Now that many people’s finances are getting even tighter due to the recession, the idea of making money online is getting even more attractive, and one of the first things many people hear about is something called “affiliate marketing.” While there is enough information out there to overwhelm most people at first, the basic concept is fairly simple.

Market research is the first step in the process.

First, you must research markets you are interested in. This is your most important starting point, and you can do this by finding out what your potential customers are looking for. This is the essence of “keyword research” – finding the actual words or phrases people type into search engines to find answers to their problems, and you can be sure that if you do not do your research, you will regret it later.

By finding and using keywords that consumers are actively entering into the search engines, you will be able to help your websites and landing pages rank higher, generating a nonstop flood of organic, targeted traffic.

Keyword research doesn’t have to be a difficult task, however. Start with the free Google Keyword Tool, which can be found by searching for “Google keyword tool external,” and enter in a keyword or phrase that identifies the product or niche that you are interested in promoting as an affiliate.

Click on “get keyword ideas” to generate a list of keywords and gauge the competitiveness of the the market by taking a look at the number of times people are searching for your main keywords per month.

What you want to do is find a market with existing demand that also has existing competition and products readily available, but not so competitive that ranking highly is next to impossible.

What’s important here is that you remember there must be an audience for whatever you choose to market. Since you are an affiliate, your costs for entering a market are not very high, but it’s still a good idea to take the time to do niche research in order to avoid wasting your time.

For more information on market research and keyword research in affiliate marketing, particularly as it applies to CPA, check out Zero Friction Marketing course.

Just what is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is based on sharing revenue sales between two parties. On one hand you have the merchant, the owner of goods, products and/or services, and on the other you have the affiliate.

Through a unique affiliate link, the affiliate is rewarded for each action the visitor takes based on the merchant’s reward system.

The affiliate is rewarded depending on which actions the merchant decides to reward their affiliates by.

The affiliate (via their affiliate link) may be rewarded by each visitor who clicks on their link, enters certain details such as a name, zip code and email address into a form, or by purchasing a product or service.

For example, if a merchant decides to pay the affiliate for each visitor who purchases a product through their affiliate link, the affiliate is then rewarded a percentage of each sale that occurs through their unique affiliate link.

A numbers example of this would be if a company has a $97 ebook that they sell through their website and then decides they would like more traffic and sales for their ebook.

They would then create an affiliate program where affiliates who promote that ebook with their affiliate link will generate (say) %50 commissions for each sale they produce.

Each sale produced by the affiliate makes him $48.50, while the other half of that sale goes to the merchant, who did not have to promote and market to generate that sale.

This creates a win-win situation for both parties involved, each makes a profit for each sale that’s produced.

The more sales made by the affiliate, the more revenue each party will make.

There are literally thousands of merchants who use affiliate programs to grow their business exponentially.

Sites like ClickBank have made it easy for merchants to create an affiliate system whereby affiliates can promote their products, and likewise affiliates can sign a form, have their own unique affiliate ID created for them and begin promoting products for the merchant immediately.

This is the essence of affiliate marketing and is one of the greatest ways for anyone to earn a secondary or main income by putting this type of marketing into practice.

Traffic is the currency of the web. The more traffic your website has, the easier it will be to achieve your objective, be it to make money, to spread your ideas, to connect with other people or anything else.

That is why we decided to create a compilation with 100 ways you can use to increase your website traffic. Apply some (or most) of them and we are sure your numbers will go up!

Read the rest of this great post by clicking here

In WordPress, you can write either posts or pages. When you’re writing a regular blog entry, you write a post. Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Pages, on the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless — information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any amount of content.

Other examples of common pages include Copyright, Legal Information, Reprint Permissions, Company Information, and Accessibility Statement. (By the way, it’s a good idea to always have an about page and a contact page — see this advice from Lorelle.)

In general, Pages are very similar to Posts in that they both have Titles and Content and can use your site’s Presentation Templates to maintain a consistent look throughout your site. Pages, though, have several key distinctions that make them quite different from Posts.

Pages in a Nutshell

What Pages Are:

• Pages are for content that is less time-dependent than Posts.
• Pages can be organized into pages and SubPages.
• Pages can use different Page Templates which can includeTemplate Files, Template Tags and other PHP code.

