Font Face, Color & Size
You may love the appearance of an unusual font, however there are a couple of problems with using fonts that aren’t common to everyone’s computer.
If the font you chose isn’t on your visitor’s computer, your text won’t appear as you intended it.

The standard and best fonts for use on a web page are Arial, Verdana and Tahoma.
Font size should also be large enough to read without the surfer having to adjust the font size display in their browser. Because they won’t bother. They’ll just leave, because they can find the information elsewhere without the hassle. Text should always be dark on a light background.

Links Should Look Like Links
Unvisited links should conform to the standard colors and practice of being underlined.
Standard link colors are:
• Underlined Blue - unvisited
• Red – active or hover
• Purple – visited

Color Scheme
Different colors have different meanings and connotations. What would you think of if you saw a men’s’ site with pink as the primary color? Might it turn the average heterosexual guy off? You bet it would! They’re terrified of pink.

Page Width
Having to scroll right to see all the text on a page is a symptom of poor design, or lack of knowledge of standard display sizes. Standard screen resolutions are 1024 X 768 pixels – for those with good eyesight. However, many, many folks still use 800 X 600.

the white spaces you see in the page are what we call the white space literally

White Space
White space, or negative space, describes open space between design elements. White space is an important layout technique often overlooked by inexperienced designers.
Visually appealing design is easy on the eyes. Without adequate white space, text would be unreadable, graphics would lose their emphasis, and there would be no balance between the
elements on a page.

Page Backgrounds
I continue to be amazed by those who think that their visitors will waste time squinting to read text on a floral, striped or otherwise ‘busy’ background.

Consistent Navigation
It’s really easy to keep your site elements consistent when you use the same template for every page on your site.Essentially, consistency is about making it easy for your visitors to find what they want. That means keeping your navigation, logo, ezine sign-up form, and all other elements that repeat from page to page, in the same place on every page.

Bandwidth Hogs
Bandwidth is an electronic resource that gets used up every time characters of information are downloaded from, or uploaded to, your Web site. The more bandwidth resources used,
the slower the transmission of data and information.

Use of Pop-Ups
For the most part, I really dislike pop-ups. I don’t appreciate being on the receiving end of them, so in keeping with my ‘do unto others’ approach; I try to limit my use of them as much as possible.

here is an example of a pop up

Music/Noise
Under no circumstances should a site broadcast noise and/or music without its visitors’ permission.

From Duane Forrester, a leading expert in Search Engine Optimization and the author of the popular How to Make Money With Your Blog, comes a highly practical guide for using all the online tools available for turning curious visitors into paying customers. Turn Clicks into Customers reveals proven techniques for not only standing out in a crowded marketplace but for reaching customers who are most eager to buy your products or services.

Forrester explains what works and what doesn’t for multiple online marketing strategies, including:

• E-mail
• Online searches
• Internet advertising
• Webinars
• Videos
• Social networking

You’ll learn best practices for each strategy at both a local and global level to reach more paying customers than ever before. Plus, you’ll get interviews with global experts who reveal proven tactics they’ve used to successfully turn Clicks into Customers.

The average visitor-to-sales conversion for a good affiliate program is between half and one percent.
In other words, you are achieving an average ‘conversion rate’ if you make 1 sale for every hundred visitors you send to a merchant’s site.

You CAN do much better than that. My conversion rates average between 2.5 and 6 percent, and
many are much higher depending on the type of product sold.

What’re my secrets?
To start with, I consistently follow my own rules in ‘How to Choose Affiliate Programs’ above.
I always give the product or service ‘added value’ by creating content around it. I tell my
customers exactly why I think it’s a good product or service. If it has a few drawbacks, but I still
think it’s a good buy, I’ll tell them that too.
As I mentioned above, I often purchase and test products before offering them to my visitors. I
do this after I’ve joined the program, and when I can, I use my own affiliate link to buy the item.
The price is then reduced by the amount of commission I receive from the sale. The cost is also a
business write-off.
As a consumer, I give my customers enough information about the product to help them decide
whether or not it is right for them, which gives me a big leg up on the competition.

Site Monitoring – Is your site online? On a Daily basis type your URL into your browser’s address bar, refresh the page and find out! The danger in not knowing that your site is down comes when you are running a pay per click advertising campaign. The click costs add up whether your site is functional or not. If your site is down, you are paying for advertising, but no one is buying.
Link Checks – Broken sales links are the bane of any affiliate marketer’s existence. It’s easy enough to make sure your links are working by regularly using one of the following tools. In
many cases your HTML editor will have a built-in link checker.
NetMechanic

http://rosalinds.com/netmechanic.html

Site Owner

http://www.siteowner.com/system/linkcheck.asp

Check Statistics -Simply visit the statistics interface for each network and individual affiliate partner and input your total revenues into Quicken or other accounting software. Using Quicken frequently will also keep you informed as to whether certain checks have become overdue.

