In previous posts we have looked at methods for making money as an affiliate such as “Setting up your own affiliate program“, “Identifying, researching and targeting a niche to earn revenue as an affiliate”, “Making money from your existing website” and “Creating a website to make money”. In this post we will delve into ways you can increase your affiliate commission by looking beyond your website.

Affiliate marketing can offer you more many more opportunities than just placing links and banners on your Website to generate commission. Your affiliate links can be put pretty much anywhere you can think of, below are a few ideas.

Twitter: Send out your affiliate link in a tweet along with a recommendation to increase the likelihood of it being clicked on. Be honest where the link is going though to avoid becoming spam! You are also more likely to have people re-tweet it too expanding your reach.

Email footer: This is quite a passive method but one that requires no effort after set up, and over time can pick up some healthy commission. Simply add your affiliate link in to your HTML footer so every time you send an email, there is a chance you can earn commission. For example:

John Smith
Acme Inc
Tel: 01234 567890
www.acmeinc.com
Authorized Heart Internet hosting affiliate

If you are a Heart Internet web hosting affiliate, we have created an Email footer generator to help create yours quickly and easily with your tracking automatically inserted.

Facebook: This can be in the form of a recommendation if someone is looking for hosting or you can post it on your wall for people to find. Again, it is nice and simple and easy to do.

Newsletter/ Email shot: If you capture your visitor’s contact information sending them a newsletter or specific mail shot containing your affiliate link can have large rewards. This can take the form of a news item amongst many, an advert within the newsletter or you could send out a dedicated email. Again, if you are a Heart Internet web hosting affiliate, we have made two email templates available with your tracking added; one for consumers and another for businesses.

Forum signatures: Working in a similar way to Email footers, if you are active on a forum, add your affiliate link to your signature. For example:

JohnSmith88
I use Heart Internet web hosting

Do you have any methods for expanding your reach beyond your website? If so, leave a comment below to share it with fellow affiliates…

Following on from the recent post about SEO myths I thought I would expand the idea in to my personal favourite marketing channel, Search Engine Pay Per Click advertising (SEPPC or just PPC to its friends). Below are some of the most common misconceptions I come across when explaining PPC to others or reading articles online.

If you are just getting started with PPC I would recommend you read Google’s beginner’s guides inside and out.

You need to be number 1
Research has shown that the top position does receive more clicks than any other, the 2nd ad slot the 2nd highest and so on (Source: Enquiro research), however being top is not always the most cost effective place to be. If your PPC strategy is based around direct sales (the alternative may be a branding strategy where direct CPA is less of a concern) the CPA in position 1 is unprofitable then you are running at a loss no matter how many you sell. Lower positions may drive less traffic but at a price you can afford.

PPC is a short-term quick fix until organic traffic turns up
This is a common stick thrown at PPC by SEO professionals with a bit of a chip on their shoulder that PPC takes the lion’s share of search budgets. The reality is the two should be viewed as part of a joint strategy and combining the two together increases both of their respective click through rates than if they were run separately.

PPC is fire and forget
I would argue that PPC requires more attention than your SEO. Any changes you make have an immediate impact and this goes the same for your competitors. The PPC market place is constantly shifting and optimising and reviewing your campaigns is a daily effort.

Broad match will bleed you dry
If you advertise through search engine pay per click and use nothing but exact matches you will be running a very tight ship but you will also be missing out on a lot of potential (and relevant) traffic from keywords you haven’t thought of. With 25% of all searches thought to be completely unique (i.e. they have never been used by anyone ever before) you can’t possibly cover every single search term as an exact match.

On the other side, if you use broad match and phrase match keywords you run the risk of seeing your advert triggered alongside a keyword that isn’t actually related to your site. For example, if you bid on ‘web banner design’ as a phrase match you would also be shown for ‘FREE web banner design’. Common sense may suggest you change it to an exact match but you would then miss out on ‘GOOD QUALITY web banner design’ etc. Negative keywords act to prevent this from happening and don’t be surprised to find your negative keyword list is much larger than your keyword list (for one of our campaigns we have just under 600 negative keywords).

Read more about negative keywords http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=6100

Your website is independent of your campaign
This certainly used to be true but since Google introduced on-site factors as part of the quality score algorithm PPC advertisers must consider the landing pages with regards to its relevance to the keywords and advert. Is the keyword in your page title, the page URL, the H tags, the main body etc?

