So you want to make money with your blog? You want to cash in on this blog money making thing?

Sounds like a great idea to me! But how do you pull this off? You don’t know what to advertise, where to get banners and links, or how to get them on your blog. What is an up and coming blogger to do??

Drum roll…..enter, THE WEB TRAINER!

Conceptually, making money with your blog is straight forward. Write great posts, tell the world, and count your money. That’s it!

Ok, not quite.  In addition to great content, you’ll also need some affiliate banners and links.  Here’s how to add them to your site.

Downloading a Banner Plugin

Before you can get affiliate banners and links on your site, you gotta get your WordPress blog ready to accept them. You can do this by manually by placing ads directly into the WordPress theme files, or choosing to use a cool WordPress plugin.While there are advantages to both, let’s just work with the plugin option.

Step one:  Go to the Interweb and download an easy-to-use, highly effective banner ad WordPress plugin called “Max Banner Ads”. Get it here.

Step two:  Download the plugin to your computer.

Step three:  Login to your WordPress administrative area and head to your “Plugins” tab and click “Add New”.  Look for the”Upload” link on the Install Plugins page.

After you upload the plugin, WordPress will ask if you want to activate the plugin. Make sure you activate it, otherwise it won’t work. WELL Duuuuu!

Making the Plugin Work

Now that the Max Banner Ads plugin is installed and active, we need to fiddle with the settings.  Head over to the “Tool” tab in your WordPress admin and look for the “Max Banner Ads” link.  You guessed it… click on the link!

At first glance, you might want to bag out of this banner thing.  Don’t.  We can get passed those icons, zones, clicks, impressions, and controls settings.  Just stay calm; The Web Trainer will explain all those headings.

Let’s start with a zone. In online advertising, a “Zone” is nothing more than a location on your blog that is designated for ads. Kinda like those annoying highway work zones that are marked off with cones and flashing barriers.

With the Max Banner Ads plugin, there are four pre-set zones. I recommend that you just stick with the default settings.

• Within The Post
• Sidebar Widget
• Top of First Post
• Bottom of Last Post

Preview: This will show you what the banner or text link looks like in the zone

Impressions: This is how many times the banner or text ad is displayed on a page. If you look at a blog post 3 times for example, you would have “3 Impressions” for that zone. Make sense? This number will always be higher than clicks.

Clicks: This numbers tells you how many times someone clicks on the banner or link.

CTR (%): This is “Click Though Rate”. This number gives you the ratio in percentage on how many clicks you are getting against the number of impressions. (clicks / impressions) × 100
For example, the CTR on a 120-impressions per 12 people who have clicked through to your blog or affiliate program is a 10% CTR.

Plugin Controls

What exactly do these silly drawings (icons) mean?

Red Cross Icon: You can add a banner or link ad to this zone from this icon.

Pencil Icon: You can edit the zone setting here.

Green Circle Icon: Resets your banners impressions and clicks back to “0”.

Red X Icon: Deletes the zone including all the banners associated with it. I HIGHLY recommend you don’t delete the four pre-set zones unless you’re a WordPress wizard!!

Bracket Icon: This is WordPress short code that you can use if you want to place your zones manually in your WordPress template.

I think that covers the major things you need to know for now. But as you know, nothing beats the tried and true method of just trying it out and see what happens!!! Now let’s move to adding a banner to your site!

Adding a Banner to the Side Column

Adding a banner to your side column on WordPress is the most common area or “Zone” bloggers use to display ads and promotions.

Now a bit of TWT (The Web Trainer) advice. Try to promote just one or two products in your side column. The temptation for bloggers is to load your site bar column with a bunch of banners, with the thinking that your visitors will need what you’re offering. And that may even be the case. But advertising studies show that focusing on one or two products results in higher revenue. I know, hard to believe it’s true since many big name bloggers run multiple ads on their sites. So you ask, if the big guys do it, shouldn’t you do it too?

NO.  Let me explain why.

Big time bloggers have built a massive following – people who love and enjoy their content. The ads at this point become more like resource links than ads to their readers. They have built loyalty and trust. two things you need before you do much advertising on your blog. Now back to installing the banner.

Make sure you have a banner that will fit in the side column area. If your banner is too wide, the plugin will resize it to fit. A 125px to 150px (pixels) wide banner seems to work well.