What Pages are Not:

• Pages are not Posts, nor are they excerpted from larger works of fiction. They do not cycle through your blog’s main page. (Note: You can include Posts in Pages by using the Inline Posts Plugin.)
• Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. The organizational structure for Pages comes only from their hierarchical interrelationships, and not from Tags or Categories.
• Pages are not files. They are stored in your database just like Posts are.
• Although you can put Template Tags and PHP code into a Page Template, you cannot put these into the content of a Page and expect them to run. (Note: You can achieve this by using a PHP evaluating Plugin such as Exec-PHP.)

Creating Pages

To create a new Page, log in to your WordPress installation with sufficient admin privileges to create new articles. Select the Administration > Pages > Add New option to begin writing a new Page.

Courtesy of http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

Introduction to WordPress Terminology

WordPress was created by the developers as weblogging or bloggingsoftware. A blog, as defined in the Codex Glossary, is an online journal, diary, or serial, published by a person or group of people. Many blogs are personal in nature, reflecting the opinions and interests of the owner. But,blogs are now important tools in the world of business, politics, and entertainment.

Blogs are a form of a Content Management System (CMS) which Wikipediacalls “a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation.” Both blogs and Content Management Systems can perform the role of a website (site for short). A website can be thought of as a collection of articles and information about a specific subject, service, or product, which may not be a personal reflection of the owner. More recently, as the role of WordPress has expanded, WordPress developers have begun using the more general term site, in place of blog.

Terminology Related to Content

The term Word in WordPress refers to the words used to compose posts. Posts are the principal element (or content) of a blog. The posts are the writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, the rantings of the blog’s owner and guest authors. Posts, in most cases, are the reason a blog exists; without posts, there is no blog!

To facilitate the post writing process, WordPress provides a full featured authoring tool with modules that can be moved, via drag-and-drop, to fit the needs of all authors. The Dashboard QuickPress module makes it easy to quickly write and publish a post. There’s no excuse for not writing.

Integral to a blog are the pictures, images, sounds, and movies, otherwise know asmedia. Media enhances, and gives life to a blog’s content. WordPress provides an easy to use method of inserting Media directly into posts, and a method to upload Media that can be later attached to posts, and a Media Manager to manage those various Media.

An important part of the posting process is the act of assigning those posts tocategories. Each post in WordPress is filed under one or more categories. Categoriescan be hierarchical in nature, where one category acts as a parent to several child, or grandchild, categories. Thoughtful categorization allows posts of similar content to be grouped, thereby aiding viewers in the navigation, and use of a site. In addition to categories, terms or keywords called tags can be assigned to each post. Tags act as another navigation tool, but are not hierarchical in nature. Both categories and tags part of a system called taxonomies. If categories and tags are not enough, users can also create custom taxonomies that allow more specific identification of posts or pages or custom post types.

In turn, post categories and tags are two of the elements of what’s called post meta data. Post meta data refers to the information associated with each post and includes the author’s name and the date posted as well as the post categories. Post meta data also refers to Custom Fields where you assign specific words, or keys, that can describe posts. But, you can’t mention post meta data without discussing the term meta.

Generally, meta means “information about”; in WordPress, meta usually refers toadministrative-type information. So, besides post meta data, Meta is the HTML tag used to describe and define a web page to the outside world, like meta tag keywords for search engines. Also, many WordPress-based sites offer a Metasection, usually found in the sidebar, with links to login or register at that site. And, don’t forget Meta Rules: The rules defining the general protocol to follow in using this Codex, or Meta, as in the MediaWiki namespace that refers to administrative functions within Codex. That’s a lot of Meta!

After a post is made public, a blog’s readers will respond, via comments, to that post, and in turn, authors will reply. Comments enable the communication process, that give-and-take, between author and reader. Comments are the life-blood of most blogs.

Finally, WordPress also offers two other content management tools called Pagesand custom post types. Pages often present static information, such as “About Me”, or “Contact Us”, Pages. Typically “timeless” in nature, Pages should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called posts. Interestingly, a Page is allowed to becommented upon, but a Page cannot be categorized. A custom post type refers to a type of structured data that different that a post or a page. Custom post types allow users to easily create and manage such things as portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, and whatever a user or developer can imagine.

