Ultimate Niche / HOT ITEM Research Software That Truely Works

I have a bit exciting news when its come to find a HOT niche.

I have been selling on ebay since 1999…… Since I was about 14/15 years old and now I am 25 🙂

And I made a living on ebay ever since. So naturally I had to find HOT NICHE to survive on ebay…..last 11 years

Since  2008 I started using this  software to find real time HOT items.

its very very easy to use. When I used this software the first time I was blown away and I am sure you will be too so I wanted to share this HOT ITEM FINDER with ALL of you

I made some video

If it helps you please let me know. So I can feel good that I was able to help our affiliate marketer community.

Hot Item Finder | Ultimate eBay Auction Research Software | Find Hot Items on eBay | eBay Software

10 Popular products tool Hot Item Finder | Ultimate eBay Auction Research Software | Find Hot Items

12 Category analysis tool Hot Item Finder | Ultimate eBay Auction Research Software | Find Hot Items

“Cut Down Research Time and STOMP
Your Competition on eBay by Finding
What Consumers Are Searching For!”

Are you sick and tired of searching for the
“Perfect Product” to sell on eBay?

Are you spending countless hours trying to
find out the best words to put into your
auction titles and descriptions ?

STOP Wasting Time and let Hot Item Finder
do ALL the Work for You!

If you had the chance to dramatically increase the profits from your online auctions, or even better, finally generate the results you have been dreaming of … would you be interested?

“Well … what I’m going to share with you is a real treat …”

Something that I know you’re truly going to enjoy, no matter whether you’re interested in internet marketing, starting or expanding an online business, getting more sales and leads, or dramatically increasing your profits – whatever your heart desires.

“You’re Going To Learn Something Valuable
In The Next Few Minutes …”

Before I reveal it to you, please let me introduce myself…

My name is David Guindon, I’m a Canadian living in British Columbia attending university working towards a masters degree in electrical engineering specializing in Digital Signal Processing.

Before I started working online, I worked for many engineering firms connected through the university coop program here in Canada. I got tired of all the hard work … and trust me engineering related jobs can be very difficult, mentally of course. But don’t get me wrong, I have done my share of hard labor as well, namely helicopter logging. Growing up in a small town where the economy was mainly supported by the lumber industry, it’s easy to pick up a job in that area.

Then reality set in…

“I’m Working For Little Pay and NOT Enjoying It!”

You are probably saying to yourself, “What are you talking about Dave, engineers make lots of money!”…

Well … yes and no!. If you have 10-20 years with a masters degree and a P.E.ng, you will make decent income.

And … NO … most graduates make no more than the average paying wage for any career.. in fact I make more money working for myself online than I every will in a full-time engineering job!

“I Make More Money working for myself Online than
I ever will in a full-time engineering job!”

Plus, I suddenly had all the freedom in the world. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

Then I searched EVERY where on how to make money online … and it all started on …

… eBay!

So I started selling stuff on eBay and quickly became frustrated with the results!

Why?

Let me tell you why I had so much difficulty at first and what you are probably or have probably experienced when trying to sell on ebay …

What is the best selling item on eBay? What items are getting the most bids! What items are getting the highest number of hits? How do I find my niche? What are the most popular selling items in each eBay category? Where do I list my item? What words should I put in my auction title? What are the best words or phrases to put in my auction description to make people buy now? What categories have the most listings? …and many more burning questions!

Do those questions sound familiar?

keep reading and I’ll show you how to answer them and much more!

Here is what I did … I designed my own eBay research and analysis software that does all the hard for me … I named it Hot Item Finder

Introducing … Hot Item Finder!

Click Image Below For Screenshots

Finding Products to Promote in the Marketplace from Clickbank.com

Finding Products to Promote in the Marketplace

http://fzaffiliat.reseller.hop.clickbank.net

FAQ

Q: How many products can I promote at one time, through the same account?

A: As many as you want! There is no limit to the number of ClickBank products you can promote through your account.

