I've finally got around to revamping the toolbar and it now includes a bunch of new features and is packed with free and low cost tools, tips and resources for anyone involved in online marketing. These latest updates have improved the original incarnation considerably and future updates will ensure it stays current and relevant.

Once installed you will find things like free SEO tools, Wordpress plugins, marketing scripts, free autoresponders, free software, advertising resources, blogging tools, free website content, article marketing tools, Twitter tools and social bookmarking and networking features, affiliate data feed tools, file sharing tools, web hosting forums, articles, reviews and more. 

The toolbar is available for both IE and Firefox and it installs in seconds - there is an uninstaller and it's certified free of any spyware/malware/parasite software so you can install it with complete confidence.

If try it and don't like it, you can uninstall it with a mouse click, but I think you'll find plenty of useful things that can help you with your online ventures. Trying it costs you nothing and if there are other things you would like to see incorporated you only have to let me know.

Download The Free Toolbar Here

TCH



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26. January 2010:

CovertLinks Review and Link Cloaking Updates

CovertLinks Review - Latest Link Cloaking Software

I promised after my last post to give an update on the affiliate link cloaking complications caused by certain browsers not accepting cookies from "third party sites". In simple terms, if you are using frames to cloak your affiliate links, Internet Explorer may well not accept your cookie if the domain in the browser address bar is different from the URL where the cookie originates. On standard privacy settings, which most users probably won't ever change, this should supposedly only apply to third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy but in practice it doesn't always seem to be the case.

After pretty exhaustive testing, I've found a couple of things that work in the majority of cases - however, the problem still means that after cloaking your links you should check every one to make sure your cookie is indeed being recorded correctly. 

1) The stealth cloaking option in Samurai Stealth Cloaker still delivers the goods and will normally set your cookie in IE. Check each link to make sure - I have tested using Clickbank and Commission Junction links and most were fine. However, occasionally a vendor's link may throw things off for some unknown reason.

If you use use the masked frame option in the script to cloak anything be sure to check very carefully in as many browsers as you can because you may possibly lose commissions from anyone using IE6 and above - the vast majority of internet users.

2) There is some software available that promises not only to ensure your affiiate cookies are correctly tracked in Internet Explorer and all other browsers but also to protect you entirely from link hijacking by parasite software intalled on your vistors' computers.

I've been trying this on Clickbank and Commission Junction links and in the vast majority of cases it works fine. I've also used it with some less well known networks without problems. However, once again, I would recommend users check their links to make sure. Keep reading for a review of the software below.

I have also been trying out cloaked links for programs using scripts such as Rapid Action Profits and the 7DollarSecret - these are affiliate programs that pay affiliates instantly, normally via PayPal and it appears that the construction of these links makes them a little trickier to cloak correctly. If you are promoting anything using either script, I would advise you to make doubly sure that you are going to receive credit and you may have to settle for using the raw link or a simple PHP redirect in some cases.

Review Of Covert Links - Affiliate Link Cloaking Software

CovertLinks Affiliate Link Cloaker

CovertLinks is one of the latest cloaking solutions on the market from Perry Wolf and, credit where credit is due, it was his sales page that woke me up to the whole Internet Explorer cookie issues, which will teach me to keep up with the affiliate forums a little more as it has been discussed at length in several places.

However, CovertLinks goes a fair bit further than just solving that one problem and Perry claims that his methods of cloaking can also prevent parasite software from hijacking your links too. He explains how all this works, in layman's terms on his website, but here is a summary of what CovertLinks can do - there are two methods available to you as an affiliate, HTML and PHP versions:

a) The CovertLinks HTML Version: An Advanced Framing Technology is used that displays the Merchant's sales page on your    website in a Frame but uses additional methods to ensure your cookies get set. 

b) The CovertLinks PHP Version : The PHP version uses an advanced method to "pull" the content from the merchant's page and display it on your website without using frames. This ensures your affiliate cookies are set and provides additional security against Parasite Software.

Full explanations can be found on Perry's website and even if you're not convinced that you should be cloaking your links it's worth reading.

So far my tests of the software have proved that it does exactly what it says on the tin, at least most of the time. Once again, it is not perfect and seems to struggle when dealing with more unusual affiliate links. If you are working mainly with the well known networks, you should not have too many issues. When faced with certain types of affiliate links though, just like SSC, CovertLinks is not immune from the occasional "brain fart", or perhaps, more accurately, the links themselves are not. 