Terminology Related to Design

The flexibility of WordPress is apparent when discussing terminology related to the design of a WordPress blog. At the core of WordPress, developers created a programming structure named The Loop to handle the processing of posts. The Loop is the critical PHP program code used to display posts. Anyone wanting to enhance and customize WordPress will need to understand the mechanics of The Loop.

Along with The Loop, WordPress developers have created Template Tags which are a group of PHP functions that can be invoked by designers to perform an action or display specific information. It is the Template Tags that form the basis of theTemplate Files. Templates (files) contain the programming pieces, such as Template Tags, that control the structure and flow of a WordPress site. These files draw information from your WordPress MySQL database and generate the HTMLcode which is sent to the web browser. A Template Hierarchy, in essence the order of processing, dictates how Templatescontrol almost all aspects of the output, including Headers, Sidebars, and Archives. Archives are a dynamically generated list of posts, and are typically grouped by date, category, tag, or author.

Templates and Template Tags are two of the pieces used in the composition of a WordPress Theme. A Theme is the overall design of a site and encompasses color, graphics, and text. A Theme is sometimes called the skin. With the recent advances in WordPress, Theme Development is a hot topic. WordPress-site owners have available a long list of Themes to choose from in deciding what to present to their sites’ viewers. In fact, with the use of a Theme Switcher Revisited Plugin, WordPress designers can allow their visitors to select their own Theme.

As the capabilities of WordPress have improved, developers have added various tools, Widgets, Menus, Background, and Header, to allow users to easily manage a site’s look and functionality. Widgets provide an easy way to add little programs, such as the current weather, to a sidebar. Menus make it easy to define the navigation buttons that are typically present near the top of a sites pages. The Background tool allows the user to change the background image and color of a site, and the Header ability gives the user control of the images displayed at the top of a site’s various pages. The WordPress TwentyTen theme is an excellent example of a theme that uses these tools.

And speaking of the WordPress TwentyTen theme, developers and users alike are encouraged to explore that theme in detail. The theme was developed by the WordPress community, and in addition use of the tools above, the WordPress TwentyTen theme demonstrates many of the recommended theme coding techniques, and makes good use of the Child Theme concept, which will shield a theme from getting overwritten during a WordPress update.

Plugins are custom functions created to extend the core functionality of WordPress. The WordPress developers have maximized flexibility and minimized code bloat by allowing outside developers the opportunity to create their own useful add-on features. As evidenced by the Plugin Directory, there’s a Plugin to enhance virtually every aspect of WordPress. APlugin management tool makes it extremely easy to find and install Plugins.

Terminology for the Administrator

Another set of terms to examine are those involving the Administration of a WordPress site. A comprehensive set ofAdministration Panels enables users to easily administer and monitor their blog. A WordPress administrator has a number of powers which include requiring a visitor to register in order to participate in the blog, who can create new posts, whether comments can be left, and if files can be uploaded to the blog. An Administrator also defines Links and the associated Link Categories which are an important part of a blog’s connection to the outside world.

Some of the main administrative responsibilities of a WordPress blog involve adding, deleting, and managing Registered Users. Administering users means controlling Roles and Capabilities, or permissions. Roles control what functions a registered user can perform as those functions can range from just being able to login at a blog to performing the role administrator.

Another chief concern for the blog administrator is Comment Moderation. Comments, also called discussions, are responses to posts left for the post author by the visitor and represent an important part of “the give and take” of a blog. But Comments must be patrolled for Spam and other malicious intentions. The WordPress Administration Comments SubPanel simplifies that process with easy-to-use screens which add, change, and delete Comments.

And not to be forgotten is the obligation for an administrator to keep their WordPress current to insure that the latest features, bugs, and security fixes are in effect. To accomodate administrators, WordPress has a simple Upgrade Tool to download and install the lastest version of WordPress. There’s no excuse to not upgrade!