Q: Instead of choosing a specific product to promote, can I earn commissions by referring customers to the ClickBank Marketplace?

A: Yes. When you refer a potential customer to the ClickBank Marketplace, you’ll earn a commission when a customer follows a Marketplace link and buys the product.

Q: If I refer a customer to a vendor’s website and they end up buying several products from the same vendor, will I get a commission on each sale?

A: Yes.

Q: If I refer a customer to a vendor’s website using my HopLink, but they end up buying products from a different vendor, will I receive a commission on the sale?

A: No.

Q: Will promoting products in a language other than English affect my commission?

A: No, you’ll receive your commission in the same way as for English-language products.

Searching the Marketplace

To find a product to promote, you should start in the ClickBank Marketplace. You’ll see a search box that looks like this:

Searching the Marketplace

To find a product to promote, you should start in the ClickBank Marketplace. You’ll see a search box that looks like this:

There are two main ways you can look for products: you can search on particular keywords or sales statistics, or browse through product categories and sub-categories in a number of different ways. We have 23 categories of products, with quite a few sub-categories under each. If you’re not sure exactly what types of products to promote, choosing a general category can be a good place to start.

Once you’ve narrowed down your search, you can further sort your results by using the Sort Results By dropdown, narrowing your results based on product attributes, or by performing an Advanced Search.

• Sort by: This menu allows you to order the results of your search based on the sales performance of the products. For example, you can order the results in terms of number of sales, products with the highest average commission rates, amount earned per sale, or more. For a useful guide to how these sales statistics can help you decide which products to promote, see our blog post Sort Your Way to Success. In addition, if you perform a keyword search, products will automatically be ordered based on how relevant they are to your search term(s).
• Narrowing results: You can filter search or browsing results based on a few different criteria, such as product attributes like Shippable Media, in what language(s) the vendor offers the products, and whether the product is a one-time purchase or is a recurring billing product.
• Advanced Search: Our Advanced Search menu lets you perform sophisticated searches to meet certain product criteria. For example, you can look for listings in a particular category that fall within a certain gravity range, or recurring billing billing products above a particular commission rate. Advanced Search lets you get extremely targeted search results, to make sure Marketplace listings meet your rigorous criteria for promotion.

Improving Your Search Results

Sometimes keyword searches occasionally turn up results that don’t fit with your niche. For example, if you search using the term “dog training,” further down the list of results, or depending on how your sort the results, you may end up with other listings that use the term “training” in the description that don’t have anything to do with dogs. If you find that you’re getting too many irrelevant results, you may want to make your search more specific or eliminate keywords that don’t fit your niche. You can do so by adding certain criteria to your search, such as:

• If you enter your keywords in quotes, such as “golf swing,” we will only return listings that use the phrase exactly as entered.
• If you enter your keywords with AND in between, such as golf AND swing, we will only return listings that use both terms.
• If you enter your keywords with OR in between, such as golf OR swing, we will return listings that have either term.
• If you enter your keywords with NOT between, such as golf NOT swing, we will exclude any listings that include the second term.
• If you enter + before a keyword, such as golf +swing, we will only return listings that include the + keyword.
• If you enter – before a keyword, such as golf -swing, we will exclude any listings that include the -keyword.
• If you use parentheses with your keywords, you can do more complicated searches. For example, if you type (golf OR swing) AND help, you will get results that include either golf or swing combined with the word help, such as golf help or swing help.

In addition to those searches, you can also include “wildcards” that can help broaden your results:

• Using the character ? will return listings that use keywords where the ? is replaced with a single letter. For example, if you type gol?, you would get results that include golf or gold.
• Using the character * will return listings that use keywords where the * is replaced with multiple characters. For example, if you type gol*, you would get results that include golf, golfing, golfer, gold, golden, etc. This can be very useful for returning listings with related keywords, like the golf/golfer/golfing example.
• Using the character ~ after a keyword will return listings that include keywords that are spelled similarly to the keyword. For example, if you type roam~, it would return listings with keywords such as roams, foam, etc.

