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10 Free SEO Analysis Report Tools For Competitive Analysis

by MAHESH MOHAN on June 9, 2012

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs) for the targeted keywords. Some of the key aspects of SEO are: Keyword Research, Competitive Analysis (or Competitor Analysis), Website Architecture, Keyword Density, Internal Linking, SERP Tracking, Link Building, Social Media Marketing etc.

What is Competitor Analysis in SEO?

SEO Competitor Analysis (or Competitive Analysis) is all about “Learning From Your Competitors”. Competitor Analysis is the process of analyzing and understanding your competitors’ Internet Marketing strategies and techniques. It’s about identifying your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.

Why You Should Crowdsource Your Next Design, Logo & Web Page

by MAHESH MOHAN on June 7, 2012

What is Crowdsourcing?

If you’re reading this blogpost then I guess you already know what is Outsourcing & Offshoring which is all about contracting a business process to another company.

Now, What is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is a kind of Outsourcing. In Crowdsourcing, instead of outsourcing tasks to a single company, it is distributed to a group of people known as the ‘Crowd’. It’s the process of sourcing skills from a group of people.

Top 10 Free SEO Tips For Beginners (Post Google Panda & Penguin Updates)

by MAHESH MOHAN on June 4, 2012

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is here to stay. No matter what. But SEO practices keeps changing with time to reflect the changes in Search Engine algorithms. Keyword stuffing, Meta keywords, Mass blog commenting, Mass web directory and article directory submissions no longer helps to achieve higher ranks in Google SERPs.

So I’m going to introduce you 10 Best SEO Tips for beginners to follow post the Google Panda and Penguin updates. These are certainly the best SEO practices for 2012.

Top 10 Affiliate Networks & Programs For Affiliate Marketing

by MAHESH MOHAN on June 3, 2012

Top 10 Affiliate Networks & Programs

I didn’t have any plan to write this post. In fact for the past few days I was working on the topic “Learn Exactly How To Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing” but when I began writing, I realized that it would contain a hell lot of words. So I decided to split up the post and published an introduction to affiliate marketing at first.

And, now you know what is affiliate marketing and how does it work. Right? Okay. So let me introduce you some of the Best Affiliate Networks and Top Affiliate Programs so that you can join them straight away.

UPDATE: A new and improved version of this blog post is available at The 18 Best Affiliate Programs & Networks For Anyone And Everyone

List Of Top 10 Best Affiliate Networks & Affiliate Programs

There are tons of Affiliate Networks on the Internet but I am going to feature only the best among them. They offers the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners and have the top paying affiliate programs.

1. Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a free program that empowers online publishers to earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on a wide variety of online content, including: Site search results, Websites and Mobile webpages and apps.

Alexa Rank: #1

Minimum Payment Amount: $100

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, Western Union

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click

Referral Program: No

2. Commission Junction

Commission Junction (CJ), a ValueClick company, is a leading provider of performance-based marketing solutions. CJ facilitates and supports equitable, lucrative relationships between advertisers and publishers.

Alexa Rank: #303

Minimum Payment Amount: $100 (Check); $50 (Direct Deposit)

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: No

3. ClickBank

Founded in 1998, ClickBank is a secure online retail outlet for more than 50,000 digital products and 100,000 active affiliate marketers. It is the most effective and most profitable way to sell information over the Internet. Find tens of thousands of digital products to promote online.

Alexa Rank: #260

Minimum Payment Amount: $10

Payment Method(s): Check

Programs Offered: Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: No; But you can refer vendors (advertisers) and earn 20% of the $49.95 activation charge. Additionally, you earn 5% of ClickBank’s typical markup of each sale that your recruited vendor makes for one year.

4. Google Affiliate Network

Google Affiliate Network is a free program that makes it easy for website publishers to connect with quality advertisers and get rewarded for driving conversions. To participate in Google Affiliate Network, you must have a valid Google AdSense account. Google Affiliate Network distributes payments via Google AdSense.

Alexa Rank: #1

Minimum Payment Amount: $100

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, Western Union

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: No

5. Amazon Associates

Amazon.com Associates is one of the most popular and successful affiliate program on the Internet. You earn advertising fees from all qualifying purchases, not just the products you advertised.

Alexa Rank: #11

Minimum Payment Amount: $100 (Check); $10 (Amazon Gift Certificate, Direct Deposit)

Payment Method(s): Check, Amazon.com Gift Certificate, Direct Deposit

Programs Offered: Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: No

6. LinkShare

LinkShare is a leading provider of full-service online marketing solutions specializing in the areas of Affiliate Marketing, Search Marketing, and Lead Generation. As the online marketing industry continues to evolve at a fast pace, advertisers, publishers and agencies are turning to LinkShare for technology innovation, superior service and most importantly – RESULTS!

Alexa Rank: #603

Minimum Payment Amount: $1

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit

Programs Offered: Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Earn $1.50 when you refer new affiliates to LinkShare.