Click here for more information about improving your quality score through your landing page: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&lev=index&cbid=-guigqu8731em&answer=6141&src=cb

PPC has an influence on natural rankings
No. Spend as much money as you want, it’s not going to happen.

PPC is all about directly measurable ROI
There is an increasing step change in advertiser’s attitudes to measuring PPC. The previously held belief that PPC is 100% about directly attributable ROI is shifting as we start to appreciate that a customer’s journey is varied and takes in multiple marketing touch points and online marketing uses a “last click wins” model.

We have recently received several requests for the ability to add SRV DNS records to domains, and we were happy to oblige. For those who don’t know, DNS stands for Domain Name System and is how a computer translates a domain name like heartinternet.co.uk to the address of the actual computer that the website lives on.

There are many types of DNS records that describe how to find different services such as the web, and email servers. SRV records let some more modern programs find out how and where to connect to potentially any service. SRV records have only been widely adopted in relatively new protocols like SIP and XMPP, but it is expected that they will become more commonplace as additional protocols are developed.

With an SRV record you can specify different servers for the same service and split the requests between them in whatever ratio you decide. This is called load-balancing and is mostly only used for services with a high volume of users. It is also possible to specify two servers and have the second only be used if the first becomes unreachable. This is called redundancy and helps to prevent downtime on important services.

Our DNS management page now includes sections for managing your SRV records, but you should only use them if you need the records and are confident with what you are doing. You could potentially break your entire site in just a few wrong clicks. If you need an SRV record and are confident of your ability then click on the link, choose the domain to manage and click on the shiny new DNS Management icon.

Our support database has a more technical description of SRV records, which is advised reading if you are going to be adding records.

SEO is an area that all website owners are at least vaguely aware of and most know they need to do certain things to help get ranked higher. Despite the importance and size of the industry there are myths that persist surrounding SEO I want to look in to.

Meta keywords matter
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords here”/>
There is absolutely no harm in adding this information to your site but it won’t help either. Thanks to spammers over using it to artificially get high rankings in non relevant searches it hasn’t been used in search engine ranking factors since the turn of the century.  BuySellAds is so confident of this they have the following…

One of the few practical uses they still have is for webmasters conducting competitor research to view which keywords their competitors are targeting!

In fact Google have even come out themselves to say they take no notice of them! You can read the article here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Meta description doesn’t matter
<meta name="description" content=”Information on egg production, recipes, egg sizes and nutrition.”>
Again, no longer used for ranking purposes but this time it is still worth writing a strong meta description. This is the information search engines use in the results page underneath your title. It won’t get you ranked higher but it could increase the amount of traffic you get.

Buying links will inevitably get you blocked from Google
One of the most prominent members of staff at Google is its head of web spam Matt Cutts (his blog is here).  He is often the face of Google when any changes are made and at exhibitions/ conferences regarding search. He is also very vocal on Google’s attitude to buying links and how efficient Google is at finding out when this has happened and punishing sites as a result.

I have seen websites (and they are pretty big brands in their industry) I know buy links disappear from the organic results but equally there are others I know buy links extensively that are very well ranked.  If you are found to have done this aggressively you are leaving yourself open to be being removed from the results index, however I would argue that their system of discovering link buying is not as efficient as Google would have you believe. My advice here would be to approach with caution and not be surprised if you do get slapped down!

Creating content purely with the user in mind will get you ranked highly
The following quote if from Google’s search engine optimisation starter guide…

“Even though this guide’s title contains the words “search engine”, we’d like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors of your site. They’re the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site’s best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines.” http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

They are essentially saying not to think about SEO when you write your website content and if your site is relevant for your readers it will also be relevant to Google. Unfortunately from my personal experience in the hosting industry this is not the case. Content stuffed full of keywords that is difficult to read and offers no or little useful information for the reader helps a lot of sites get ranked very well, in fact I personally own one website (unrelated to web hosting) that saw a big jump in rankings when I stuffed it full of keywords!

SEO is influenced by PPC
Not at all. Not even slightly. You can spend millions a year on PPC and get no SEO benefit or spend absolutely nothing and be ranked #1 in the organic results.  Simple!

A Google SiteMap will get you ranked higher
A Google SiteMap makes it quicker and easier for Google to learn about your site’s structure, which in turn will allow them to improve their crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future.

“Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site they might not otherwise discover. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.” http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

They are definitely worth having to get your site indexed quickly and more of your pages indexed. However, having one does not mean your site will get an extra ranking boost over any site that doesn’t have a SiteMap.

