eBay Partner Network Changing the Rules

The eBay Partner Network (EPN) is such a wonderful moneymaker, depending on how you play it...EPN allows us moneymakers to place affiliate links, banners and flash displays in places like Blogger, Squidoo and Hubpages. People head to the eBay site through our links and we score! Unfortunately, there's been a recent email bulletin sent out by the EPN people claiming that they are making a major set of policy changes which is going to reduce our abilities to profit:

Important updates to the Network Code of Conduct include the following:

* eBay Partner Network does not compensate for sales that come from invalid click activity, which includes, but is not limited to the following:
o clicks generated by a publisher clicking on their own ads
o automated clicking tools/traffic sources/robots
o activity generated by other deceptive software
* Publishers may only place links and/or promotional content on sites they own. Affiliate links on third party sites such as Craigslist, MySpace, etc. are not allowed.
* You will not redirect any traffic to middle servers for the sole purpose of masking your referring source of traffic. This includes the use of URL shortening services (including but not limited to tinyurl.com, short.to and cloakedlink.com).

There's been some confusion about what this all means exactly, (see Network Code of Conduct for more). Some say it means no more EPN on Squidoo or Hubpages. However, there was never any specific mention of either of those sites in eBay's language. What they did "seem to say" is that you can't put tiny URL links or re-directs on your sites to mask eBay partner links, and that you can't use eBay links on sites that don't allow these affiliate links under their terms. Way to confuse the masses eBay Partner Network! If it's a "partner network", I'd think that means we all work together. Instead, eBay's recent notice gives current, active EPN members til August 1st to get their sites straightened out. That can mean a lot of work for those of us with lots of internet properties around the net! There has been a lot of buzz on the eBay Partner network forums, with EPN staff chiming in to clear some things up, sorta.

Of course the hubpages community is up in arms about this, discussing the amount of work it will take to remove all of the capsules from their hundreds of hubs. Luckily, one of the Hub staff members has mentioned they have sent communication to EPN, but will also be working on a built-in tool with hubs to allow mass removal of all eBay modules off your hubs, should this be necessary. The Hub staff also kindly suggested they would switch things over so that they would get 100% of the eBay revenue. At least they're finding solutions to help the masses, rather than getting in the way!

My advice is either get working to remove your eBay affiliate links from places that they shouldn't be (i.e. sites like article directories, myspace, facebook, squidoo, twitter). Remember that Squidoo uses eBay revenue sharing modules, so you should be most concerned with removing affiliate links you may have placed into your lenses. It will mean time and work, but it will also mean staying in this eBay moneymaking program, which is starting to look like it wants to be exclusive to your own properties, such as websites you pay to run. We've all got a good 10 days or so to get our butts in gear, so maybe break your internet properties (Blogger blogs, Squidoo lenses, Hubs, etc) into manageable lists and check off your progress as you examine them and remove the improper EPN links.

And of course my other advice is to tap into the many other moneymakers that you can choose from online. Diversify. These programs change rules and go out of business all the time, so constant worrying over one will just be too much stress...So don't stress over EPN and find more ways to make money online!

PS: On a side note it seems as of today 7/20 that the EPN reporting system is having some issues, so don't despair if you're not seeing stats on your dashboard. If you are, maybe I should despair! ;)

SEO & Keywords will Make You Money!

Let's face it folks, there's no such thing as shortcuts to internet millions, but there are some very hardworking individuals out there sharing their knowledge and insight. One I've mentioned is Courtney Tuttle of The Keyword Academy. I recently joined just due to the fact that the Hubpages phenomenon has really taken off. Joining TKA allows you to view training videos done by Court and his associate mark, and also provides you with forums as well as some great webinars. They dedicated a webinar just to the building of hubpages and how to get it ranked.

Another guy that I respect for his hardworking online money making efforts is Grizzly who also teaches How to Make Money Online. He hasn't shown himself via any recent posts, meaning he's extremely busy working away, which is what we all need to learn to do to make money in this game. But if you immerse yourself in his blog entries, you'll find a true "wealth of information". His posts may seem to go on and on, but that's his style. They're still full of Golden nuggets of wisdom for how to make money online.

Now enter Ben of Make Money Online with SEO. Ben just might be the hardest working dude online from what he's written at his blog. He apparently forces himself to create 100's upon 100's of hubpages, Squidoo lenses, ezine articles and info barrel articles. In fact, reading his blog taught me of Info Barrels which is yet another way to improve your link power and make money. Ben shares a strategy of creating a hubpage, info barrel and ezine article all based around the same keyword or phrase. You then link from the ezine to the info barrel to the hub page, and watch it rank! I'm testing this as you read this, by creating infobarrels to hook up to my existing hubs. InfoBarrels also give you a 70% cut of the Adsense, while Hubs give you just 60% of the impressions. Ben is working towards an income of $50 to $100 a day. Not too shabby and his writing is truly inspirational to those who can't motivate themselves to just do it, when it comes to online work.

Now many gurus stress how you need to join social media sites and become an A-List blogger. John Chow and Shoemoney entice us with pictures of their lavish dinners and trips to see UFC fights, as well as pictures of beautiful girls from trade shows. Readers are sucked in and just toss up a pretty looking MMO blog to finally realize the good life. But it just doesn't come that easily. And that's why SEO and Keywords are key to your online success. I've seen it myself and attribute my success to the inspiration of Courtney Tuttle, Grizzly and most recently Ben of MMO with SEO, because these guys throw themselves into their work and just do it.

Due to this you don't see these guys posting so much on a daily basis. And why is that? Because they are busy with countless other projects making money. They aren't here to show us what they're eating, or which show girl they caught on their new digital camera. They aren't sharing predictions for UFC 100 or showing us who they bumped elbows with at the blog expos. Again, they're working, because work is what produces income, unless you inherit a fortune, win the lottery or discover oil on your property. Lesson learned: work=money, but I think we all already knew that, we just don't choose to accept it. Accept it, and get busy making yourself a nice extra income online!