Make Time for Yourself – I list this last in the ‘daily’ section, but it really belongs at the top of the list. A business that involves sitting at your computer for lengthy periods of time can lead to weight gain and repetitive strain injury if you don’t take proper care of yourself.

Make Time for Yourself – I list this last in the ‘daily’ section, but it really belongs at the top of the list. A business that involves sitting at your computer for lengthy periods of time can lead to weight gain and repetitive strain injury if you don’t take proper care of yourself.

Monthly Tasks
Publish Newsletter – Stay in touch with your site’s visitors by dropping them a note or newsletter at least once a month. Share news and give them yet another reason to return to your
site.
End of Month Statistics – Tally your income and expenses once a month to stay on top of your overall business picture. Enter data into your spreadsheets to see which direction your traffic and sales conversions are taking.

Quarterly Tasks
Launch a New Site – Diversification is the best way to hedge your bets against significant market upheavals. Events in recent years such as 9-11, the war in Iraq and the outbreak of SARS have impacted businesses online and off. When your business is diversified, you’ll see that while some sales plummet during times of crisis, others will in fact increase.

Here are 6 things to consider when choosing your domain name.

Make it DOT COM – Although there are a number of domain name extensions to choose from, including .com, .net, and .biz amongst many others, choose .COM. The ‘.com’ extension is the one people think of first when they think of web addresses, so go with it. You wouldn’t want your potential customers to head off to ‘thepuppytrainer.com’ if your site is registered as ‘thepuppytrainer.net’, would you?

Make it Relevant – The next rule of thumb is to include at least one, preferably two, of your important ‘keywords’ in your name. One way to decide, is to find out which of those keywords or keyword combinations is searched for most often.

Make it Memorable – Which of the following names will you remember a week from now? DogTraining.com, DoggyU.com or DogCollege.com? Shorter names are also easier
to remember.

Try to Avoid hyphens – One of the bigger mistakes I made when registering my first domain, was to hyphenate the name. Sometime later I discovered a site using the nonhyphenated (hmm… that LOOKS like an oxymoron) version of my domain name – and he was promoting the same products as I had on my site.

Avoid a name that you need to spell out. – Take for example my site, byebye925.com. The first time you hear it, you might think it is spelled ‘bybynine2five.com’,
‘byebyeninetofive.com’ or a number of other ways. For that reason, I have to spell it out each and every time I say it. Adding numbers into 156 the fray adds to the inconvenience. Imagine having to say, ‘B-Y-E-B-Y-E, number 9, number 2, number 5 DOT COM’ several times a day.

Take care not to infringe on a trademark – A trademark is a name or symbol is officially registered to a third party, and unless otherwise specified, the trademark owner
is the only party that can legally make use of a trademarked name.

There are 6 essential Web site elements… Logo and a tag line, Privacy statement, contact information link, an ezine signup form and an ‘About Us’ page. Those are the basic
elements that should be included on every Web site you build.

Logo

You need a unique business logo. It sets your site apart and makes it memorable. GotLogos.com – The work these folks do is professional, very attractive and lightning fast – and
inexpensive. They’ve done two logos for me and I’ve been very satisfied on both occasions.
􀃎 http://gotlogos.com
LaughingBird Software – This is do-it-yourself logo creation software, and I was amazed at the
gorgeous templates available! Simply pop in your text and you’re ready to go!
􀃎 http://thelogocreator.com

facebook logo

twitter logo

wordpress logo

TAG line / Slogan

Develop a Tag line or slogan for your site to place directly beneath your site’s logo or name.
It’s another way to make your site more memorable.
The tag line should be short – no more than four or five words – and catchy. It should also say
exactly what your site is about.

Privacy Statement

Every commercial web site should have a privacy/security statement. Inclusion of these
statements will achieve a number of things for you. They will differentiate you from your
competitors, instill user confidence and trust, reduce liability, and increase your web site’s
conversion rate.

Contact Information

The point of any ecommerce site should be to help the people that come to it, and if a webmaster
can’t take the time to answer a few questions from his or her site visitors every day, then they
shouldn’t be in business.
If someone has taken the time to email a question, that is a guarantees that they are interested in
one or another of the products on your site.