By using these special search techniques, you can make sure your searches are as targeted and relevant to your niche as possible.

What Marketplace Stats Mean

Once you’ve run your search in the Marketplace, you’ll see a list of ClickBank products. At the bottom of each listing, you’ll see sales statistics that look like this:

Since these statistics are unique to ClickBank, it’s important to know what they mean and how they can help you decide which products to promote. If you forgot what these mean, you can click Stats under any listing to return here.

• Initial $/sale: This is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale of this product. One-time upsell purchases are also considered initial sales. This number takes into account refunds, chargebacks, and sales tax. Since vendors may offer products with different prices and commissions, the amount you earn on any given sale may not match this number exactly.
• Avg Rebill Total: This number is only shown if the vendor offers recurring billing products (e.g., products like memberships and subscriptions that regularly bill customers over time). This number shows the average amount an affiliate makes on all of the rebilled sales. Note that this number doesn’t include the initial sale amount.
• Avg $/sale: For one-time purchases, this number is the same as Initial $/sale. If the vendor offers recurring billing products, it equals the average total of the initial sale plus all rebills, divided by the number of initial sales. To put it simply, for every new purchase of this product, this amount is the average you’d make in total over the life of a new customer. However, this is just an average; this amount is not guaranteed.
• Avg %/sale: This number shows the average commission rate earned for all sales of a vendor’s products, including one-time purchases, rebills, and upsell purchases. Since vendors can offer different commission rates for different types of products, this number may not exactly match the commission rate you earn on any given sale.
• Avg %/rebill: This number is only shown if the vendor offers recurring billing products, and shows the average commission rate earned only on rebills.
• Grav: Short for Gravity, this number represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 12 weeks. Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are “hot” at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product.
• Cat: The Marketplace category and sub-category of the site.

For more ideas about how to take these different sales numbers into account when deciding what to promote, take a look at our blog post entitled Sort Your Way to Success.

You’ll also see a number of different icons below each listing. Here are the meanings of these icons:

• Product(s) in English
• Product(s) in French
• Product(s) in German
• Product(s) in Spanish
• Standard (single-sale) product(s)
• Recurring billing product(s)
• Shippable product(s)
• Upsell product(s)
• Vendor Spotlight listing includes an Affiliate Tools page

Choose a Product and Create a HopLink

To learn more about the products in your search, you can click on the Marketplace listing title (in red) to be taken to the vendor’s website. This can help you learn more about the product and get ideas on how to promote it, such as what keywords people might search to find it, benefits you can highlight in your promotions, and more.

In addition, you can click the Vendor Spotlight link on the right side of the listing to learn more about the vendor, including a recent history of their product’s gravity, and any announcements they’ve created for affiliates that may help you promote their product or learn about other interesting products they have coming up. You can also see other accounts they recommend promoting or investigating.

Once you’ve decided on a product to promote, click the Promote button to the right of the listing. This will generate a customized HopLink for you that you can then use to promote the product and get a commission on the sale if someone buys the product after clicking your HopLink. For more information about HopLinks and how they work, as well as how to promote them, see All About HopLinks and Common Ways to Promote Products.

Are you a Bad Apple?

999 Stars and a Bad Apple

This message is for everyone. The 99.8% of you that are stars and to the 1 to 2 bad apples we may get in here.

Hey everyone, I believe that it is possible for negative people to own Credit Cards. I know, it is crazy but they simply do not ask on credit card applications if you are a negative person.

Now, I’m not talking about regular people who don’t think they can make it. That is our job to change their mind.

I’m talking about the people that don’t want YOU to make it.

People that come in thinking everything is a scam but need to buy it to prove it to themselves. So slowly they start to bad mouth content, mentors, experts, the prices, the theory, the validity of claims etc..

