Being a brand leader is someone that is set in there direction with there believes. For example are you going to follow someone else’s ideas and do the exact same thing there doing if so then you would be better of working for them if you really think about it which don’t take me wrong replicating other ideas to your benefit can be beneficial by all means I mean you can learn a lot from what other people are doing, but at the same time you need to think of ways you can differentiate your self from the crowed market place.

What I am saying is to be your own brand and your own leader guide the consumers into your direction and how can you do this?

1. Trust: You must build trust with your brand rather it being through social networks, client lists, and anything similar to that. You have to have a way of making people feel confident into buying off you and that’s by treating the people right therefore ti will build an everlasting long brand.
2. Your Image: Promote a good image when I’m referring to a good image I’m referring to something that will make you stand out from the crowd in a positive way and always make people think of you.

Them are just a few tips, but out of all honesty building a unique brand is the way to go and that’s by doing something different such as using your own colors and logos give your brand a character.

For example, what does the consumers think when they hear the following names below?

Wal-Mart: Low Prices Everyday, right? I mean wal mart has done a good job at this they have branded there name as someone that will always have the best prices and customer satisfaction am I wrong or right?

I’d have to say Wal-Mart has done a great job of doing what they’ve done because honestly think of it would they continue to grow at the pace they are and did if they didn’t know what they was doing…

BMW: BMW has branded there name as someone who offers a classy car well to a degree lets put it this way when your buying a BMW you know your buying a good car right, I mean when any one hears the name BMW they automatically think an expensive car or at least a car that is more expensive, but why?

It’s because your paying for quality and BMW has branded there self as someone to make a well defined car that can drive forever because most generally BMW’s do hold up longer and they are better cars.

Conclusion: When your branding your basically engaging something into the consumers mind thats it nothing more and nothing less, but you have to find out what you want to brand into there mind I mean what type of consumers are you trying to attract or what do you want your brand to stand for.

Exposing a brand can be challenging specially if your not famaliar with the things such as SEO / SEM or just general online marketing, so let me discuss that and offer you some educational information that can help you expose your brand and I will even link out to a few sites that will give you a kick start into the right direction.
What Should You Learn?

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - Knowing how to use SEO to your advantage is a plus plus by all means and you can learn a ton about SEO through forums and blogs.
2. PPC (Pay Per Click) - Pay Per Click can be better then SEO or just about the same just depends on what your better with working with, but keep in mind when using PPC have a little money to play with because you’ll have to invest some money to find out what works, but then again if you think about it thats about like anything your either investing your time or money to learn something well speaking its something thats going to make you a *good living (or investment)*.
3. Social Networking and Blogs - Learn more about social networking and blogs. Blogs are highly important to have if you ask me out of all honesty the reason being is because you can build content around your brand which will result in more exposure, so therefore it will drive more leads.
4. Learn To Build E-Mail List - Building e-mail list can be used to your advantage if done properly and you can use Pay Per Click to build e-mail list the great thing about this is that when you turn PPC on you will automatically start getting traffic therefore you should start getting sign ups through your e-mail list just make sure you build a good landing page that will get people to sign up.

Where to Find This Information At?

Most of this information can be found through social parts of the web such as blogs which granted you can learn a little from forums, but out of all honestly I would suggest checking out blogs and trying to communicate with other SEO’s and SEM’s so check out placed like SEOMOZ, V7n Blog, and SEOBook.

Which of course you should subscribe to our blog too because you will learn a lot from reading our blog, but the ones I suggested are just a few places to give you a kick start in the right direction and then you can start to explore on your own, but keep in mind all the information you find on the web is not 200 percent accurate specially older articles, so try to stay up to date on reading stuff that is more accurate or at least use your best judgment you can’t believe everything that every one writes about, but I will tell you this reading this blog and the few I suggested are pretty accurate in the information that is provided.

The Web 2.0 has sprouted with blogs and blogs are great for numerous things such as sharing education information, communicating, and they can even be used to market your brand. Social networking is something that can really drive consumers to your brand because the best form of marketing sometimes or I should say is usually word of mouth which there again that depends.

If someone hits your website and you have a pretty good client list or at least one to provide. What this will do is build the consumers confidence in buying off you.  I mean it only makes sense right? Well I’d hope so, but lets get back to the social networking.