7. ShareASale

There are currently over 2,500 Merchants plugged in to the ShareASale Network. Each of these merchants has a different type of product that they are selling – and each is ready to commission you on that sale if you bring a customer to them.

Alexa Rank: #598

Minimum Payment Amount: $50

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Earn $1 when you refer new affiliates to ShareASale and earn 5% of their future earnings.

8. Neverblue

Neverblue is a performance-based online marketing company that specializes in lead generation and client acquisition. Through the powerful medium of Internet, Neverblue successfully matches advertising clients with solid business leads, registrations and sales.

Alexa Rank: #4,827

Minimum Payment Amount: $25

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal

Programs Offered: Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Earn 5% of referral’s revenue for the first 6 months.

9. PepperJam

PepperJam, a GSI Media company, is an industry leader in online performance marketing and technology. PepperJam operates a next generation performance marketing network, which provides innovative tools and analytics to optimize the complex performance marketing channel.

Alexa Rank: #33,414

Minimum Payment Amount: $25

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal

Programs Offered: Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

10. LinkConnector

LinkConnector is an affiliate marketing network helping merchants and affiliates increase online sales and revenue. LinkConnector has introduced exclusive technologies to the market that give our merchants and affiliates a strong advantage.

Alexa Rank: #8,492

Minimum Payment Amount: $100

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Earn $2 for referring new affiliates and earn $100 for referring new advertisers to LinkConnector.

BONUS: Automated Affiliate Marketing

With just one sign up get instant access to thousands of advertiser’s affiliate programs. Get paid automatically for links from your site to advertiser websites.

11. VigLink

VigLink looks to make it easier to use affiliate programs on your blog or website. Your links can be doing more. Unlock the power of your site’s links through affiliate marketing and earn extra money from your site automatically, transparently and honestly.

Alexa Rank: #5,332

Minimum Payment Amount: No Minimum

Payment Method(s): PayPal

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Refer your friends to VigLink – they will give you 30% of their earnings for 1 year!

12. Skimlinks

With Skimlinks, you can finally tap into the revenue stream you’ve been missing out on. Your community is posting links to merchants and mentioning products they use – previously you couldn’t easily convert these into affiliate links. The Skimlinks technology takes care of this automatically, converting product links and references into affiliate links; and, no matter what your niche, we’ve got the merchants to keep you covered: over 17,000 of them, aggregated through our service.

Alexa Rank: #8,434

Minimum Payment Amount: $10

Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal

Programs Offered: Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Sale

Referral Program: Refer your friends to Skimlinks – they will give you 12% of their earnings for 1 year!

What Is Affiliate Marketing And How Does It Work?

by MAHESH MOHAN on June 2, 2012

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Beginners Guide: What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is an internet marketing channel in which advertisers (or companies who offer a product or service) pay publishers on a pay-for-performance basis. So unlike Google AdSense you don’t earn anything for clicks. You’re only paid for results which could be a sale or a lead (user fill a form and complete registration). In Affiliate Marketing as advertisers pays only for results its a win-win situation as they don’t have to shell out large amount of money in Banner Advertising or Pay-Per-Click Networks like Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or Yahoo! Search Marketing where the results are not guaranteed.

How To Use Gmail SMTP Server Settings To Remove "On Behalf Of" When Using "Send Mail As" Feature

by MAHESH MOHAN on May 24, 2012

Gmail by Google

I’m a power Google Mail (Gmail) user using almost all of its features. Gmail is my primary e-mail account which I have been using since its launch in April 1, 2004. Why? Because of it’s powerful features like – Search, Filters, Labels, Archives, Labs, POP3, IMAP, Chat within browser, Offline features, Smart Spam filter etc. – the list never ends.

Read: 10 Gmail Tips You Probably Don’t Know

Send and Receive E-mails From Multiple Accounts in Gmail

One of the key feature of Gmail is it’s ability to check emails from other accounts such as Hotmail using POP3. You can also use Gmail to send mails from your other email addresses using Gmail’s “Send mail as” feature. However Google used to show an annoying “On behalf of” message to the recipient. Not anymore!

Read: 10 Gmail Lab Features You Must Enable

I’m going to show you how to use Gmail’s “Send mail as” feature to send mails from all your other email accounts without actually showing to the recipient that you’re emailing from Gmail. So the recipient will never know that you’re using your @gmail.com or @googlemail.com e-mail address to send the mails.

Top 25 Free SEO Tools For On-Page & Off-Page SEO Analysis

by MAHESH MOHAN on May 13, 2012

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), according to Wikipedia, is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines’ “natural,” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”), search results. SEO is done to improve your website but it can also damage your website if you’re not ethical. If you’re a newbie then I would recommend Google’s Search Engine Optimization Guide.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a rocket science. Search Engine Optimization is all about Content Creation, Link Building and Website Analysis (On-Page and Off-Page Analysis) – Keyword Research, Keyword Density, Competitor Analysis, Website Page Speed, Title & Meta Tags Analysis.