Update : after a bit of back and forth with the man behind the software it seems to me, despite my non technical background, that the software can fail to pass cookies in IE. I have now tried it with all manner of affiliate links and with the default privacy settings in IE8 (based on the assumption that most users will not alter these) and CovertLinks does not always manage to get the cookies set. Reverting to a straight redirect solves the problem, but this means having to do that manually or with other software. So, here I am, using both CovertLinks and Samurai Stealth Cloaker in tandem and testing every single cloaked link I create.

This is not ideal obviously and it's time consuming. I'm hoping that my feedback and examples of the software's shortcomings will enable the developer to address them and remedy them in future releases, even though I got the impression that my suggestions that there were some issues didn't go over that well.

There is one other aspect of it that I don't like very much and that is the appearance in the title bar of the browser of "Covert Links - Show Page http://www.ehateverthelinkis.com" This doesn't appear to happen on all links so I'm unsure if it's intentional or if it's a bug. IF it is intentional it is a rather silly flaw in my opinion - after going to such lengths to produce a secure link cloaking software you give the game away for the sake of advertising in the browser's title bar? This particular issue really needs attention because, intentional or not,  it spoils an otherwise competent and good value product.

Now, as far as the protection from parasite software goes, I'm taking Perry at his word because I'm not technical enough to understand how such nasty trickery works. I'm not sure that SSC provides such protection, it doesn't claim to, but that's not to say it doesn't when using the stealth mode.

I'm keen to use CovertLinks, as it does solve, at least in the main, a couple of pretty serious problems for affiliates. Sadly, unlike SSC, which is a script that resides on your server, CovertLinks is software that runs on your computer. I say sadly because in terms of ease of us, convenience and tracking, it is far less user friendly than the script. Each cloaked link has to be created using the software's interface - basically a box filling and checkbox ticking exercise - which is pretty simple. You will then need to upload the resulting file to your server, either via FTP or through your hosting control panel.

This is a gripe that I probably wouldn't have if I had never used SSC - it's not really a big deal, it just seems laborious because with SSC you can create your links far more quickly and keep track of them far more easily using the simple admin panel which also gives you basic tracking facilities.

Having said that, CovertLinks certainly seems to be a more up to date method of cloaking and the way things on the web progress, it's a good idea to keep up with current technology. If parasite software is as big a problem as some people are claiming, anything that can beat it is a good thing in my book.

The good news about CovertLinks is that it is pretty cheap, certainly compared to many other cloaking solutions, many of which are actually pretty useless in any case. As to whether it is better than SSC or equally as good, both methods have their advantages and disadvantages and choosing between the two is going to come down to what each individual considers more important to them, and perhaps budget. In terms of price, CovertLinks is a clear winner, but when weighing up the differences, SSC might still edge it out for some users. The choice, as they say, is yours.

TCH 

 



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caymanhost  Affiliate Marketing  2 Comments  
24. January 2010:

Affiliate Link Cloaking, Internet Explorer and Parasite Software

My last post gave a detailed look at some link cloaking software for affiliate marketers and having written it, I thought I ought to expand a little more on the whole issue of link cloaking and the menace of parasite software.

Parasite software is a program installed on a user's computer that can do some very underhand things. Basically, if the software recognizes an affiliate link, it can insert its own cookie in replace of yours, effectively stealing your commissions from right under your nose and neither you, or your visitor/referral will know a thing about it.

That is pretty serious and perhaps far more of a real threat than someone manually altering or stripping out your affiliate link. The problem is, that even if you use redirects, such parasite software can still do its dirty work.

I am currently evaluating some software that claims to overcome this problem using a whole new way of cloaking links.

The other thing I wanted to mention is Internet Explorer. I've never been a fan of this browser; it gives webmasters more headaches than any other browser out there - it messes up the appearance of websites and I recently discovered, by chance, that if you redirect a link using a frame, which is a very common way of handling affiliate links, IE will potentially block cookies, (supposedly ony third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy) robbing you of your referrals and commissions! This sucks big time as the vast majority of internet users who don't know any better still use this crappy piece of software because it came installed on their computer.

Having said that, Clickbank and CJ links should be OK.....however, when testing in IE8, results are inconclusive - some cookies were set when using a frame and some were not. Why? I have no solid explanation but whatever, if you are using frames to cloak your links, it would pay you to check them in various browsers to ensure your cookie is being set correctly.