Who are these people? You know.  Just like some of our own family, friends, and co-workers that laugh at us for having the guts to do what they don’t. Spend money to learn. Spend money to put their faith in someone that will show them a blueprint.

So, what is a STAR?

Well, you are. When you participate in the community with an open mind and an abundant mentality you are being a STAR. We want to hear from you. Please, let us know where we can do better and if you don’t think what we say works, let us know and we will explain it better. We WELCOME mature discussions, and especially love seeing members helping members.

In fact, very soon, once we make sure the bad apples are gone, and refunded, we will open a community forum for you here to talk to other members and help EACH OTHER.

Don’t get me wrong. If you ask for a refund you are still a STAR in our book and we wish you well.

Here is what I am talking about. (And we need your help. See below)

We have refunded 3 people already. WITHOUT WARNING. They were ZAPPED and they were refunded.

Why. Because they were using words like FRAUD, SCAMM, and RIPPED off.

WTH?

Can you imagine?

Again. If you are frustrated or upset we understand. We don’t ZAP for that, but ask that you take that up with us at the help desk. Of course, things are not always easy or perfect, but we are committed to being here to help you.

But, when a BAD APPLE calls the course, me or Chris a scam, we can not allow that person in here.

“We don’t need the money like that Mr. B. Apple.” – There is NO WAY we are going to allow this WONDERFUL place to be taken over by people who think they are in a trash forum or haters blog.

POINT BLANK… BAD APPLES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.

Chris and I will simply not allow these people to twist your good efforts and your mind by their negative posts. And we know you don’t want that.

So how can you help. Let us know when we do a good job and a bad job. So we can improve. Do it with class.

ENGAGE the topics and the community.

And stand together to not let anyone trash this place.

This is YOUR place. You see someone getting out of line, you can politely remind them of this link. Just paste it to them.

Sometime “Bad Apples” are so strong they silence others that have a positive frame of mind. But not here. Because we do NUKE people like that.

Yesterday 3 people were nuked and I can’t tell you how happy I am to know they will not throw rocks at your attempts to better yourself.

Chris and I, along with the team and featured experts, will do everything we can to provide the best value AND ENVIRONMENT for you to prosper.

Thanks for your help.

YOU are a STAR!!

Mike Filsaime (and Chris Farrell)

Unadvertised Killer Content worth $997

http://www.media-mentors.com/products/

Welcome to Media-Mentors. Over the last 12+ years, I’ve been a part of creating nearly a dozen online companies that have done in excess of $100M in revenue.  I’ve also (along with a whole team of uber-talented teammates, spent in excess of $100M buying online advertising, which makes me a bit unique.  Over the years I’ve taught an entire army of Affiliate Marketers, Product Owners and many more  how to create successful online businesses and crush it in the world of online media.  The world of online media buying can be a chaotic, unpredictable, yet wildly profitable world.   Look, i’m NO GURU.  I think that term is heavily overplayed, self aggrandizing, and a bit lame.  Guru’s are people who’ve never made money on their own other than selling you something that probably doesn’t work.  I’ve had the good fortune of starting two Affiliate Networks, been a high volume media buyer, a super affiliate and a high volume advertiser.

Media Mentors covers…

1. Internet Direct Response Strategies (proven)

2. High Volume Media Buying (over $100M)

3. Strategies To Starting And Growing Your Online Business

We created Media-Mentors as a resource people who are serious about growing their business through Direct Response and Online Media Buying.  Do we know it all?  Of course not.  I work with a select group of advertisers and affiliates on a one-on-one basis, and apply my expertise to help them succeed.   I also am building out educational products to help people understand this crazy world of Online Media Buying.  You see…I’ve been teaching people how to become super affiliates, purchase high volume online advertising, and grow their companies now for over a decade.  I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with the best and brightest minds in online media, and can share some of that knowledge with you.  Our goal is to become a great resource for anybody buying online media. From the person coming online for the first time, to the seasoned, high volume Super Affiliate.  we need to continually learn in this space, or face being roadkill.  We are the anti-road kill.  We are going to arm yo with as much as you need to be successful in this wonderful business.

