Most bloggers have heard of Digg, or the many clones that are available to submit your posts to in order to boost traffic. Such sites that emulate Digg are driven by software that comes from pligg.com and are known as "pligg" sites. I'll tell you a little more about pligg in a moment. But how many bloggers know that by submitting posts to some of the lesser well known social bookmarking sites can actually benefit your blog more?

Some, like Blogging Zoom are getting big and more popular, but are still very useful for building links and boosting SERPs authority for individual blog posts. They do that by publishing your submitted posts on their main page after your post gets a certain number of votes from othe rmembers of the site. With Blogging Zoom that number is currently 15. So if you join a site like that, it pays to make friends!

But that idea can be followed on to the next level by the smart Internet Marketer. How?

Build your own social pligg site!

Yes, if you have your own web host, then you can build your own pligg site, publicise it and attract new members to build the site from the ground up. Pligg.com provide the software free of charge, so its just a case of downloading it, creating a new MySQL database in your cPanel, following their instructions and uploading the files to your server. You can also download a free template if you don't like the original and with some cosmetic tweaking, you can have your very own, Google friendly social site up and running within a few hours.

The benefits of running your own pligg site are obvious - you can submit all your own posts to it and build up lots of links to your blogs as well as boost their SERPs rankings. In the early stages, you can set the number of votes to 5 to get your posts onto the front page fast, so their links carry with them any Page Rank your new site has.

A timely tip is to buy an expired domain that already comes with some Page Rank and established links to ensure it keeps it. You, of course can promote your new pligg site and get it more backlinks to further establish its authority quickly.

As you may have guessed by now, I have done exactly what I have been telling you about, so that the information is coming straight from the horse's mouth! Yep, I built my own pligg site called TheFB and you can easily register for free and then submit blog posts to it directly from the site.

TheFB can be found by clicking on this link: TheFB

TheFB is a PR2 site at present, which I am building links for to improve its ranking over time. So feel free to sign up and make use of this valuable link building resource and get in on the ground floor. It takes only 5 votes to get your post to the front page at TheFB, so what have you got to lose?

And much to gain!

Terry Didcott
Owner of The Honest Way Forum

Let me start off by saying that affiliate marketing does have its advantages over selling your own products. The biggest advantage is that there is simply a whole lot less work for the affiliate marketer to do. For one thing, you don't have to go through the agonizing process of creating your own products. If you think it's easy to do that, it's not. I've been creating my own products for years and the amount of work is astronomical.

Aside from the time factor of creating your own products, there is the cost factor as well. Affiliate marketing doesn't cost anywhere near what it costs to create your own products. Some professional quality software products needed to create certain types of products cost hundreds of dollars. For example, take Photoshop which is the top product for creating ecovers. You're talking about $600 in cost. If you want to create video products, Camtasia is about $300. That's close to a grand for just two products.

And then of course there is knowledge. To create your own products, you have to have a solid handle on the subject matter. All my products are created from what's crammed into my head. That knowledge did not come overnight. Some of it took me years to accumulate. What you don't know, you have to go out and research. And let me tell you, research can be a painstaking process. One product I created took me almost one year to create because of the research required.

Okay, so you can see where affiliate marketing has its advantages. However, we haven't touched on the disadvantages and other pieces of info. Well, in my signature is a free report that you can pick up. It will go over all the pros and cons of affiliate marketing versus creating your own products. I am sure that by the time you're done reading it, you'll know whether or not affiliate marketing is right for you.

So you wanna be an affiliate marketer?

Then you better know what you're up against.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Why Affiliate Marketing?...Find Out HERE

The first thing is your price. I don't know how some marketers come up with the prices that they do, but a price that is either too low or too high isn't going to convert as well as a price that is just right. And this requires testing. However, the point is, your copywriter can only work with the price that you give him to work with. If you're determined to sell your widget for $47 when everybody else is selling theirs for $27, you're probably not going to make as many sales.

After price, there is your guarantee. Now I realize that if you're selling your product through Clickbank that you're stuck with their 60 day guarantee. However, if you can, by increasing your guarantee length, you can, in many cases, increase your conversions. I sometimes offer 6 month or even 1 year guarantees on my products. This is another thing that is beyond the copywriter's control. He can only work with the guarantee that you give him.

Then of course there are your bonuses, or lack thereof. Like it or not, most people expect to get bonuses when they buy something. That's just the nature of the beast. So if you don't offer any, that's going to hurt your conversions. But you can't just offer any old bonuses. You have to offer bonuses that are really worth something. Again, this is something that is out of the control of your copywriter.

Finally, there are your testimonials. Some people just don't know how to give them. They'll send you something that is so lame, it's not even worth putting in print. Well, guess what? Your copywriter can't do anything about these. You can't fudge testimonials. You have to print them just as you get them.

So before you start throwing stones at your copywriter, take a good look at these four items. They may be the REAL reason why your conversions are in the toilet.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Want to save $2,500 to $15,000 in copywriting costs? Want to write copy yourself that can command that kind of payday? Visit my site at http://www.bcipe.com/ and discover killer copywriting tips that have allowed me to write my own copy for years and earn myself a 6 figure a year income selling my own products.

