The Demo Site

Indian Premier League 2009 Batsman With Highest Half Century
Team Name Score
Chennai Super Kings Matthew Hayden 5
Mumbai Indians Jean-Paul Duminy 5
Delhi Daredevils TM Dilshan 4
Royal Challengers Bangalore Jacques Kallis 3
Deccan Chargers Herschelle Gibbs 3

the Template of the MaximumTricks Blog has been changed!

There’re a lot of affiliate advertising programs available to help you monetize your blog, but it's important to evaluate those affiliate programs to ensure you choose the best one for your blog. Not every affiliate program is right for every blog. Follow the tips below to help you choose the affiliate advertising program that will help you earn the most money from your blog.



1. Reputable Sponsors & Products

Make sure the affiliate program you choose works with reputable sponsors who are selling products that you would be comfortable buying yourself.



2. Product Prices

Choose an affiliate program that offers products in a price range that is high enough so you'll actually make money from them but not too high that none of your readers can afford them. Choosing products in the $10-$500 range is generally a good balance.



3. Commissions

In order for an affiliate program to be worth your while, the commission attached to the product you advertise on your blog has to be adequate. Look for commissions > 20%.



4. Payout Schedule & Method

Before you join an affiliate program, make sure you'll be paid at least once per month. Also, check the minimum payout amount. $100 is typical for a minimum payout amount. Naturally, payout amounts less than $100 are even better. Finally, ensure that the payout method (PayPal, check, etc.) works for you.



5. Tracking

Choose an affiliate program that provides adequate tracking tools, so you can see where your earnings are coming from and tweak your participation to maximize future earnings.



6. Customer Support

If you have problems with your affiliate program, it's imperative that you can get the assistance you need in a timely manner. Be certain that the affiliate program you choose offers adequate customer support via email/telephone, so you can get the help you need when you need it.

Many bloggers are eager to find revenue streams to help monetize their blogs. Once your blog is established & receiving some traffic, you may want to begin researching affiliate programs that could allow your blog to put money in your pocket.


What is Affiliate Advertising?

Affiliate advertising is basically an online marketing channel. An advertiser pays a blogger to promote the advertiser’s products/services on the blogger’s site.


There’re 3 main types of affiliate ads: pay-per-click, pay-per-lead & pay-per-sale. Each of these affiliate ad types has 1 thing in common. They’re all performance based meaning you don’t earn money until your readers perform an action such as clicking on a link/clicking on a link then purchasing the product on the page to which the link brings them.


There are several large & well-known companies that offer affiliate programs which you can set up on your blog within minutes regardless of how well established your blog is.


Examples of Companies Offering Affiliate Advertising Programs to Bloggers:
Amazon: You can choose from a wide variety of ads such as text links, banner ads & more. If you’d like, you can also select the exact Amazon products you’d like to feature on your blog.
eBay: You can choose from eBay’s auctions & find the specific products you want to advertise on your site.
AllPosters: You can choose from 400,000 products to advertise on your blog.


What is an Affiliate Directory?

You could sign-up to monetize your blog through an affiliate directory where various online merchants post their affiliate ad opportunities. You can review the ad opportunities and apply to host a specific ad on your blog.


Most advertisers on these sites will have restrictions related to the blogs they will work with. Typically those restrictions are related to how long the blog has been active & the amount of traffic the blog receives. For those reasons, an affiliate directory is most helpful if your blog is well established.


Take some time to research each affiliate directory to find the right one for you and your blog. Different affiliate programs offer different payments & credibility. Take your time & investigate your options before you jump into anything.


Examples of Popular Affiliate Advertising Directories:
Commission Junction
Associate Programs
Affiliates Directory
Refer-It


Factors to Consider When You Select an Affiliate Advertising Program to Monetize Your Blog
Read all the details about the opportunity including the pay, the terms, etc.
Select affiliate program ads that are consistent with your blog’s content. Ads that don’t match your content will undoubtedly be clicked on less frequently (meaning less revenue for you) & can decrease the credibility of your blog (meaning fewer readers will return to your blog because it's cluttered with irrelevant ads).
Don’t go overboard with affiliate ads. Too many ads not only make your blog look suspiciously like spam to readers, but search engines will think so, too. Sites that are covered with affiliate ads & little additional original content will be marked as spam by Google & other search engines which will hurt your traffic & page rank overall.
Don’t expect big profits (at least not at first). While many bloggers can generate a decent ancillary income from affiliate advertising, most bloggers can’t boast those kinds of results. Boosting your income through affiliate advertising takes time & practice. Don’t be afraid to test new ads, placement, programs & more until you find the best mix to meet your goals for your blog.

What Are RSS Feeds?

RSS Feeds
RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.

Benefit to the Webmaster
As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.

RSS allows webmasters to:
1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

3.) Automate content delivery.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.

Benefit to Web Surfers
The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.

RSS allows for users to:
1.) Easily locate information.

2.) Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.

Written by:-Ajay Kumar Roy (MaximumTricks)