The thing is with social networking its a bit different the reason being is because when someone has referred you or talked about your brand highly through out groups of people then that builds major credibility towards your brand and gives it more trust because most generally when someone is talking about someones services there usually telling friends and even if there not at least you know you did your job and people is referring you.

The the thing in business if your good at what you do social networks will build and you can use blogs to build the community that will talk about you for example if you have 10,000 plus subscribers and there all know how good you are at what you do the chances of you being referred by people is very high and this is what blogs can do for you.

Producing content is important specially when optimizing for organic search the reason being for is because the more pages you have the more of a chance your website will get links and get brand exposure. Which granted if your using pay per click I guess it wouldn’t really matter, but then again it would because I mean think about it if your running a website that is very rich in content the chance of people spreading your articles through social networks is a lot higher.

What are the key elements of promoting content?

1. Detailed Content - is always better or at least something with a viral hook to hit. For example if your good at something why not give out some tips on that topic to share with your readers or maybe you have found something educational and its releavnt to what you do why not share this education information with your readers, but the same time giving your advise out on it.
2. Images Produce Better Perception - This is very true using images through out your articles, blog, or general content can make the reader feel more “attached” in certain ways its a better way to market your content which granted I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “never judge a book by its cover” which this is true by all means, but when your using images along with your content it creates a more creative hook for your readers, therefore increasing the chances of it being linked to (the mind feels more connected).
3. Brand Writing - I made the term “brand writing” up so don’t get confused, but when you create content on your website try to stick with a certain design for example have you ever read a blog or website and everything seems to have a character that fits together.
4. Volume and Quality - Volume is great by all means, but remember don’t forget about the quality of your content sometimes it can be better to just work on 2-3 articles a day instead of 10 because when your working on 2 to 3 a day your more into it which granted some writers can write for hours, but at the same time expressing there thoughts very clearly just proof read a lot (this is something I need to do my self is proof read more)

How Does Content Help the Brand Image?

1. More Content the Better - Yes that’s right the more content you have the more likely someone is to find it through search engines and then virally spread it through social networks.
2. Improves Your Over all Outlook - When you have a bunch of content written up on your website that has been written by you, it helps your image, for example have you ever read something that someone has written and your thinking to your self this person is smart I would like to outsource some work to them or maybe you tell someone else about someones blog or something or promote it through a social network, now see what I’m getting to?

It’s all about exposure when your marketing a brand which granted we all have different strategies we use to market our brand, but most generally in the web world the most popular ways of building a brand is through social networks, viral content, PPC, and Organic Search.

Honestly I think all of them combined together can really make things take off for you I mean it only makes sense, so give it a try and if you don’t have any content on your website start creating some today!

Building an affiliate business is simple which of course some people prefer pay per click and others prefer organic search I would say a big majority of people use pay per click, but either one will work.

I was talking to Jeremy Schoemaker through e-mail a few months ago we was going back and forth talking about one of his sites and affiliate marketing and he was telling me about a guy that was doing around ~2 million a month all through organic search yes that’s right through organic search not pay per click, so thats all profit baby.

Which don’t take me wrong pay per click is still profitable model by far and they both have there advantages for example organic search might take longer to optimize for, but in the long run you will get better ROI because if your smart enough you can literally put 10-20k into an affiliate business and generate profits that will net 250k+ a year through an affiliate site (I know people doing it right now).

Now with PPC its a little bit different you have to keep putting money into it to maintain traffic, but the advantage with PPC is that you can start getting traffic right off the bat for example say you have 25 websites you want to promote through PPC and there all affiliate sites and you know you can explode each market into 3k a day you could literally do this a lot faster with PPC.

Either one will work, but let me tip you off on something when optimizing for organic search say you build one affiliate site and you get it going good through the natural results then you start thinking to your self man if I could turn around and build 50 more sites and build them up slowly with then the next ~1 year I would be making a shit load and yes that’s how it works, but you need to practice with one before you go launching 50 sites at a time because you will want to learn SEO from the inside to the out and then you can literally go crazy with it and that right there is how you build a long lasting multi million dollar business, but keep in mind its not something your going to jump into and make a million bucks right off the bat, but when you become a very *good SEO* you can turn around and replicate the same practice with 10 times less work, but at the same time getting 10 times the results.

Why 10 times less work?

