This is indeed good news for eBay affiliates who have been clamoring for a separate network away from CJ. Under the CJ network, I was unable to sign up for the eBay US affiliate program. For those of you not familiar with the regulations, in order to sign up with a respective eBay affiliate program of a certain country, you need to be live in that country geologically. Some eBay affiliate programs like HK eBay and UK eBay is less stringent and allows you to register even though you did not live anywhere near or in these countries. Others like eBay US and eBay Canada and also eBay Australia where all the money are, they are virtually closed to people living in other countries.

But it seems from the new eBay Partner Network; I was able to get accepted to majority of eBay affiliate programs without any hitches at all except for eBay IT which is still under review.

All along, I was very keen to kick off some websites to tie in with the eBay US program for some time, but was unable to do so in the past due to the restrictions placed on affiliates from countries outside US. With the new regulations in place which I hope is not a mistake on my part in comprehending the new regulations, it seems that my wish have finally come through.

But the strange thing is I have gotten so used to making do without Adsense ads that the news did not really affect me that much. I thought I would be very delighted but I am just glad to have an extra revenue channel back. I have some good results in using CBpro Ads on some of my websites and this is where the dilemma starts, should I go back to using Google Adsense or other contextual ads.

Nah! As always, I would go for both. Initially, those first 2 weeks without Adsense is hell but the good thing to come out of this experience is that I am forced to look for alternatives and good things have come out of it. I’ve always believed “whenever there are obstacles, opportunities are always around the corner” and this certainly hold true for me each time I meet with an obstacle. So the next time any obstacle appears, take time to survey and look around for the hidden opportunities that are just round the corner. Good luck!

Personally for me, the best PLR articles membership site that I have experienced so far is Niche-Content-Packages.com. The articles in this PLR articles membership site are high quality in nature and I also love the fact that only a limited number of a particular PLR article package will be sold. Once sold finished, these PLR packages will be taken off the shelf for good.

Although Niche-Content-Packages.com is by nature a membership site, you can either choose to join its monthly membership or you can opt to purchase credits to buy PLR articles instead. In this way, there is no pressure on you to join and then regret later, although this would be a highly unlikely scenario given the quality of the articles they have there. If you need a lot of quality PLR articles every month, Niche-Content-Packages.com is the place for you to get them.

Check out the video below for more information. Alternatively, you can check out their website here for more information.

So what does PLR articles got to do with providing quality content to your visitors?

PLR articles are great for people like you and me who write content for our blogs and websites but do not have the time to do the research or look for topics to write on. Should you elect to write the content yourself just like me, you can make use of good quality PLR articles to help you save precious time and leave you with more time to market your business!

Normally, when I use a particular PLR article, what I do is to rewrite the whole article or majority of it in my own words. In this way, I cut short my writing and research time as the article already provide a good platform for me to write and add on. That is why it is important to go for good quality PLR articles which are already well researched and provide interesting information.

Other webmasters may like to use PLR articles to set up content sites quickly, saving them much needed time. However, this is not encouraged by a lot of webmasters unless you rewrite part or the whole articles as Google may penalize you for having duplicate content on your website. There are two schools of theory on duplicate content. One school is adamant that Google will penalize websites that have duplicate or similar content as others. Another school says that the Google penalization on duplicate content is all b*lls*it.

As for me, I would suggest using PLR articles that are rewritten and also fully intact without changes on your websites.

Why?

I would say it depends on what your business model is going to be. For example if you are creating sites to flip, using PLR articles to make up the content of your websites is one way to build up your websites fast and sell them quickly for a quick profit. However, if you are looking at building authority sites, unique and quality content is the way to go. Definitely, you don’t want someone coming to your site to read something that is already on another website. This will give the visitor the impression that your site is not the originator site and he or she may not come again.  

As you can see, PLR articles is a great time saver and if you are not using PLR content to help you save time, isn’t it time for you to consider doing that.

That is why I realized it is very important for any webmasters to recognize the need to explore and have multiple sources of income from other networks. If you read one of my earlier posts, you would have known that I got my Google Adsense account closed recently and still pending an appeal. As such I was researching other contextual networks and advertising systems to replace my lost income from Google Adsense. I found a number of replacements and one of the best is CBpro Ads which is an advertising platform and system for ClickBank products.

If you have been marketing ClickBank products for quite some time, you can check out this fantastic ClickBank advertising system that will allows you to display ads in various formats just like Google Adsense. You can choose to display your ClickBank ads in contextual formats, banners and even image ads. This is a wonderful way to promote ClickBank products on your website and a nice replacement for those who lost their Google Adsense accounts.

You can check out the full details over at CBpro Ads and best of all it is free! To sign up for a free account, click here!

As for the other contextual networks that I have been testing, I have yet to see any positive results. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my websites are based in very specialized niches. I have been testing some other advertising scripts and systems that come to my attention recently.

I will post some reviews and introduction in the near future and I hope you will find them useful to your online success.