This stuff is $997. How did I get it for you? It is crazy. I just asked. Scott is a GREAT GUY and I called him and we hit it off. We know each other already but on the phone we really hit it off. He will be speaking at the event and offered more than I asked to our members.

We are going to figure out HOW to get the content in here over the next week or so. So just hang in there.

Also, he and I will be doing a call and we will record it for you and I will post it in the members area.

We want to keep providing as much vale as we can to ensure your success.

We promise, just stay involved and the future success stories WILL come from this forum. Just engage!

Thanks

I just bought AffiliateDotCom Coaching Program for $1997 Paid with my Brand New AMEX Card

I just bought AffiliateDotCom Coaching Program for $1997 Paid with my Brand New AMEX Card 🙂 =( THIS IS THE BEST INVESTMENT OF MY LIFE ) I’m Going to live event in Las Vegas Yayyyyy!!Nov-2010 Thank you Affiliatedotcom.com Join me in my brand new blog https://startupaffiliate.wordpress.com/

My Intro to: www.affiliatedotcom.com group

My Intro to: http://affiliatedotcom.com group

My name is Faisal Zaman  from New York.
I am an “Infopreneur”
I LOVE WHAT I DO!
My Blog: https://startupaffiliate.wordpress.com
I thought this course was just what I needed to make it in affiliate marketing. I have been on line for about 11 years. I like the fact that this is a community and I can get to know other like minded people. Eben Pagen is is one of my top mentor and I heard about Mike from Eben.
NO doubt its the best service in the Internet world /=

Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization video 51 min

Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization video 51 min

Mark Ling:

Welcome everybody to Affilorama.com’s interview with search engine expert Marc Lindsay. In this interview I’m going to grill Marc Lindsay until we’ve extracted from him every bit of search engine knowledge he possesses, so everyone out there can learn how to get their sites ranked highly in the search engines, get lots of visitors and make lots of money online. Ready, Marc?

Marc Lindsay:

Looking forward to it, Mark.

Mark Ling:

Ok, first of all for all those newbies out there, can you tell us briefly what SEO or Search Engine Optimization actually is?

Marc Lindsay:

Search engine optimization describes the methods you can use, both on-page and off- page, (we’ll get into those terms later) to enable your webpage to be ranked higher for certain predetermined keywords within a search engine, and give you more visitors as a result. So it’s basically just things you can do with your website to give you a better chance of ranking well with Google, MSN, Yahoo and other search engines.

Mark Ling:

So you’re saying that if someone had (for example) a website about paragliding, and a lot of people were searching on Google, Yahoo or MSN for “paragliding in Rome.” (I don’t know if many people are actually searching for this term, I’m just making one up here.) Anyway, you’d try to optimize your site so that you’d appear at the top of the results page when someone types “paragliding in Rome” into their search engine, is that right?

Marc Lindsay:

Yeah, the ultimate goal with search engines is to be listed in the first three pages of the results. That’s the goal for pretty much all search engines. If you’re not within the first three pages of results for that search term, you might as well not be listed at all. The most traffic comes from the first ten positions, and that goes for any search engine.

Advanced SEO Tips with Marc Lindsay and Daniel Turner Video

If you haven’t seen the Beginners SEO lesson that I have just done previously with Marc, then watch that first – that’s where you’ll get 85-90% of your search engine gains. This is for advanced search engine optimizers when you’ve already gone ahead and done everything you need to do in the beginners stuff ok?

On-page SEO factors: What works, and what doesn’t

In our introductory lesson “Getting traffic to your site with SEO” we talked about how search engine optimization (SEO) is the general term for things you can do to make your website appear closer to the top of the natural search engine listings.

We also talked about how SEO falls into two categories: On-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page being the things you can change within your website to make it more attractive to the search engines, and off-page being the things that aren’t actually on your website that can help bump you up — like getting links from other websites.