Micro Niche Finder Review

Micro Niche Finder Review

Micro Niche Finder is a nifty application developed by James Jones which can help anyone make money online, whether it be blogging novices all the way up to the much more experienced SEO wizards. I had been reading a lot of buzz and positive things about the Micro Niche Finder software and after having some recent record months of online earnings, I wanted to break through to a higher level, rather than plateau or fall off. I decided it was time to take a serious plunge and make an investment in my online business to generate even more income. More money will allow me to invest in other aspects such as paying others to write content.

I consider myself to be moderately skilled with identifying good niche areas to write blog posts or Hubs or Squidoo Lenses on, but wanted to take it to the next level. I've always done well with Adsense, and have started to do better with the eBay Partner Network in addition to a few other programs. Micro Niche Finder seemed like the app to get to help me start working on making some money with Clickbank, as well as creating new hubs and niche blogs. Also, automating the process of all that keyword research is something that can pay for itself. You've heard of "work smarter, not harder" right? Well Micro Niche FInder (MNF) allows you to do just that.

The MNF program is a quick download and easy to install, and comes with two receipt codes so you can use the program on two computers (maybe your PC and laptop, or work computer). Also, there's a recent bonus where they throw in a "MNF to go" Jumpdrive which comes in the mail within a week or so. There's several more nice bonuses which I'll mention further in the review. Anyhow, within mere seconds of purchasing the software I had an email sent to me with the download link, and within a minute or two I had it downloaded and installed. There's a "check for updates" feature you can click on as soon as you're up and running to make sure you're current, and from the looks of it a very good support system for help or inquiries.

So what exactly does Micro Niche Finder do? In a nutshell it will speed up your search for profitable niches that you can rank for and profit from. It allows you to type in a keyword, or phrase and then return the information us online money makers need most. You'll get back the related keywords and phrases that you just might have a good shot at ranking for. You get the CPC or Cost Per Click for Google Adwords ads, so you can get an idea if maybe a niche blog with Adsense on it will generate good money. You'll see the results count for the exact phrase in Google (the phrase if you type it into Google with "" around it). And you also get something called "SOC" which is a color-coded indicator of how good a chance you have to rank and beat other search results in Google for the term.

The fun doesn't stop there with MNF, as it includes many possible ways to take a term and make some good money. You can click on the term itself and bring up a pop-up menu of even more options, such as the ability to see the Google search results for that term. Or you can automatically search Ezine articles to see how many articles are written on that phrase. You can bring up Amazon's product results for the phrase, or Clickbank search results to see if there's affiliate products to sell. James Jones has a series of helpful moneymaking videos you can view at the Micro Niche Finder website to give an idea of what can be done with it.

In my estimation, this program's easy to navigate around and use for your moneymaking benefit. I already have a good handle on keywords and ranking for them, but feel this will give me a leg up on the competition. It may also expand my moneymaking into new venues.

What I love most about MNF is two things:

1) The SOC or Strength of Competition indicator. This shows you a number as well as a color code; red for don't bother, yellow for caution and green for go ahead and swoop in on this niche now!

2) The "Brainstorm" feature. It allows you to just click the Brainstorm button and Micro Niche Finder generates lists of hot products you can try to sell online. It's a very helpful feature that can really get your creative juices going. Not only that, but I noticed some niches with CPC's I had no clue about until hitting that button! Just for an example, "envelopes" has some CPC's around $4 - $5, which surprised me, although I'm not sure I want to start a niche blog about it. Squidoo lens perhaps? As you can see MNF definitely provides quite a bit of help to your online moneymaking possibilities.

All of that said, I encourage those of you who want to get even more serious about your online income to purchase Micro Niche Finder. Within a few months it'll likely pay for itself with the amount of extra income you're bringing in whether it be through Adsense, eBay, Amazon or Clickbank. And you will receive some great bonus e-books to get you brainstorming about Squidoo, eBay and PLR (private label rights) content, as well as a Google Adsense page generator, a jumpdrive and James Jones' regular email newsletter which so far has given me some nice tidbits for making money online. James Jones must be one creative (and rich) guy because he certainly has come up with some interesting ways to profit from the internet cash machine!

How to Make Money Online with Hubpages

Google's Wonder Wheel for SEO

(Google continues to give us more help in search engine ranking)

A newer innovation in the world of Google is the Google Wonder Wheel. You may have heard about this new search related feature you can tap into, or it may be news to you. I honestly learned of this just a few days ago, but already see it as a useful tool when it comes to crafting blog content and even creating hubpages to make money online.

Apparently, Google unveiled the Wonder Wheel experimentally to select internet users. If you do a simple Google search, you may notice under your search box and to the left a bit it says "Web" and then "Show options". Click "Show options" to unveil a panel of various Google search info you can tap into such as:

Videos
Forums
Reviews

Recent results
Past 24 hours
Past week
Past year

You'll also notice "› Standard view" which has the Wonder wheel below it. Click on that and you'll launch the Wonder Wheel for your particular keyword(s) search. In my example below I did a search on the late Michael Jackson. What it gives is a branch out from the original term to other terms and keyword phrases that internet users tend to search for.



This is helpful as it allows you to create a smart linking structure around your keyword you want to rank for. It gives you related material to write about on blog posts or Hubs or Squidoo lenses, which you can link back to the keyword phrase you're trying to rank for. Make sure to use SEO optimization when crafting your related posts and good internal linking. This cwill help solidify your ranking for key terms and bring you the extra traffic and potential money you're looking to earn.