If you are using masked frames to redirect your links, go and check them in IE now. Once your page loads, look in the bottom of your browser for a small eye shaped icon - if it's there, double click it and you will probably see that your affiliate cookie has been completely stripped out. If it has, you may need to change all those masked frame links to a simple PHP redirect - the least secure redirect there is, just so that IE users will be credited as your affiliate referrals. Alternatively, try the stealth cloaking option in Samurai Stealth which seems to solve the issue most of the time

Can you imagine how many sales you may have lost because of Microsoft and their decision to implement such a feature in their browser? When I found out I was more than a little mad - thanks a bunch Microsoft for screwing affiliates the world over.

The problem of parasite software is made even worse when using simple PHP redirects because your cookie does not get processed until your visitor actually lands on the page - the parasite does its work before this happens meaning you have no chance whatsoever!! 

Now, the product I am currently evaluating claims to have all the answers to these problems but I'm not ready to share it yet because in early tests, I'm not convinced and IE8 still seems to be blocking cookies on my redirects, whether HTML or PHP. Having said that, the testing process is a bit of a complicated one and I'm hoping that after some dialogue with the program owner, these difficulties can be resolved. If or when they are, I will publish my findings here.

In the meantime, the best advice for all affiliates would be not to use masked frames as a form of redirect, certsinly not without ntesting them fully in the major browsers,  and to check all your existing framed links and redirects very carefully, in particular in Internet Explorer, because you could be cutting your own throat and losing commissions as a result of trying to do the exact opposite! Thanks Microsoft.

TCH 



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22. January 2010:

Cloaking Affiliate Links With Samurai Stealth Cloaker Script

Samurai Stealth Cloaker Review Updates

I wrote a review of Samurai Stealth Cloaker some time ago and hailed it as the best link cloaking script on the market at the time. To date, I have still not seen anything better and I finally got around to doing a demo video which shows the script in action.

There are many good reasons to cloak affiliate links - more professional looking URL's from your own domain, shorter URL's, disguising your affiliate status and to a degree, helping you avoid the stripping of your affiliate ID by visitors who don't want  you to get paid for their own unfathomable reasons.

Up to a point, the claims of commission theft are true and they also make for sensational ad copy but let's be realistic. Average internet users wouldn't know an affiliate link if it bit them on the a**, so if your selling something not related to internet marketing or SEO for example, it's doubtful they are going to bypass your link. On the other hand, particularly with Clickbank products, no matter what you do, once a savvy Clickbank affiliate lands on the payment page they can easily clear their cookies and return to buy through their own link, so cloaking does not protect you from those folks at all.

One of the most valid reasons for using redirects is the management aspect of your links. Let's say you promote a product related to Wordpress - you may link to that product in a huge number of blog posts and articles, perhaps using an automatic linking plugin for instance, meaning that you could have hundreds of links on countless web pages. If that product becomes outdated, or is withdrawn from the market, or goes away for any of a variety of reasons, you either have a load of broken links to fix by trying to find and amend each one, or you just leave the broken links littering your content - not a great option.

If you use redirects, all you ever have to do is change one link and all the instances of that redirect will automatically be updated. Using a script like Samurai Stealth Cloaker enables you to login to your admin panel and with a couple of mouse clicks all your redirects are changed in seconds. That is a very worthwhile plus point, and the more affiliate links you generate over time, the more important it becomes.

SSC is very easy to install on your server and once it's done, you can see from the video how easy it is to use. We've chosen a complicated scenario in the video, basically to show the power of "stealth" redirects and the fact that once you have placed your affiliate cookie, you can send a visitor to absolutely any page you like - great if the sales page is crap, or you've maybe done all the preselling in a review on your own site for example. In our example we show how you, the affiliate, can send someone to your own opt-in page, capture the lead, and then send the visitor straight to the sales page as opposed to the merchant's lead capture page, or even straight to the order page. 

The script can also handle simple PHP redirects or mask your link in a frame (we would not recommend using frames however - see this post on cloaking links and Internet Explorer which explains why) but the stealth option is what makes the script most powerful. In rare cases however, the stealth link may break an affiliate link so it's always wise to double check your redirect before publishing it to the world. In my experience with SSC it has handled various networks with no problems at all and I've only ever had a couple of affiliate links where it broke something along the way. Just be aware that it can happen.

Here's the video demo of Samurai Stealth Cloaker

I'd also like to mention another redirect script that I use in certain circumstances, particularly when I'm sending customers or visitors to a download - you'll see how you can add one time offers and instead of just seeing a click to download box pop up, your visitor views another offer or offers while they wait for their product delivery. It seems to work pretty well if you keep the offers relevant.