Go to your Max Blog Ad dashboard and click the “Red Cross” icon to add a banner. It looks like a lot to do here, but really it’s quite easy. Just follow these steps:

1. Under “Add New Banner” choose whether you are going to place a banner or a text link. In this example we will be doing a banner, so leave the default setting to “Banner Ads”
2. Name your banner. This is for your reference only, so name it something you can quickly look at to identify, like, “AnytimeBlogger 125×125 Red Banner”.
3. Then you need to add the image URL: If you are getting the link directly from an affiliate program, you could put the URL to the banner here. Otherwise, click the “Upload Banner From My Computer” radio button and browse your computer for the banner you want.
4. Next, put the URL linking the banner and its site. If this is an affiliate program, you will need to get the link from the affiliate site.
5. Last but not least, I always click the “Open in new window”.
6. Then hit save!

Now go out to the front of your blog and refresh! What do you see? NOTHING??? WHAT? You broke it! Just kidding, you’re not quite done yet. We need to do one more step.

We need to add the MBAN Sidebar Widget to get our new banner to display.

Displaying the Banner

Head on over to “Appearance” then “Widgets”.  Look for the MBAN Sidebar Widget tool and drag it to the sidebar widget where you want to display the banner.

When you open the MBAN Sidebar Widget, you will more settings. I recommend leaving the default settings until you get more comfortable with using this plugin.

NOW refresh your blog and you should see your new shinny banner! Just to be safe, click on the banner to make sure it is linked to the correct site.

You are now a banner master ninja.  I’m so proud of you.

In conclusion, always remember less is more with ads on your blog!  If you want to learn more about WordPress, scamper on over to my WordPress Training Video site AnytimeBlogger and get your WordPress basic training NOW!!

‘Til next time, Rock on!

Resource Links:

Max Blog Press Banner Ad Plugin
WordPress Training 

To be straightforward this particular online marketing strategy has been around awhile. But, because it’s so simple many folks, like you perhaps, have said it doesn’t work, it’s worn out, and it’s no longer effective. If you have been one of those, you may need to rethink your position on this marketing tactic. Here’s why!

Millions of new users come online each and every day. The primary reason most of them come online is to learn something new or get information that will help them solve a problem. These “newbie’s” to the internet have never been exposed to this marketing tactic. So in today’s modern internet marketing vernacular it’s “an evergreen marketing tactic”. Now let’s get on with it.

Step 1:

You need to set up another project directory on your Internet site. Come up with a universal password and user name which your present opt-in list folks will use and the new subscribers to your list. Name your new project “My Magic Steps To Astounding Weight Loss …” or something else which makes them want it. The next step may be the hardest part of the whole sequential autoresponder marketing tatic.

Step 2:

Take the time to find some really valuable reports, eBooks, articles, scripts (are good), videos or perhaps software (Of course it must fit your niche market). Upload to your new directory for your subscribers to get hold of. Make sure it’s free.

Step 3:

Very Important! Prepare a short series of autoresponder messages (3 or 4) to go out to your list. They should create a buzz about what’s coming from “My Magic Steps To Astounding Weight Loss …”. If possible each of these messages should have a tidbit of good solid information. Naturally they will be in sequential order with the buzz building to cresando. Space them out over a week. In fact your sequential autoresponder will distribute them in the order you set them up in.

Step 4:

Write an intriguing and curiosity arousing conversational “sales page” about “My Magic Steps To Astounding Weight Loss …” You must include the fact that this information/whatever are free. To make this tactic really work for you set a time limit or the number of people you are going to release this to. Make subscribers feel they are taking part in a very personal and private event.

A word of caution here! Don’t make the mistake of not shutting down your offer when you reach the total number of people or the deadline date. You could damage your crediability with your new subscribers and your old subscribers. When that happens you may find yourself losing leads instead of gaining them.

Now here’s the payoff!

Once all these good folks have opted in to your new list you can send out new notifications to them of what’s going on with your “”My Magic Steps To Astounding Weight Loss …”. You can also include information about other products which are in the same “niche market“.

Go ahead and try the sequential autoresponder marketing tatic. It still works and it can be very profitable when used properly.

On a day to day basis, we have seen so many people struggle with this to the point where they don’t want to even get started on Niche Blogging. Just to much to do and learn.

That’s why when I received this email today, I felt obligated, as “The Web Trainer”, to pass this very cool site on to you.

It’s called Easy Niche Blogs. They are turn key, WordPress Niche blog sites that are equipped with pre-written content, as well as monetization links for Amazon, ClickBank and Google AdSense. The themes are very professional and appealing. I think they did an awesome job and worth every single penny. And here the part that is great for all of us…you can buy one for just $9.97. $9.97?? Do you realize that’s like paying a programer and designer for around 10 min of their time? Sometimes I wonder how they can ever make money doing it, but, I’m not complaining.

I bought these immediately and discovered…WELL WORTH THE MONEY! Get this, you can buy all 7 for $27.00! Hell, the code that pulls in the Amazon, ClickBank and Google AdSense ads into the sites are worth that! Click here to view all 7 blogs.