‘About Us’ Page

An ‘About Us’ page instills trust. People like to put a name and a face to what they are
reading. I can’t blame them. I do as well.
It’s a human trait. We like to know who we’re dealing with. If we feel that someone is hiding
their face, then we’re less likely to trust them.

Ezine/Newsletter Sign-Up on Every Page

A signup form for your opt-in mailing list or newsletter should be placed on each and every page
of your site.
Did you know that just about every page on your Web site is a possible initial landing/entry page
for your visitors? That’s right, visitors from the pay per clicks and other search engines will often
land on pages other than your homepage. So, be sure to offer them the same opportunity to join
your newsletter for free site updates, as those who start out on your homepage.

How do you get your pages friendly and rank high in the search engine results is your problem here in this article will help you solve or if not will atleast give you some tips.

Here is a list of tips to help you.

Keyword-Rich Pages

sample of a rich search engine page

In the past you had to be extremely careful not to overuse your keyword phrases for fear that the search engines would consider you an engine spammer and penalize you. Six per page was the maximum number of repetitions suggested.

Keyword-Rich Page Names

Name your pages using keywords relevant to the product sold on that page, or the most relevant content. For example, if my page were about Proform Treadmills, I would call the page exactly that – ‘proform-treadmills.html’.

Site Map

NSSA site map

Offer your visitors a site map with links that point to all the important pages and sections of your site. If your site consists of one hundred or more pages, you may wish to break the site map up into separate pages.

Relevant Content

Jill Whalen, a well-known search engine (SE) expert advises that you should work with at least 250 words on a page for search engine optimization purposes. More or less words will also work, but she makes the point that you need at least 250 words so that you can repeat your keyword phrases a number of times throughout the page without seeming ‘dopey’.

Eliminate Clutter

Search engines don’t read graphics or javascript, and they get confused when they encounter nested tables. If all that stuff precedes the first most important keyword phrases on your page, your ranking may be lowered as the SE considers that phrase less relevant, due to its low placement on the page.

Meta Tags

If we continue our ‘snooping’, I mean ‘research’ at Rupert’s site, one step farther by doing a ‘View Source’ on his homepage, we discover that he’s made excellent use of his keywords in his Meta Tags.
The 2 Meta Tags that you need to be most concerned about are the Title and Description tags.

Title Tags – The title tag is perhaps one of the most crucial factors in how a search engine will rank your site. The text you use in the title tag must include your most relevant keyword phrases. It must also make sense, as the title tag text is the wording that appears in the reverse bar of your browser. That’s the blue bar right across the top of your browser window.

Description Tag – Some search engines will use the text contained in your meta description tag as your listing description. The meta description tag also influences your site’s ranking in the engines, so you should repeat your primary keyword phrase once or twice in the description.

ALT Tags – The ALT tag, which stands for ‘alternative text’, is primarily for use when the image is not being displayed. They were intended to make your site more accessible to visually impaired folks using text readers.

Dynamic Pages

Dynamic pages, which deliver content based on user input or other variables, can be more useful
and responsive to visitor needs than regular static HTML pages.

A Web host is typically a service company which actually stores, or hosts, your Web site pages on its servers (computers) so others on the Web can have access to your material 24/7.

Choosing a web host service might be the most confusing thing you have to do with regard to setting up your affiliate marketing business. Let’s hope so, because it really isn’t all that hard when you know what to look for.

Key Hosting Features

• Storage - How many megabytes (MB’s) of storage space are offered to house your Web
site and pages?
• POP3 email accounts – How many do you get?
• Transfer – How many gigabytes (GB’s) of data transfer are allowed?
• FrontPage extensions - If you use FrontPage to design your site, you’ll need these.
• WebStats - Can you access your Web site’s log files and server statistics?
• CGI-Bin – Needed if you plan to run CGI scripts. Also helpful if the host includes a
library of scripts, e.g. guestbook and counters.
• PHP Support – Another programming language that requires host support if you plan to
run it.
• Server Side Includes – allow you to dynamically include data in your Web pages
• MySQL – Needed if you run the SQL database program on your site.

• Stated ‘uptime’? – The percentage of time their server is up and running. This shouldn’t
be less than 99.7%.
• Browser Based Email – Allows access to your email accounts through your Web
browser from anywhere, as long as you have Internet access..
• Interface or Control Panel: Is the account managed through an easy-to-use
administrative interface?
• Scalability: Is the account easily upgraded with the growth of your business? Whether
you need to add email accounts, more space or more traffic, it should be as easy as
simply sending an email or making a phone call.