In this lesson we’re going to go over some on-page factors for your website. There are some tricks which are widely acknowledged to work, some tricks that might have an effect, and others which used to make a difference but have become less useful as the search engines have got smarter. Because you’ll probably see people talking about all of these at some point or other, we’ll go over them all.

Link Building Tips

#1: Find out which sites are linking to your competitors’ websites.

In my books this is the first and most obvious place to start. Sites that are linking to your competitors are probably going to be interested in linking to you as well, (provided your site is as good as your competitors’ sites, of course!).

Use Traffic Travis’s Backlink Checker tool on the top-ranked sites for your keywords. See who is linking to them, and then contact these sites to see if they’re interested in recommending your site to their readers too. Perhaps the links come from directories, in which case you can submit your site as well. Perhaps the link isn’t free, and you have to sell out a little cash to get your site linked to. In any case, you know that these links are helping your competitors get the top ranked spots in the search engines, so chances are good that the links will help you too.

#2: Build or provide top-quality content

One of the best and most effective ways of getting links from another website is to create some unique, high-quality content. Not only will you attract links naturally from other sites, it also makes it a lot easier to ask for a link if you can provide some sort of benefit for the other site’s visitors.

You might also try offering to write a unique article for the other website in return for a credit or a link. That way you’re offering them something valuable, and you get a valuable backlink. This kind of link is good because you’ll probably be one of just a few links on the page.

#3: Social Media Link Building

There are a lot of different social media sites on the internet these days. These sites are great for both click-thru traffic and helping your search engine rankings. Some of my favourites are:

• Squidoo.com
• Hubpages.com
• Twitter.com
• Digg.com
• Del.icio.us
• Wikipedia (very good if you can get links from here)
• 43things.com

There are many, many more of these sites out there. They don’t all work in the same way, but they can all help.

With Squidoo, for instance, you can build a page full of information on your chosen topic. These pages are typically well-received by the search engines. You can earn money directly off your lens, or use it to point to your main site.

If you can create some interesting or timely content on your site and submit it to Digg, you might find yourself facing more traffic than you know how to handle when your site makes the front page.

With 43things you can tap into targeted niche markets full of people who want to do or learn something. Start up a blog on this site and join in conversations with other people, then watch the traffic begin to flow.

The key is to provide useful content to these places. Spamming social networking sites is usually a pretty bad idea.

One tool we really like is Twitter. Google loves Twitter as well, and if you set up a Twitter profile and begin “twittering” (posting mini-blogs or status updates) then you’ll find the Googlebot crawling all over it. This is great for getting your sites indexed in the search engines, or letting the search engines know when you add new content to your page or your other social networking sites. Just Twitter it, and they will come!

#4: Link building with blogs and feed directories

It’s a really good idea to submit your site to all relevant RSS feed and blog directories. It is a great way of getting more exposure.

Popular directories include:

• Technorati
• Google Blog Search
• Bloglines

#5: Building content to get links (Link baiting)

You could call this the “if you build it, they will come” method for building links. Simply create a good site with useful content, or an interesting tool, and people will naturally want to link to it.

If this seems like hard work, think about the amount of time and money you’ll spend buying or trading links. What if you could put that time and money into building a tool, and then got all your links for free?

Content that is created purely to attract links is often called “link bait”. Here’s a list of types of “link bait” from Wikipedia:

• Informational hooks – Provide information that a reader may find very useful. Some rare tips and tricks or any personal experience through which readers can benefit.
• News hooks – Provide fresh information and garner citations and links as the news spreads.
• Humor hooks – Tell a funny story or a joke. A bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons can also prove to be link bait.
• Evil hooks – Saying something unpopular or mean may also yield a lot of attention. Writing about something that is not appealing about a product or a popular blogger. Provide strong reasons for it.
• Tool hooks – Create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.
• Widgets hooks – A badge or tool, that can be placed or embedded on other websites, with a link included.