Fresh from the creative depths of our web design workshop has emerged a pair of brand new HostPay templates. These templates have taken on a different look from our previous releases as to give our customers a greater choice when selecting a style for their web hosting company.

Both templates have adapted characteristics of modern looking web 2.0 sites you may find online, this breaks away from the more traditional style of design web hosting companies have used over the years and gives you something that’s completely different, but still conveys the right message. Each templates homepage caters for a large promotional pitch at the top, this can be changed to anything you desire, we’ve also added a sprinkle of jQuery magic to one of the templates, to create a slideshow effect that dynamically rotates various messages. We’ve taken the time to include a couple of blank message templates which you can change accordingly using your favorite graphics package (Mines Fireworks!) or use it as a basis to create your own! As usual the templates are built with XHTML/CSS and are fully W3C standards compliant.

We hope you enjoy these new-look templates and would certainly love to hear what you think about them!

Screenshots below:

Template 1:

Template 2:

We recently addressed the issue of what we mean by unlimited web hosting here at Heart Internet with regards to the technical elements of web hosting (e.g. web space, bandwidth etc) but it can just as easily be used to describe the unlimited possibilities of our reseller hosting.

No limits on how many websites you can host
We don’t place any artificial limits on how many websites you can host. 1, 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000, if you can attract them, you can host them on our servers!

No limits on how customisable you want it to be
Every aspect of your reseller hosting is fully customisable with no extra fees required to make it so. If you can think of it you can brand it.

No limits on adding more features
We want you to be a success and the best way to do that is untie your hands and let you sell without fear of being charged more for doing well!

The price we charge per month (£29.99) or per year (£299.99) is the only fee we will want from you for your reseller hosting. There are no hidden fees or extras to unlock features that are an essential part of reselling hosting. We won’t charge you to give your customers a control panel, to re-brand the webmail or offer graphical stats and we won’t give you a basic package (e.g. 5 MySQL free) and then ask you to pay for more afterwards.

No limits on what you can sell
We don’t charge you an extra monthly fee for the ability to resell domain names or dedicated servers; you just pay the cost of the domain or server itself. This means that if for any reason you don’t sell any over a time period you don’t have to pay us anything.

If you are new to Heart Internet check out our reseller comparison table to see how we hold up against other web hosting resellers.

Blogs are a great way to increase traffic to your site but only if they are given the same amount of attention as the rest of your marketing.

The power of a successful blog is well documented and the promise of more traffic and brand engagement draws in countless webmasters every year. At Heart Internet we first started our blog in 2007 instantly making the same mistake many other businesses have made when it comes to blogging; we didn’t know why we wanted one, we just knew they were the fashionable thing so we needed one! The posts were irregular and were often just product updates or press releases. At the turn of 2009 the blog’s existence was called in to question and it was agreed we needed to make wholesale changes or remove it altogether. Since then we have seen a 400% increase in traffic to the blog and a marked increase in reader engagement thanks to a fundamental shift towards providing our readers with useful content to help them make the most of their website, encouraging comments and a conscious effort to market our blog as resource.

Content is king
What you say, how much you say and how you say it should all be constructed with your target audience in mind. The two big questions to ask are “Why should anyone read the blog?” and “Why would they want to come back and read it again?” Corporate press releases or staff hires are fine in moderation, but not if that is all the blog is about, people simply won’t read it. To gain traction with a reader a blog post has to be informative, interesting, amusing, original or shocking. Committing yourself to this long term takes a lot of time and effort. If you approach the blog something to be done when you get a spare minute, it will fail.

On the flip side, It is just as easy to fall in to the trap of sacrificing quality for quantity under the misconception the more posts published the better, regardless of what they say. Jakob Neilson’s site www.useit.com has a relatively small number of articles published each month but each of them brings some useful insight in to usability for webmasters to apply and as result is a respected source of information. Popular topics to try include top X lists, Interviews with known industry figures/ site owners, competitions, “How to…” guides, free resources and biting industry commentary.

Gaining and keeping your readers
Writing a blog no one is reading is a depressing affair. You spend hours writing an insightful article that you are genuinely proud of and your analytics shows a big fat zero for page views. If your blog is part of a larger site, prominently linking to the blog from the home page will deliver instant results and you should also consider adding a feed to the home page to show the latest posts. If you send out newsletters, link to stories from your blog to help drive traffic and avoid duplicating work. If you have a standalone blog, attempt to capture your reader’s contact details through any means at your disposal e.g. user registration, competitions, twitter followers etc. and then use this data to send alerts or monthly emails/ newsletters listing your blog’s new posts to proactively pull in traffic.