Here is the video demo of Interstitial Links Manager

So, two great products, well tested and used by yours truly and a worthwhile investment for anyone marketing online as an affiliate.

Have a great weekend!

TCH



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12. January 2010:

Goodbye GVO Hello MKHostingUSA and A New Wordpress Blog

GVO Reviews - MK Hosting USA Reviews

As mentioned in my last post I was about to move my hosting arrangements to another provider. 

I'm pleased to say that this has now been done over the course of the weekend and visitors should not have noticed any interruptions in service. So, after four years with GVO, I now have a new home on the web with my data tucked away on the Planet's servers in Texas. Hopefully these will be far more secure than those in the same state belonging to GVO! 

Whilst it is too early for a review as such, I did post a detailed run down of the move and the new company who are now hosting my sites for me - MKHostingUSA. I recommend reading it and if you are in the market for a marketing and hosting service all under one roof, they can set you up with a great set of tools including email marketing software and unlimited autoresponders. This is not some cheap and nasty kit either, it is a very fully featured system offering in depth delivery, click and bounce statistics for all your email campaigns and autoresponder messages. There are also a whole raft of email templates to facilitate a professionally branded newsletter along with customizable opt in or lead capture templates for your marketing efforts.

Here's a quick video overview of the company website: enable annotations if you watch it here or just click to view on YouTube.

As a hosting customer you will get a free dot biz domain name, "unlimited" hosting (MySQL databases, FTP accounts, email accounts, storage and data transfer). They also throw in $145 worth of PPC advertising credits, over 4500 website templates from Hostgator but most importantly the trusty Cpanel and Fantastico with all the major scripts including Wordpress.

My initial email contact with the company and subsequent Q&A session was what made me decide to forge ahead with the move. Extremely efficient and professional even on a Friday afternoon/Saturday. They even moved everything for me and took care of the DNS changes and it went as smoothly as you like! It's all explained in full detail in the MKHostingUSA review post on my main site.

They also have a similar affiliate program to GVO that pays recurring monthly commissions, so if that is appealing to you it's another bonus for being a customer. The icing on the cake - less than $20 a month for the whole kit and kaboodle.

Take A Quick Video Tour Of MKHosting Here 

I've also been busy working on a new blog/article directory. After my experiences running a general directory on Article Dashboard I swore off ever doing it again, but........

The new site is focused on hosting, domains, blogging, internet marketing, SEO and similar related topics and has been built using Wordpress. It's a bit of an experiment in terms of using a subdomain to see how well it can do in the SERPS. If you are familiar with writing posts in Wordpress as a blogger, the experience will be pretty much the same when submitting your content to the new TCH Article Directory. Sign up for a free account and get posting - the site has been optimized so that your posts should get indexed quickly and start seeing some reasonable traffic once the spiders pick it up. At present the content is non existent but that won't last for long.

Free Article Directory - Hosting Domains marketing SEO Wordpress

Unlike most directories you can include hyperlinks in your posts as well as in a resource box - the only hard rule is "no affiliate links" which will be stripped out before publication if they are used, or, the article will just be rejected. If you want some backlinks and your content syndicated to a wider audience, drop by and give it a run sometime. You can include images and embed video into your posts too, just as you would in your own WP blog. All I ask is that you keep it relevant, read the submission guidelines and have fun. 

I've also upgraded my helpdesk to a a far better system using the open source software from OSTicket which should make for better experience when using the contact forms on the sites.

That's about it for today :-)

TCH 



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08. January 2010:

Internet Marketing In 2010 at The CaymanHost

Starting 2010 is an exciting time for me and is going to see a number of changes here and on some of my other sites.

First off, we are going to be moving to a new home on the web as we have outgrown our present hosting plan - more of that in a separate post. We have suffered a lot of downtime in recent months and it as done a fair bit of damage to our rankings which is another reason why we are making the move.

I have been considering the future of this blog for sometime and although the new hosting arrangements will allow it to remain without eating up too many resources, the fact that it is a non Wordpress blog is one of the reasons its future is uncertain. Moving it to Wordpress is so convoluted that I doubt I will try it for this site so I'm considering all options carefully before making a final decision.

If you haven't visited our main site recently, please drop by and see what we have been up to - a new series of video tutorials on things like Wordpress, Cpanel and other blogging and web hosting related subjects are to become a regular feature and are proving very popular. My blogging focus will probably shift to this site far more as the year progresses - visit TheCaymanHost Here

I have been busy elsewhere this past few months both online and off and my wife and I are about to open a physical offline business having launched a new website last year and the move into a retail premises is the focus of our efforts at present. We used Wordpress for the site and you can visit Arteccentrix for another example of what can be done with the software and associated plugins, it really is a versatile platform - it's not internet marketing related.