Because you know what works, so in other words you know how to get into the game and play ball because you’ve done with through the failure stages which you will always be in a learning cycle, but quite honestly after time goes by it will seem less complexed and you will find your self working 10 times less harder, but getting the same results its because your learning your trade.

You know one thing I’ve notice about the web and computers is that you can make millions of dollars and run auto pilot, so in other words it don’t really require much labor work I mean out of all honesty it don’t speaking you know what your doing.

Speaking of manual workt I remember Amit Metha making a blog post on his blog awhile back stating that is where rookies always go wrong at, when they jump into the affiliate game they automatically think its like a labor working job, like they have to just set there all day and wait for something to happen and that’s not how it works.

How does affiliate marketing work (few tips)?

1. Knowing your investment, speaking your working with organic search.
2. Knowing how to bid down on certain keywords which of course this is if your using pay per click. Let your campaigns run for awhile before you go bidding down for example throw about 1k into your campaign and let it run or at least collect around 200 clicks for certain ad groups then start bidding down, but at the same time maintaining your position.

I could probably list around ~100 points, but out of all honestly it not like a 9-5 job where your setting there all day long doing someones grunt work making 20-30 bucks an hour or sometimes just setting there to just be there with affiliate marketing your free, you can do whatever you feel the need to do, but at the same time generating large sums of cash ;).

Now keep in mind you have to figure out your strategies in the beginning stages, so you will probably be researching a lot, but after time goes by you’ll literally keep replicating the same practices into multiple affiliate sites and generating more cash at the same time :).

Some people get confused about traffic from search engines, forums, blogs, and traffic from other sources and a *lot* of people have the tendency to think 1,000’s of visitors are better then 500 visitors which I’m just using that as an example, but the facts are thats not always the case (true) which don’t take me wrong they both can be beneficial for different things.

Most generally websites that carry more traffic are sites such as blogs, forums, and things to that nature which there again traffic from blogs and forums can be great traffic if you leverage it right, but at the same time you need to keep in mind traffic from these sources do not convert as well as what search engines will.

The reason behind this is because search engines send targeted traffic speaking you have the right keywords optimized. Some people think they need 1000’s of visitors to get good leads which yea if you want a website thats rolling in with cash most certainly, but at the same time its going to take time to optimize for that traffic rather your using adwords or organic search which granted don’t take me the wrong way if your a good SEO / SEM you can drive convertible traffic very fast just depends on your experience.

Most generally when your optimizing for organic search you only need a well set defined keyword list of maybe ~200+ keywords that are actually getting traffic and you should do very good with that, but then again that depends on how much traffic the keywords are carry and how there converting.

The idea is to keep your conversion level high as possible with the traffic that you actually want and don’t get confused when you see a site getting 10,000 plus uniques a day for example like a blog because if your driving adwords traffic or organic traffic with a well defined keyword list you won’t even need anything close to that, but at the same time you will probably be making 3 times as much sales as that site, but there again keep in mind it all depends on how you leverage things for example you could leverage your current traffic through a blog to get links to a sales page with keyword rich links and then carry high conversions from there on out.

A lot of people ask where or how should I promote my affiliates the question is simple you can promote your affiliates through organic search or pay per click. Which don’t take me wrong there is several other ways to promote affiliates such as through a blog and etc, but quite honestly building a blog is going to take some work I mean if your someone that likes to write and build viral content then your made out for it, but if your looking for a more faster approach to start generating revenue right off the bat then I would suggest PPC and SEO - the results are more effective, but then again depends on the person.

Anyways let me discuss on what I would recommend everyone and any one to do.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - You can use search engine optimization to promote your affiliates and you can actually build traffic into a website that will start generate profits with then ~6 months, but I will tell you this you have to be extremely good at what you do to start generating large revenues or at least some what ok revenues. The thing is with SEO it takes a lot of dedication and time to get rankings (or learn the process), but once you figure out the strategies that work you should be able to jump right back into it with no problem or at least start promoting another affiliate website with no time involved, so in other words you’ll know how to get links faster and more accurate therefore the result will be more traffic faster (its all about scaling).

Pay Per Click (PPC) - The Pay Per Click method is very profitable too just like SEO, but the thing is with pay per click is that you can start generating revenue as soon as you turn it on, so for example say you have a well set defined keyword list that is around ~200 words and you know these keywords are converting into sales well you can insert these keywords into your PPC campaign give them the right matching options and boom your ready to go, but keep in mind if your using a new account or a new keyword list its going to take time and some money to get them keywords into a profit state because most generally when you launch a new PPC campaign it will take time to get the historical keyword data built up then as you start to build your history up through PPC you can start to bid down on your keywords therefore they will hit a profit state sometimes this can take as long as 4 months it just depends on things such as account history, and your experience with working with Adwords.