Rather than attempting to build your own community from scratch consider engaging with existing communities, be it forums, niche networks or leaving post comments on popular blogs. If you are confident in your writing skills and knowledge, approaching sites to write for them is a great way to gain exposure, position yourself as an expert and get a high quality link to your site. For example, if your blog was about search engine marketing www.searchengineland.com would be a logical site to approach with an idea.

When you get started out it is vital you treat every reader like gold dust replying to every comment they leave, and just as importantly, replying as yourself and not ‘The Website’. Personalisation shows your readers the human side of your blog and using author photos, comments from other team members, and your name rather than a generic name (e.g. Admin) encourages further engagement with you personally rather than a faceless website. www.seomoz.org is a great example of using personalisation to create a community based around their blog.

We are pleased to announce that all Heart Internet resellers can now use PayPal Pro to take payment on their website. PayPal Pro allows you to accept payment directly on your website or by phone, fax and mail. Customers can pay you with all major debit and credit cards without having to leave your website as well as use their PayPal balance and activate bank transfers.

To get started log in to your HostPay control panel and click on ‘Payment Gateways’. From here you can input all your details and styling information to activate PayPal Pro. Before starting we would recommend you read our payment gateway set up guides which will help you get up and running as quickly as possible.

This follows the recently added Customer support ticket system in HostPay and Exclusive monthly contract dedicated servers for resellers.

A lot of web hosting companies, including ourselves, make bold claims about offering unlimited web hosting features such as unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases etc. We see a lot of discussion on forums about what this actually means and questioning how anything can really be unlimited when no one (not even Google or Microsoft) can have an unlimited number of servers to draw power from.

What we mean by unlimited is that we have so many resources at our disposal and we have invested so much money in to our infrastructure that our customers never have to worry about hitting a limit because the allowance available is so large it won’t ever be stretched to breaking point.

Unlike other web hosts our business model is not based around running servers at capacity to wring every last cent out of the bottom line. Why? Because this ignores the unpredictable nature of internet usage. If one customer has a sudden and dramatic spike in traffic it could bring the entire shared server down, affecting hundreds of other customers. We just don’t think it’s worth the risk.

With this in mind, we build in extra capacity in to a server and don’t allow any server to get even near maximum capacity so that no customer can drain a server’s performance levels. The same goes for bandwidth, database servers and mail servers.

We have run a handful of blog posts WordPress over the past year covering topics such as top plug-ins and interviews with those who work within the burgeoning WordPress economy. One of the patterns we have seen has been the increasing use of WordPress as much more than just a blog and even beyond just a simple CMS. The sites below are great examples of how WordPress can be used imaginatively to create something new and original.

http://wpvote.com/

Describing itself as “Digg for WordPress fanatics” users can submit WordPress related sites and content for people to vote up, much like Digg.

http://icondock.com/

This site has combined WordPress and the WP eCommerce plug in to create a very pleasurable
shopping experience. Pick the icon you want, click and hold the image and drag it in to the basket to the left. Don’t want it anymore? Just click on the cross to remove it.

http://wpshift.com/

Wpshift.com has brought drop and drag features you would normally associate with a WYSIWYG site builder allowing users to create their own unique layout.

http://camachocigars.com/

If I hadn’t checked out the page source I wouldn’t have believed this is powered by WordPress. This is a great example of how the back end and be integrated in to a fully functioning CMS.

http://magazine.wsj.com/

The Wall Street Journal shows how WordPress is ideal for magazine style websites looking to upload regular content.

http://www.thesalonhair.com/

Bold and glossy implementation of WordPress from a hairdressing salon in Lancashire.

http://www.nocturn.ro/

Very stylish portfolio site with a subtle, but addictive, animated background (try scrolling up and down).

http://www.lordlikely.com/

This is one of the most charming websites I have seen for some time. The subject and writing style is heavily influenced by the Flashman novels but as an example of the flexibility of WordPress it is worth taking a look.

http://searchinsidevideo.com

Another website you wouldn’t think of as using WordPress on face value. Very slick animation, clear messaging and simple (but original) navigation abound.

http://www.spotify.com

Fast becoming a key channel for the music industry due to its massive user growth over the past 12 months, spotify’s entire site, from pre-sales to order process, has been built around WordPress.

Doyou know of any WordPress powered websites that should have been included here, or do you own one? Let us know in the comments below so we can take a look!