PLR stands for Private Label Rights, but you already knew that. What you probably don't know is that PLR is one of the most misunderstood and misused items in Internet marketing today. That's right...people just don't know how to use it properly.

The reason is because they think they can just pull it out of the box as is, slap it up on their web site and sell it...WRONG! That is the worst way to use your PLR material.

See, people think that the value of PLR is that the writing has already been done for you. Again, WRONG. The real value of PLR is that the RESEARCH has been done for you. That's where the true worth comes in.

Think about it. You decide that you want to break into a new niche, say health. Maybe you want to write about acne. Well, you don't know anything about it, so what do you have to do? Well, for starters, you have to do research...tons of it.

What's tons?

You have to find out what acne is, what causes it, what the standard treatments are and so on. This research can take you days if not weeks. By the time you get around to actually creating your product, you've wasted one month of your life.

Why do I say wasted?

Because let's just say that you find a PLR product on acne where all of this information, all this research, has already been done for you. What is then left for YOU to do?

I'll tell you what...almost nothing.

Notice I said almost. See, you do have to rewrite the PLR slightly and make some other minor changes, but the time you will spend doing this is nothing next to the amount of time you would have had to spend doing the initial research.

This is basically the misunderstanding that people have about PLR. You can't just buy it and sell it. But by following a simple procedure, you can turn your PLR into absolute gold.

How so?

My friend John Rhodes purchased PLR for about $10 and turned around and made well over $200 from it in a very short time, simply by doing a few rewrites.

If you want more info on how to really turn your PLR into massive cash, check out John's new product PLR EXPLOITATION which may be the definitive product on such subject yet. John leaves nothing out. I know...I helped write it.

PLR gets a bad rap, but with this product, you can turn YOUR PLR into a gold mine too.

To YOUR PLR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
PLR EXPLOITATION

Fortunately for me, I have dial up as well. Oh yes, I don't just rely on one way to get onto the Internet. You never know what's going to happen. So as a result, even though I'm working a little slower than usual, I am still able to get my daily chores done and even write this article, which you are reading now.

And this is just one of the many areas, Internet connection, where things can and do go wrong. So the question I put forth to you today is simple. Do you have a backup plan? If something goes wrong with a part of your business, do you have something to fall back on? And I'm not just talking about a temporary thing like an Internet connection going down. I'm talking about when a whole business model goes up in flames.

Think it can't happen? Remember all those made for Adsense sites that were all the craze about 2 years ago? Well, guess what? After Google cracked down on those crappy pages, people who were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month were suddenly out of business. So make no mistake about it...business models DO crumble.

So again I ask...do you have a backup plan? More to the point, are you diversified or do you have all your eggs in one basket? I have so many different product lines out there that I can't even keep track of them all. But at least I don't have to worry if one of them stops selling.

It's certainly something to think about.

If you're having trouble even thinking of one business to run, let alone several, you might want to sit down and think of other niches to get into besides the one you're stuck in. It doesn't take long to do niche research and get some ideas. As a matter of fact, I have a free book that will show you just how to do niche research and pick out a niche that has the potential to be profitable. You can find it in my signature.

Point is, you don't want to be waking up one day and find that your bread and butter has turned into dust.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Niche Research In Plain English

Here are just some benefits of being an author:

1) You can write about pretty much anything you want as long as it fits the theme of the blog... work at home, home based business, online business, internet marketing, affiliate programs, SEO, traffic generation, make money online, blogging, and other closely related topics.

2) You may put up to three links to your websites or blogs in each of your posts.

3) As the PR of this blog increases any links to your sites will benefit greatly from it.

4) As it grows and becomes more popular your name will be associated with it, which will up your online credentials.

5) The traffic to this blog will increase, which will send more traffic to your websites/blogs.

6) You will get a blurb about you and your business on the authors page with links to your sites.

7) It only takes maybe 15 minutes to write a good blog post. I am requiring a minimum of only two posts per month from each author, so you can get all the benefits above for very little work.

Here are some minimum requirements to consider before applying to become an author:

1) You must get a wordpress.com account. I cannot add you as an author unless you have a wordpress.com account. Signing up only takes a couple minutes and it's completely free.

2) You must be very knowledgeable about any or all of the following topics: work at home, home based business, online business, internet marketing, affiliate programs, SEO, traffic generation, make money online, blogging, and other closely related topics.

3) Must post at least twice per month, but no more than fifteen times.

4) You agree to post QUALITY content. Similar to what you would put on your own site or blog. I retain the right to judge the "quality" of all posts and delete any that I feel are not.

5) All posts must be your original work or content that you have exclusive rights to post. No plagiarism or copyright violations.

6) You agree that I get final approval of all posts. If I feel your post needs edited or deleted for any reason at any time, I reserve the right to do so.

7) You agree that all content becomes property of this website.

These requirements are subject to change at any time without notice, so check back here often.

If you are interested please leave a comment below. Give me some information about yourself and at least one link to where I can see examples of your work... articles you have written, your blog, your website, etc...

I cannot accept all applicants so please don't take it personally if you don't get picked.

Thank you!

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Work at Home Blog