Now the top two methods above will work if you work them, but like I said before you can get to that point where you know what to do and hardly work at all you will have to set down and figure it out it can take hours for example when I first got into the search game I use to set down for hours trying to figure out how stuff worked and I struggled to get rankings on keywords such as website design, but after time went by and I knew what I did to rank the keyword website design I was able to replicate it into 100 more things for example we have clients that we rank on numerous keywords over, over, and over again by using my strategies and it don’t take a lot of time I mean it does to a degree, but I know what I have to do to get them to where they want to be if that makes any sense.

Once you start using these two methods and working with them if you want go ahead and install a blog therefore you can build the content up on the website and at the same time build them around your products do keep in mind though if your promoting through organic search I would always suggest to have viral content on your website if your not a writer hire a content writer to craft you up some beefy content to put on your new site and then acquire some rich keyword links into that content preferably keywords that are going to bring you traffic of course so therefore the content might spread out in other areas (through social networks) and people will naturally link to the site.

Conclusion
The thing is find out what works for you and then work it over, over, and over again (replicate it). As time goes by you’ll start to find out these strategies become easier and easier, but at the same time your getting results much faster most generally at firs you won’t make much money, but once you get some experience behind you it will all start to make sense.

Scaling is the biggest factor in affiliate marketing well speaking your wanting to increase your ROI. Just encase you don’t know scaling is the process of where you fine tune your adwords campaign to get the most out of it, or you could scale through out other search engines such as using Yahoo Publisher Networks, and MSN Ad Center.

The best way to scale campaign after you get them running at there best through Google, Yahoo, and MSN is to start promoting through organic search. The reason being is because basically you already know what keywords convert you can literally triple your profits dramatically.

When scaling through organic search it can take some time such as getting your website optimized specially if you using a new domain, but if your good enough you can out rank the big boys in ~6 months by building links into your site be careful though you wouldn’t want to get penalized.

So do you think SEO is important to know along with SEM?

Yes I most certainly do I don’t know about your thoughts, but you can dramatically scale campaigns for example lets say you got ad words running at its fullest and you can “squeeze” no more profits out of it I mean its juts running top notch and your CTR is at the fullest with the best clicks on the most competitive keywords that are converting why not scale that into organic search I mean really because honestly the only investment your going to have to make is through link building, but after thats taken care of your set in place.

Now this is how you build a real affiliate website that can build profits like you never imagined lets say you are making around 90k a month profit through PPC, so in other words lets say your putting 90k into the campaign a month and getting a 100 percent ROI which will be 90k profit why not scale them keywords into organic search and make an extra ~180k a month through organic side now do you see what I’m getting to?

Either way promoting through will bring you larger profits, but there is negatives and positives to both and they different from each others a bit.

Take your time out to read the following below on what the positives and negatives are.

Pay Per Click Positives 

1. Instant traffic
2. Highly and targeted convertable keywords
3. ROI Tracking Tools

Pay Per Click Negatives

1. Takes time to build up account history specially on new accounts.
2. Its a constant investment, but honestly the investment is always worth it speaking you have your campaign optimized.
3. Google Slaps

Organic Search Positives

1. Once you achieve your rankings, they pretty much stick unless its a very competitive market, but most generally if you good at what you do and get your rankings then most generally the traffic will always be there and you will be in good shape.

Organic Search Negatives 

1. Google has majorly come down on penalizing sites that are buying links and its getting tougher and tougher to build links into your site which granted you can still easily do it, but its not like the old days where you could pratically do anything all the time now days you have to worry about being penalized over everything.

Which granted there a ton of more things I could list, but thats just to give you an idea of how there different. The thing is with organic search like I mentioned above is that you have to be careful because you can get penalized very easily as long as you don’t go bragging about your rankings and how you built your rankings you’ll be fine.

The best thing though really to get the best effect out of your affiliate marketing campaign is to combine SEO with SEM and release the full power I would always suggest started with Pay Per Click before optimizing for SEO specially if your flying blind in your adwords campaign you need to know what keywords are converting before you move into the SEO side, but after you know whats converting you good to go.