Here are the screenshots:

So Mr. Trainer…what’s the catch? Well, here are the things you need to be aware of if you get these themes:

Not perfect. While they are great looking themes and well put together, they still have a bit of a “template” feel to them. If you’re looking for brandable or killer visual themes, these are not it. If you are looking for mechanics and simplicity, you have it with these.

If you’re a rookie, not the easiest to install. While installing a WordPress theme is simple, these require a bit f know-how for setting up your affiliate information. And it’s not even that it’s hard, you just need to know where to get your affiliate ids and affiliate codes. If you don’t, it might slow you down.

Content. Unlike most themes, these Easy Niche Blogs themes come with pre-populated content. So getting them up and running is not for the first time WordPress user. It will require some code changing and importing a MySQL database.

And last, duplicate content. Since these are only $9.97 for each or $27.00 for all, you shouldn’t expect that the content will be different for each affiliate ninja that buys these themes! So you will need to get creative in changing the content around. If you need a tool to do that, I have article spinning software I will proved if you purchase the themes from my link below..;)

Click here to view all 7 blogs

NOTE: If you want someone else to set up the sites for you ..say..me, we can set up all 7 for you on your cPanel hosting account for $50.00.

But overall, you can’t go wrong with theses themes. Even if 1 theme was $27.00, you would be miles ahead of the game.

I hope this helps in your journey to Affiliate income stardom (or gets you started anyway).

Please leave me some feedback and let me know how you liked these themes and how they are working out for you!

Till next time..rock on!

Click here to view all 7 blogs.

A successful affiliate marketer can earn a very sufficient income to provide for thier family. For that reason; more and more people in the prime of their earning life are taking the opportunity offered by affiliate marketing.

But, and this is a mighty big BUT, working at home isn’t quite as easy as it looks, though.

Here’s why:

Our lives are divided into multiple compartments. We have our “at home” compartment, our “at work” compartment, our “home maintenance” compartment, our “band night with the boys” compartment, etc. We think, speak, act, react — LIVE — in each of our life’s compartments in totally different ways.

It’s natural and much easier to keep life’s compartments separated when they take place at different physical locations. Most people don’t realize just how “compartmentalized” their lives really are until they try blending the “at-work” compartment with the “at-home” compartment. It can look mighty murky at times.

The following three work-at-home tips have been gleaned from my personal experience. I’ve living it as we speak. And I didn’t learn this information in a classroom, a book or an A&E special. Nothing but day to day experience speaking!

Tip #1 – Designate a Physical/Mental Workspace

You may have already tried working in the family room or at the kitchen table where family life is happening all around you. It doesn’t work very well, does it?

Designating “workspace” in your home is the basis of successfully working from home. The ultimate work-at-home space is a separate room designated as your “home office,” with a door that locks from the inside.

That’s not always possible.

Choose a corner of the room in your home that gets the least traffic. It doesn’t have to be huge. All you need is a space large enough to hold a table or desk, your computer, a telephone, and a chair. My spot is our sometimes cold and dark unfinished basement. Sounds creepy, but it is actually very cozy!

Tip #2 – Set Work Hours and Work Rules

One of the reasons why you wanted to work from home in the first place was so you didn’t have to drag yourself out of your nice, warm bed at the crack of dawn so you could make it to work at a specified time. You still don’t.

But you DO need to establish regular work hours. The Internet stays open 24/7, so your regular work hours can happen at anytime you wish, depending on the business you run that is. But they do have to happen, and they must happen on a regular basis if you want to successfully work from home. Consistent structure is the key.

If you don’t work enough hours, your business suffers.

If you work too many hours, your personal life suffers.

Balance is needed. A 40-hour work week is reasonable. Establish your own work schedule. Include at least, but no more than, 40 hours of work in each 7-day period.

From the cradle to the grave, humans are expected to follow whatever set of rules are imposed upon us. If we don’t follow those rules, penalties of some kind are imposed upon us.

We’re geared to follow rules. So it’s important that you make work-at-home rules.

Tip #3 – Retrain Yourself, Your Friends, and Your Family

Now for the really hard part. You DO have a job! You DO have to work! Just because you don’t get up, get dressed, and leave home DOESN’T mean you’re unemployed. You might not want to wear a bathrobes to get the mail though. The neighbors might talk.

Train Yourself: Accept the fact that if you don’t get your work done, you won’t earn any money. Abide by your own work-at-home rules, and enforce those rules for yourself first. If you’re abiding by the rules, it’s easier to convince others to also abide by them.

Train Your Friends: The answer to interruptions by neighbors and friends is: “I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m working. Maybe later.” Eventually, your friends will get the idea. Really.