The Terminology of Help

The final set of jargon relates to helping you with WordPress. First and foremost is the hanging Help tab that is displayed under the each of the Administration SubPanels. That contextual help describes the function and use of the current SubPanel and provides links to other help topics. And, there are other help resources available to WordPress users;Getting More Help, Finding WordPress Help, Troubleshooting, and WordPress FAQ (frequently asked questions) are good starting points. Also Getting Started with WordPress will jump-start readers into the world of WordPress and the excellent WordPress Lessons provide in-depth tutorials on many of the aspects of using WordPress. Among the most important resources is the WordPress Support Forum where knowledgeable volunteers answer your questions and help solve any problems related to WordPress. And, of course, this Codex which is filled with hundreds of articles designed to make your WordPress experience a success!

Courtesy of http://codex.wordpress.org

When writing your post, you have the option of using the visual or HTML mode of the editor. The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the HTML mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG editor buttons with quicktags. These quicktags are explained as follows.

• b – <strong></strong> HTML tag for strong emphasis of text (i.e. bold).
• i – <em></em> HTML tag for emphasis of text (i.e. italicize).
• b-quote – <blockquote></blockquote> HTML tag to distinguish quoted or cited text.
• del – <del></del> HTML tag to label text considered deleted from a post. Most browsers display as striked through text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• link – <a href=”http://example.com”></a> HTML tag to create a hyperlink.
• ins – <ins></ins> HTML tag to label text considered inserted into a post. Most browsers display as underlined text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• ul – <ul></ul> HTML tag will insert an unordered list, or wrap the selected text in same. An unordered list will typically be a bulleted list of items.
• ol – <ol></ol> HTML tag will insert a numbered list, or wrap the selected text in same. Each item in an ordered list are typically numbered.
• li – <li></li> HTML tag will insert or make the selected text a list item. Used in conjunction with the ul or ol tag.
• code – <code></code> HTML tag for preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier.
• more – <!–more–> WordPress tag that breaks a post into “teaser” and content sections. Type a few paragraphs, insert this tag, then compose the rest of your post. On your blog’s home page you’ll see only those first paragraphs with a hyperlink ((more...)), which when followed displays the rest of the post’s content.
• page – <!–nextpage–> WordPress tag similar to the more tag, except it can be used any number of times in a post, and each insert will “break” and paginate the post at that location. Hyperlinks to the paginated sections of the post are then generated in combination with the wp_link_pages() or link_pages() template tag.
• lookup – Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
• Close Tags – Closes any open HTML tags left open–but pay attention to the closing tags. WordPress is not a mind reader (!), so make sure the tags enclose what you want, and in the proper way.

Courtesy of http://codex.wordpress.org

Descriptions of Post Fields

Title

The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post like “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.” WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post, called the post-slug.

Post Editing Area

The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts. For more on the HTML view, see the section below, Visual Versus HTML View.

Preview button

Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it.

Publish box

Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. APublished status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

Publish box

Visibility – This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Permalink

After you save your post, the Permalink below the title shows the potential URL for the post, as long as you havepermalinks enabled. (To enable permalinks, go to Settings > Permalinks.) The URL is generated from your title. In previous versions of WordPress, this was referred to as the “page-slug.” The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non-HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash is put between each word. If your title is “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid”, it will be cleaned up to be “my-site-heres-lookin-at-you-kid” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to “my-site-lookin-at-you-kid”.

Save

Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish

Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.

Post Tags

Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Categories

The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Posts > Categories.

Excerpt

A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktagmark. If you use an Explicit Excerpt, this will be used no matter what. For more information, see Excerpt.

Send Trackbacks

A way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, separating each one by a space. SeeTrackbacks and Pingbacks for more information.

Custom Fields

Custom_Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

Discussion

Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.

Password Protect This Post

To password protect a post, click Edit next to Visibility in the Publish area to the top right, then click Password Protected, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.

Post Author

A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see Users tab on the far right. For more information, see Users and Authors.

Courtesy of http://codex.wordpress.org

Posts are the entries that display in reverse chronological order on your home page. In contrast to pages, posts usually have comments fields beneath them and are included in your site’s RSS feed.

To write a post:

1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel (Dashboard).
2. Click the Posts tab.
3. Click the Add New Sub Tab
4. Start filling in the blanks.
5. As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
6. When you are ready, click Publish.

Courtesy of http://codex.wordpress.org

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