Tracking a websites data is highly important in the search marketing (Pay Per Click) or optimization (Organic Traffic) world. When you track data you have a more realistic view of whats going on which granted we all have our own ways of tracking data rather it being through analytics or just something we have figured up on our own, but most generally we would use some type of analytics to track traffic count.

What are the best ways to track traffic?

Personally if you ask me the best ways to track your traffic is with Google Analytics. Out of all honesty from my experience analytics returns the most accurate measurements. Google breaks things down way better then programs such as AwStat, which don’t take me wrong at “one time” aw stat was considered a good program to use, but now days its useless if you ask me.

The reason I say its useless for is because it does not return accurate measurements by any means compared to analytics. when I first start using analytics software I used awstat and the measurement it was giving me was totally out of this world it was saying I was getting around 130 uniques a day from search engines when I was actually only getting 13 uniques a day this was when I first got involved with search marketing, so thats been years ago, but the bottom line is I wouldn’t use software such as Awstat use analytics and get the most accurate returns on your website.

Also please be advised to check out Google Analytics vs AwStats.

How to do a competitor analysis?

Running a competitor analysis can be tricky and I think a lot of people get confused on how its actually done well depends on what there doing for example an older domain can out rank a new domain due the trust rank and a lot of people over look that having old domains is like major credibility toward the search engines (big time).

Anyways lets say you have the same age domain as someone else for example 1998, but your your thinking to your self how can I out rank this competitor the method I’m going to give you is simple and requires nothing else, but what I’m going to tell you to do.

Do a link count on your competitor use your Yahoo search engine to do a link count for example go to http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain:www.creditcards.com%20-site:www.creditcards.com now this will give you the results for creditcards.com now you see the link count where it says 5,490 don’t get confused with that the reason being is because it counts all links including site wide links and site wide links give you no more credibility towards the search engine then what a one way unique link does, but what you can do is get an actual measurement of how many links this site has pointing to it.

In this case it looks like its around ~1,000 links (flip through the pages and you’ll see it stops at 10) the down fall about this is that its not an actual result, but it gives you an idea and also keep in mind for some odd reason Yahoo will only give you 1000 results for the links, so in other words if a site has more then 1000 links pointing to it they won’t show them all which I think is quite ridiculous out of all honesty, but hey the Yahoo linkdomain command gives you an idea of what your working with.

The site I just referred to was creditcards.com, but let me tell you something if the site is showing over 1000 links go down your search result until you hit a site that does not show 1000 links for example the yahoo back link checker might be showing 500 links for a particular site in position 10, so what does that mean?

That means you need to get around ~500 links to get up into that position maybe even less who knows that site could have numerous anchor text its using, so you could possibly out rank that site with ~100 links on that given keyword for that search result so if your doing a search result for credit cards and the position 10 site has around ~500 links and you get ~100 links using the anchor text credit cards you might be right up there in the top 10.

Which don’t take these measurements as an accurate reading, but if you set down and start researching this type of stuff it can give you a very good idea on what you need to do to out rank the other site and I will tell you this if your going up against an old domain that is dated back in 1997 and your domain is 2007 your going to have to get a ton of links to out rank them other sites trust me on that.

Also keep in mind page rank is not a big deal which you want to try to get links with some what page rank, but don’t get caught up on the whole fact that you need 10 pr 8 links to rank high because quite honestly if you have an older domain with a hand full of half decent links maybe coming from pr2 websites they will work a lot better then one silly higher page rank website for example you could get ~200 permanent links with different anchor text a lot easier and faster then compared to a pr8 link and better yet rank better on the pr2 links because you got more of them (even with different anchor text) that page rank is not everything your page rank bar only goes so high then it stops.

One thing I notice when I consult with clients is that they always play around with there titles and description tags they think just because they have a keyword rich description there going to rank better well the answer to that is no I mean it really won’t help that much out of all honesty it might have a 1 percent effect on a non competitive keyword ranking, but for more competitive keyword ranking it won’t make a difference.

The idea is to write your description for users not for search engines. When you write your description for users this will improve your overall CTR (Click Through Rate) thereofre resulting in more sales. If your wanting to rank build links or create viral content that will attract links don’t just go out spamming your description tags out because if your doing this chances of you getting very good profitable traffic will be never.