Train Your Family: If you think it’s tough to train yourself and tough to train your friends, you “ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.” Training your family is the toughest item on this list — maybe on any list.

Family relationships are difficult, to say the very least. They’re complicated, too. Saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t right now — I’m working” to your significant other or your child can and will produce all kinds of responses, including shouting and tears.

Still, families can be trained at least to the point of keeping interruptions to a minimum. Family training should be undertaken with a great deal of patience. After all, these people gave you a reason to live in the first place.

Tip #4: Schedule, Schedule, Schedule!

Now before you think I have a bit of a stuttering problem, hear me out on this one. Life today has become extremely complicating and hectic with everything we need to try to accomplish day to day. Put kids AND a home based work environment in the pot, you have yourself one big mess!

So here is what we do. Every Saturday afternoon or evening, my wife and I sit down with Google Calendar, a absolute must tool for any entrepreneur. We begin by blocking out vital and must do events for family, church, kids, etc. Then we block out any family times we want during the week. Next, we hit The Web Trainer’s schedule. We mark off any face-to-face appointments needed to be done, trying to block them together or as close together as possible. Then we review the client projects and determine what needs to be done for the week. Most client projects are worked on in the morning and affiliate project and marketing are done after 12:30PM.

Get the picture? As a home based business ninja, having everything you need on a schedule is one of the only ways to keep yourself track. VERY easy at home to get sidetracked!!

Conclusion

Working from home isn’t nearly as easy or carefree as it looks from the outside. But it’s still way better than getting up at dawn, dressing, and fighting traffic so I can put in eight hours doing what others tell me to do.

Put these three work-at-home tips into action. You’ll improve your work-at-home experience as well as your work-at-home productivity.

Many people are intimidated by the thought of creating their own ebooks but the truth is, the process is very straight-forward and it can be enormously profitable. If you are already involved in activities such as blogging, article marketing and creating relationships with newsletters, an ebook is just one step beyond in the whole process but can really give your credibility rating an extra boost.

Here are three steps in how to write your own e-book.

1. Choose a topic for your target audience. Don’t make this into a huge product. Pick something relatively narrow within a major topic. So, for example, if the main topic is “internet marketing”, choose something that fits within that category like “article marketing”, or you could go even further and narrow it down to “keyword research for article marketing”.

Keep in mind that for an ebook to work the way you want it to, it must truly address the problems, concerns, or desires of your target market. The content must be top-of-the-line.

2. Brainstorm. Write down every idea you have, walk away and come back and write more. Put down anything and everything for now.

3. Organize your ideas into an outline. Divide your ideas into headers, subheaders, chapters and write descriptions of each point you include. Make sure to keep track of your references and write those down too.

4. Research. Hopefully you’ve picked a topic that you are familiar with already but whether you have or haven’t you’ll need to do research to make your content as valuable as possible. Take notes, mark references and use quotes as you write your own ebook.

4. Put all of your organized ideas and research into a very long article of at least 30 pages – this is your ebook!

5. Get a second opinion. Chances are you’ll spend quite a bit of time on this endeavor. Make sure that you step back every once in a while to give yourself a break. And when you’re near the end, ask someone else to read it for a more objective opinion. Whether it’s your friend, spouse or a fellow marketer, make sure you get a good, honest critique and, if possible, edit of your work.

Once you’re finished, you can either sell your ebook from your blog or website or you can offer it free of charge for people who sign up – the goal of this is to build your list.

If you decide on the first option, you’ll have to set up a shopping cart system. You don’t have to charge a lot for your ebook to make money and because it doesn’t cost you anything to create the book (if you don’t count the time you spend on it) so anything you sell will be a profit.

So now are you ready to write your own ebook?

Get our 7 Figure List Building Guide FREE!

Get our FREE 7 Figure List Building Guide Today! List building is all about connecting with your target audience by offering them high quality information in exchange for their subscription and in affiliate marketing, a laser targeted, responsive email list will be the key element to your success.

If you are anything like I was when I started out; excited and all set to make my fortune as an affiliate marketer and yet not knowing where to start you may have to say what I said, “I don’t have a clue!” If you are new to affiliate marketing can I tell you something? There are some essentials that you must know or you will waste an incredible amount of time and money.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

Important Tool #2: Quality Content

One of the most powerful tools for building quality content for your website is writing relevant and informative articles. Consider this, almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more-trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation on the net is a good step in building loyal customers and articles help establish credibility.

Important Tool #3: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #4: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important success vehicles in the affiliate marketing world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do what is necessary to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must have an aggressive link building campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles as mentioned above, with your website’s link in the resource box. Submit to related e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick them up and post them.

These are but four of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become an affiliate marketing success.