Don’t underestimate this method, it’s a VERY good way of gaining one-way links.

#6: Directory submissions

Submitting your site to directories is an easy way of getting links. The links aren’t usually very good quality, but it’s a good place to start.

How to submit to directories:

You can pay someone to submit your site to 100+ directories (manually) for as little as $15 if you use a source such as Submit2Edge.com, or do it yourself with Directory Submitter Gold. This software drastically streamlines what can be a very tedious process, andwehighly recommend it.

The reason you need to do it manually (as opposed to using the automatic submission services and software that you’ll see around) is because most good directories won’t accept automatic submissions.

What to write in your directory listings:

Keep in mind that it’s the anchor text that matters for your search engine rankings, and that directories will usually create the anchor text out of whatever you give as your website name or title. So if we wanted to add my SitStayFetch dog training website to a directory, we might submit the following:

Dog Training with SitStayFetch

Contains in depth information about how to train your dog including a free 6 part mini course, comprehensive ebook, videos, bonuses and an email based consultation.

Directories often ask that you don’t just list a bunch of keywords as your title, since it’s not particularly meaningful. In this example we’ve managed to work my “dog training” keyword into the title, but we’ve also included my product name so that it doesn’t look spammy.

I recommend that you vary your directory submission anchor text a little to make it seem natural to the search engines. we also recommend that you use your keywords in the title field as naturally as you can — Don’t just stuff your titles with keywords!

How much does it cost to submit to a directory?

It varies. Some are free, some require a small payment, some require a large payment, and others ask that you include a reciprocal link. we don’t really recommend going with reciprocal linking directories (you don’t get as much benefit as a one-way link, and if the directory engages in behaviour the search engines deem to be “unseemly”, you might end up getting penalized by association), but some of the most valuable directories require payment and (if you can afford it) can be very good investments if you’re going after some particularly competitive search terms.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Yahoo.com—$299/year, but many sites we submit to Yahoo end up getting top-3 results in Yahoo over time.
• Business.com—$199/year
• ExactSeek.com—$12 you can get a top 10 listing.
• Dmoz.org (free) — DMOZ is in an open content directory project that organizes Website listings across the Internet. Its name derives form directory.mozilla.org, which was once its original URL. The directory is maintained by volunteer editors and serves directories of the leading search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Overture, Alexa and more who use its titles, descriptions and category metadata.
• Stpt.com—$99 submission, another good directory to be linked from.

If this looks expensive, don’t worry — there are many free directories you can submit to as well. Even if you just stick with the free sites, you’ll still get a lot of backlinks. Often it isn’t really necessary to fork out for paid directory links when you’re going after less competitive terms. (For instance, if we tried to tackle “dog training” head-on, it’s pretty competitive. If we step sideways and go after “how to train a German Shepherd”, however, we would find it much easier to rank highly.)

#7: Article Writing & Submission

Article sites like ezinearticles.com are another good place to get backlinks. You can submit your own articles to these directories, with links either inside your article or at the bottom of the article in what’s called an “author box” or a “bio box”.

Not only do you get one backlink then and there from the article directory itself, these sites are also places where website owners come to find free content for their own sites. The website owners can take your article from the article site and publish it on their own site, so long as they keep your bio box (and all its links) intact.

What does this mean for you?

It means that by submitting one article to an article directory, you could end up getting hundreds of backlinks when your article is picked up by other websites.

IMPORTANT: Write quality articles!

It’s important that you write relevant, good-quality articles for these directories. Firstly, the article site moderators might reject your article outright if it’s particularly poor. Secondly, other webmasters won’t use your article if it’s terrible, so you won’t get many backlinks. Thirdly, by creating good, unique content, you give your article a chance for ranking highly in the search engines. Yes that’s right…. your article can be picked up by the search engines. You might even find that it outranks your real site! This is great because people will click through to your site from the article, but only if they’re interested in what you have to say — another reason to write good, interesting articles!