The thing that makes it the more surprising is that the previous night; I was still checking my stats and everything seemed normal. There is no surge in traffic to indicate I may be a victim of someone trying to get my account closed by Google.

A quick check on Google Adsense forum revealed that a large number of webmasters are affected too even though there are no indication of any click fraud involved. Some webmasters suggested writing in to Google to highlight our plight. However, the general reply from other more experienced webmasters is that the chances of getting your account reinstated will be very slim. Left with no further options, I sent an appeal email to Google immediately and I hope to get a reply from them as soon as possible.

Although only a small part of my online income comes from Google Adsense, I have gotten so used to them that most of my websites are carrying Adsense ads. Add to the fact from my experiences from using other contextual networks, Adsense provides the most relevant ads of all the contextual networks and this is a very important consideration in making your visitors click on ads.

Right now, I am investigating other channels of monetizing my websites left vacant by Adsense ads. I will once again look at contextual networks which I have used in the past but with limited success. This incident made me realized that one cannot be too complacent about things and should always look for better ways to monetize one’s websites. This is something that I should have done long time ago.

Now, this post is not on using videos to promote products, rather it is focus on using videos to drive traffic to your websites. Regardless of which niche you are in, using videos to drive traffic to your websites is the way to go and it should be a definite part of your marketing plans for your online business.

I am sure everyone has heard of YouTube. If not, you must have been living under a rock for the past few years. YouTube is the biggest and most visited video hosting sites on the internet. Every day, millions of people visit YouTube to watch or upload videos. No matter what types of videos are being put up, there are definitely audiences for your videos. With so much traffic, it is no wonder this is one of the best website to reach out to targeted audience.

Some smart marketers have been using YouTube or other similar video sites to market and drive traffic to their websites since the inception of video sites and this has been a highly profitable way of marketing and driving traffic for these marketers. As for those who have not yet tried out this form of marketing and that includes me although I already have plans for some videos for one of my niche, video marketing is definitely something you should consider as part of your marketing activities.

From my observation, the most viewed videos are those relating to humor, sex or entertainment. Those that are instructional are also very popular such as cooking for example. If you are planning to create videos to market and drive traffic to your websites, here are some pointers that you can try out:

1)      Inject humor into your video. People love to watch funny videos or videos which are humorous in nature. People who visit video sites are looking for some form of entertainment and what is better than funny and humorous videos.

 2)      Sex sells and this is something you should look into when shooting your video. Please do not mistake this statement as an agreement that I am all for adult or objectionable content. What I am trying to put across is a pretty lady or a handsome dude may not be a bad idea especially if the video is shoot tastefully.

 3)      Spoof a recent or popular movie or TV series. This will attract a lot of fans who may become converts to your site. It is a good idea if you have a website which is selling movies or TV shows memorabilia. The thing here is to be creative, even though you may not be selling movies or TV shows memorabilia, you can still use this tip.

As you can see, there are many more ways you can go about using videos to market and drive traffic to your sites. The key is to be creative and think outside the box and you too can utilize videos as one of your main marketing strategies. From what I have seen, video marketing is only going to get bigger and bigger.

What about you? Are you using videos to drive traffic to your sites or what do you think of video marketing in general? Is it a fad or is it going to stay for long?

I have websites spread across a few web hosts and servers and surprising all the page rank start behaving abnormally at the same time. One moment, I have a site page rank down to zero and the next day, the website has its page rank increased.

I don’t recall experiencing such abnormities during the last update and after a quick check in various forums revealed that Google may have change its page rank algorithm and that might be the cause of my websites’ abnormalities.

Luckily, the change in algorithm did not affect my websites ranking that much. In fact most of my sites, old and new have seen an increase in page rank except for one blog which is penalized and has its page rank dropped to “0”. I suspected it may have to do with all those paid postings that I have been doing all these time.

Anyway, according to other webmasters, the updating is still in progress and may last until the end of the month.

So how did your sites fared during this update?

If you are the buyer, you will obviously feel shortchanged and definitely not going to buy from that particular marketer again. This is something that happens on a very regular basic and if you have been online for a period of time, you will find a lot of products that you have bought will be in some way or another similar in context and content. I know that because I have purchase products that are simply rehash materials from another previous product. While this maybe a very profitable way of generating a good amount of cash, it does leave a sour taste in the mouth for consumers and definitely will not do your reputation any good at all.

I’m currently in the midst of developing my own reports and products for free distribution and for sale and this consideration is being taken into account very seriously. While the temptation to simply put out a rehash product for a quick profit is there; I mean seriously creating your own product is not easy and I am human after all! I do realize that my credibility and responsibility to my customers are more important as I am looking to build a long term business rather than making a fast buck or two.

For those of you who are looking at creating your own products now or in the future, do the bear in mind the mistakes being make by other marketers. You can use PLR materials and other people’s people as much as you like, but rather than copy wholesale, you can select the best features from each product and come up with a far superior product. This way, you will end up with happy customers and a good reputation to boot.