From doing it all yourself to having it all done for you, each option has advantages and
disadvantages you should consider….

These are the 4 basic web site building options:

1. Do it Yourself – Building your own web site is usually the least expensive option.
On the other hand, the cost of designing and building your own site can become fairly hefty if
you buy the most expensive graphic design programs and HTML editors. It can also be the most
time-consuming way to build a site when you are new to the game.

example of a template

3. Complete Web Site / eCommerce Package Deals

4. Hire a Designer, Programmer, or Web Developer – As a developer with reasonably good knowledge of HTML and graphic design, I personally find the SBI! interface a little clunky and frustrating to use. However, I can overlook this downside to take advantage of the amazing topic research and search engine optimization tools that SBI!
offers.

I suggest to those who are new in this business and don’t have that much skills in web design to hire someone to make their web sites.  If not he may buy already made and complete web site. And for those who wants to save money they can make their website on their own.

QuinStreet is an online marketing company based in Foster City, CA with satellite offices worldwide. QuinStreet employs a performance-based advertising model with use of search engine marketing  strategies to promote clients on Web sites in a number of verticals, including: education, home services, financial services, business-to-business, medical/health, brand advertising and career services.

ReferBack

Referback is the world’s first online casino affiliate program  and since its inception in 1999, has firmly been established as the bedrock of the affiliate industry.

• Partnering professionally with you to ensure you receive the best products and reports possible.
• Building not only a business relationship with you, but also a friendship.

the statements above were the mission of this affiliate network they guaranteed you to make money.

Shareasale.com

It is an another affiliate marketing network like mentioned above. It is based in Chicago, IL USA. ShareASale services two customer sets in affiliate marketing: the affiliate, and the merchant. Affiliates use ShareASale to find products to promote, and earn commission for referrals on those products. Affiliates use their own website, blogs, PPC campaigns, SEO campaigns, RSS and email, as well as a number of other means.

Websponsors

Affiliate Network specializes in providing advertising campaigns on the CPA or cost-per-action revenue model, meaning affiliate are paid per sale rather than per click, or banner impression. Websponsors is a good affiliate network for webmasters who like access to unique advertisers and don’t require a lot of detailed traffic statistics.

Linkshare

LinkShare Corporation provides ecommerce businesses with a wide range of online marketing services including Search Marketing (SEM), Lead Generation and Affiliate Marketing. Advertisers can increase their online sales by leveraging LinkShare’s massive performance marketing network, along with expert consultative services and patented technology. Superior service combined with technology innovation allows advertisers and publishers to acquire and retain new customers, increase revenue and drive results.

Are sales tools offered?

You may think of sales management as a people business, and it is. Which may make you wonder how computer software can help in the sales management process? Here’s how…a good Sales Software program, with the necessary sales tools included, provides instant access to critical sales management information that shows at a glance where your opportunities lie, so you can focus your efforts on those with the greatest potential.

Yes, definitely sales tools were offered in the market well in fact you can have a selection of advertising graphics and text to choose from and the code will be automatically generated with the click of a button. Then you will just have to paste it on your Web site or in your e-mail, wherever you plan to use it.

There are actually different types of sales tools the followings are:

BANNERS

These are graphic images that come in a variety of different sizes. The most popular sizes of banners are 468 x 60 pixels, 125 x 125, 234 x 60, 120 x 60, 120 x 90, and 88 x 31. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), Javascrit program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shock wave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence.

INSTERTITIAL (POPuP) BANNERS

This type of sales tools is an advertisement that appears in a separate pop-up browser window while the main page is still loading, forcing exposure to the advertisement before visitors can see the main content.

TEXT LINKS

Text liknks are usually a one line description of the merchant property that includes the HMTL.

EMAIL PROMOTIONS

Instead of having page created with banners and text you can have it send your promotions via email that’s what email promotion do.

CLASSIFIED ADS

We are familiar with classified ads as it can be seen in our daily news papers. Classified ads are presented in plain text to be ‘ copied and pasted’ into your newsletter.

INTERVIEW

The interviews tend to have great conversion rates because it appears that more information is being shared with the reader than through typical product advertising.

PERIODIC ARTICLES

Unlike the interview and email advertorials that get stale from overuse after a period of time, periodic articles are always new and fresh. This is helpful if you send out a weekly newsletter to your subscribers and don’t have an idea for this week’s feature article.