There are hundreds of article sites out there, here are some of my favorites:

• www.goarticles.com
• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.articlecity.com
• http://www.thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/suggest.asp
• www.amazines.com
• http://www.netterweb.com/articles
• http://www.articleinsider.com

I strongly recommend that you submit your articles to these article sites manually with a tool like Article SubmitterSubmit2Edge to submit them for you. (which also comes with hundreds of article sites pre-loaded, so you just have to plug in your article and go), or pay someone like

Much like with directory submissions, automated software might not work very well because many article directories block these tools. (Article Submitter isn’t an automated software… it just streamlines the process!)

#8: Local Link Opportunities

Submitting your site to any relevant local directories can provide valuable links and may help you to rank higher in regional searches.

For example, if your business is located in New Zealand, you should submit your site to http://www.nzs.co.nz

Or if you are in the US, you might submit your site to your local Chambers of Commerce, or to the Better Business Bureau.

#9 Link brokers and purchasing links

It is possible to rent links from other websites, but be careful: Google is starting to clamp down on people caught buying links. The red flag is often raised when you rent a link for a period, and then your link disappears when you stop renting it.

I personally prefer to purchase permanent one-way links rather than renting.

You might also try this new angle on link purchasing: Paying a blogger to write about your product or website. This can be a great way to get relevant links. Sites like ReviewMe can arrange these deals for you.

You may come across link brokers at forums.digitalpoint.com, or sites like www.textlinkbrokers.com. Even if brokers don’t explicitly offer permanent one-way links, you can often negotiate something.

#10 Forum & community links

Interacting in public forums and communities can be a great way to get links to your site. Many people engaging in forums and blogs will post links to their website in their footer or profile. So long as you’re contributing to the community in a positive way and not just spamming… these links are usually well tolerated.

Unfortunately these links aren’t the best for improving your search rankings. Many sites implement “nofollow” tags on their links, which effectively blocks the search engine spiders from counting the link as a vote, or passing on PR. (Note that this is true for Google, but other search engines might not pay much attention to “nofollow” tags, so the links might still help your rankings in those search engines.)

The real benefit with forums and communities lies in getting targeted traffic actually clicking through on your links. If you’re a genuine contributor to the community, people will be interested in what else you have to say. You might find that this offers your business a bigger boost than slogging away on your search engine optimization.

#11 Press releases

If you have something very newsworthy going on on your website, then you may wish to consider submitting a press release about it. If it gets picked up by major news organizations like cnn.com, this can be a very powerful source of links and visitors.

#12 Donations to charity

Some charity websites have extremely high PR in Google, and many of them will give you a link from their home page or another high PR page in exchange for a generous donation.

#13 Social media and Web 2.0 links

We’ll look at this strategy in more detail in other lessons, but in short you can gain a large number of links from sites like www.squidoo.com, simply by setting up your own presence there and linking back to your main site. As with most things, you need to create some good quality content for your Squidoo (or similar) site, but this can be a very powerful tactic since these sites are often highly regarded by the search engines.

#14 Private blog and article networks

I really like this method of gaining high quality relevant links because you have the ability to access sites and links that very few of your competitors will bother with.

There are some good quality blog networks out there: Portal Feeder, for instance, has over 50 blogs in its Blog Network. If you’re a Portal Feeder member you can write a relevant blog post and submit it to the appropriate blog(s) in their network. You can get some really good backlinks to your site through these posts. It’s a particularly good way of getting deep links to your content.

#15 Blog/article networks that we recommend:

• PLR Pro—A private label article site that also comes with a blog network.
• PortalFeeder—A site packed full of tools to help you gain higher search engine rankings.
• Article Underground—Another private label article site that comes with a great blog network. (I actually don’t use the articles in this site and feel that their blog network is more the value here.)
• Linkvana
• Unique Article Wizard—we’ve only just recently started using this resource and it seems to be producing great benefits.