So, 2010 is going to be an exciting and busy year! I hope that all my loyal readers will stick around and enjoy it with me.

To kick off this new year I'm starting with a few tips that will help your marketing efforts online this year.

URL Redirection and Affiliate Marketing - if you are still using the TinyURL service to shorten your links you may want to rethink the idea. Why? Well, it has been a much abused service and as a result you could be losing a lot of traffic and visitors if you continue to use it. Browsers like Google Chrome now include a feature for users to preview every TinyURL as so many links led to undesirable or spammy sites. This means that instead of redirecting to your page, users will see something like the image below. This is plainly not a good thing!

So, if you're looking for a better alternative there are plenty out there nowadays - ViralURL is one option and can help you with more than just redirection, as can the excellent and new service from Skadoogle. 

However, I recently discovered that ViralURL also has problems associated with it - having been unfairly flagged (imo) by the Spybot Search and Destroy software, anyone running Spybot and Internet Explorer is unlikely to see any of your links at all. I'm not sure how many users Spybot S&D has, but it's a pretty well known tool and it's free. CNET alone cites the number of downloads from its sitealone at 111,925,794 so it has to be borne in mind. ViralURL id certainly going to be crippled on a lot of machines out there. Rightly or wrongly SpybotS&D have decided to "protect" their users from ViralURL links and have refused to remove the flag, despite the best efforts of ViralURL to state their case. I think the people at Spybot are morons judging by the comments they made on their forum and simply do not understand viral marketing or any form of affiliate marketing at all. Needless to say I choose to use alternative software for parasite detection.

If you want a professional link cloaking script for your own domain we still say that Samurai Stealth Cloaker is the best out there. You can visit my hub on link cloaking and redirection for more tips too.

When it comes to marketing online, your list is going to be one of the most important aspects of those efforts and if you are still baulking at the thought of getting started with your own list, make 2010 the year you get to grips with building your own list of subscribers. You can choose from countless list building programs but the bottom line is that most of them are a waste of time - sorry to say that but it's true.

For some great listbuilding tips try Josh Spaulding's report on email marketing, it's a steal and contains some great information. 

I'm often asked what programs and services I would recommend for beginners to the world of internet or affiliate marketing but it is such a huge subject that without a clear idea of exactly what model you are intending to use it's very difficult to answer.

If you are just starting out, there is a very good 120 video course available called IM For Newbies that covers all kinds of topics and explains how to do a whole range of things - it's not the most advanced stuff but if you're wanting to accelerate your learning curve it's very worthwhile and good value for money at only $7. For anyone wanting to learn how to set up affiliate marketing sites or niche sites, the free training videos at the Clone Cash System are well worth a look too.

If you are planning to use Wordpress in your online marketing there are a huge number of free and paid resources available - take a look at my main site's Wordpress tools section and check out some of the Wordpress Training Videos too. You can even get a free membership site software for Wordpress at Memberfire, so if you are looking to set up your first membership site for free or paying members, it's a great place to start.

As far as free services go there are a million and one that claim to be the answers to your prayers, but they can't all possibly be telling the truth. That's not to say that some will work better than others for different people and their online ventures. There are literally thousands of options, tools and sites out there, so many that it can be difficult to know what to do and where to begin but my advice would be to try as much as you can cope with - test and discard anything that does not bring results. Do not just take someone else's word all the time - if you like the look of a free service try it - there can often be some nice surprises when you do so.

You will have noticed  several buttons in the sidebar for free advertising sites - if you have no advertising budget to speak of these can be quite effective - I know because I've seen some good results with them in recent months so give some a try and see if they can help you too. In my experience if you have the right product/service they can be good for list building and even sales. I'm also currently trying some banner advertising with an exchange that seems to be performing reasonably well although I've never been a fan of such things before - it all depends on what you're advertising but it's a no cost way of getting your sites seen in more places and there is a Wordpress plugin available too.

If you stick with me on this blog or subscribe to my list, I will post results and ideas of my own to help you further your online goals at the start of this new decade!

I'll report back on the hosting move once it's underway - if the new service is as good as people claim, you can be sure I'll be giving a full and detailed review of my experiences and the services provided so look out for that in the weeks ahead.

TCH 



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caymanhost  Internet Marketing  3 Comments  
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