Affiliate Tools Online

Ever wish you had access to a computer programmer or writer or some other professional? One of the toughest things about creating your own products is having the necessary skills and training to get the job done.

Even if you have the necessary skills and training, it’s sometimes difficult to find the time to do some of the more time consuming tasks, like writing an eBook, or building a software program, etc.

That’s where sites like Elance.com and RentaCoder.com come in handy. These sites bring people together. Now even the small business owner can afford to hire a computer programmer to do a job or a ghost writer to write your next eBook. The possibilities are endless.

The process is simple. You can post a job on the site and let others bid on it. This will give you an idea of how much a job will cost and who can do it. Once you come to an agreement with somebody, they do the job and you pay them.

Folks with time and skills can offer their services on the site for others. This is a great way to work from home. You can do research, write eBooks, graphics design, etc. The list goes on.

Need to rent a coding expert? Choose the perfect coder from over 10,000 at Rent A Coder.com

RentACoder is specifically designed for those folks who need custom software. This is a great way to create a new software product that your business or web site can sell.

Elance.com and RentACoder.com are two of the best resources out there for the small internet marketer. Be sure to check it out. The more work you can outsource, the more time you have to grow your business or enjoy life!

One of the common problems of writing an eBook, is the need to create a professional looking cover. This is something you’ll either have to do yourself or hire somebody to do it for you.

There are a couple of different options available.

Create Your Own eBook Covers

The first is to create it yourself in your favorite image editing program. But this is very time consuming and tedious and takes a great deal of skill. And after all that work, you’re likely to find that the resulting image lacks that true professional look.

Download eBook Covers

Another option is to download a free eCovers and edit them. While this is a better solution than the one above, these free eBook covers are still very limited and won’t give you a truly professional look. But if you’re just starting out, this may be a good solution if you don’t have money to spend.

Download eBook Creation Software

Another option is to purchase software that will create eBook covers for you. Some of the popular eBook software programs include:

• Dynamite Covers
• CoverFactory.com (free trial available)
• Virtual Cover Creator

Hire Somebody to Create Your eBook Cover

The next option is to hire somebody to create your eBook cover for you. There are several different sites that will create your eBook cover for you:

• MonsterCovers.com

The downside to this method is that it can be very costly. While each cover typically only costs $50-$75 … keep in mind that you will often need covers created for your free bonus eBooks too. So by the time you add all your eBooks together, this can be an expensive option.

Use Photoshop Actions to Create Your eBook Covers

The last option (and my personal favorite) is to use Actions in Adobe Photoshop. The only catch to this solution is that you have to have Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or higher on your computer (Adobe Elements won’t work).

If you’re not familiar with Actions, they’re little scripts that run in Adobe Photoshop to automate certain actions. And there is an Action script that will create great looking eBook covers for you - all you need to do is edit your cover text and images.

This is how I create all of my eBook covers. The really nice thing is that these actions are so flexible and powerful, that they can be used over and over again to create an unlimited number of eBook covers. To learn more about the eCover Actions for Photshop, click here.

Writing and publishing your own eBook is an easy way to create your own product. And because you created it, you can keep 100% of the profits! So writing your own eBooks can be a great source of income.

Here are some more advantages of writing and selling an eBook:

• They’re digital (so you don’t need to pay for printing, binding, and shipping)

• People can download them immediately after purchase (they don’t have to wait a week for it to be shipped)

• Once created, you can keep selling them over again at no extra cost (so as long as people are interested in your eBook, you have a continued source of income).

• You can incorporate affiliate links into your eBook (so you can earn even more money on other resources relevant to your readers)

• You can add audio and video to some eBooks (depending on the software used)

• Including long links is easy for you and readers since they can easily click on them to go to another relevant site or resource (as opposed to trying to type in that long URL later).

• You can offer free viral marketing eBooks too which drive more people back to your site

As you can see, there are some definite advantages to selling eBooks. So how do you create one?

You can either write it yourself or hire somebody to write one for you. Most people choose the first option. Of course, the first step is still doing keyword research to see what kind of information people are looking for and not finding much help (this step is critical for success).

Once you figured out what you’re going to write about, you just have to research your material and start writing. You can start writing your eBook in Word or use eBook creation software.

Writing in Word is easy (and you have advantage of spell-check!). It’s okay to do this and you could always convert it to a PDF later and sell it in that form.

But here’s the thing … PDF’s are not very secure. Sure you can configure it to require a password so that only your customers can open it. But what happens if that customer wants a refund (no matter how good your eBook is, there will always be some people wanting refunds)? Your customer already has the password, so even after you refund their money, they can keep reading (and printing) it. Even worse, they can share the eBook and passwords with others. You have no control over this.

Another option is to use eBook creation software that is secure. My personal favorite choice is eBook Pro, created by IMC.

eBook Pro is VERY SECURE. With eBook Pro, you can:

• You can generate a unique username and password for every customer

• You can set a limit to the number of times they can open and register their eBook (so they can’t share it with others). After they reach the limit, they are prevented from registering it again (unless you allow them to).

• You can control whether or not readers can print your eBook. This can prevent photocopying and scanning (although I usually let my readers print the eBook so they don’t have to be on the computer to read it).

• You can lock people out remotely. So if they want a refund, no problem (you can push a button and prevent them from having further access to the eBook). If somebody steals it from the server, or you discovered that it was shared without your permission - no problem (just lock them out of it).

You have a LOT of control over who has access to your eBook. Now having said that, there are a few other things to consider.

First, eBook Pro is PC based software - so MAC users can’t open eBook Pro (not yet anyway). Luckily, MAC users are a very small percentage of the population. But you can work around this limitation by providing a PDF version of the eBook (which is the easiest solution). I just don’t recommend advertising that you offer a PDF version of the eBook so as to cut down on fraud.

I’ve been using eBook Pro a while now and really like it. You can use existing built in templates or create your own to give your eBook a nice look and feel. It’s designed to work like a web page, so users can click back and forth between chapters quickly and easily.

There is one more thing worth mentioning. After you create your eBook using eBook Pro, you need a way to deliver the usernames and passwords to your customers. You can do this manually - but it really should be done automatically so as to allow 24×7 delivery (and lessen work on your part).

So far, I have not seen cases where people have been able to automate this process in Aweber or other online autorepsonder services. If you have, please let me know.

But the majority of us using eBook Pro are also using Mailloop (IMC’s email management solution). Since IMC created both software programs, they work together well. And Mailloop can be automated to send eBook Pro usernames and passwords automatically (keeping your business up and running 24×7).

So if you’re going to use eBook Pro, I highly recommend using Mailloop as well.

Ever notice those feed buttons that some people have on their web sites and blogs? If you don’t know what I mean, take a look at this blog on the left side under “Feeds”.

All those buttons that say “Add to Google” and “Add to Yahoo”,etc. are called “Chicklets” and they’re easy to add.

First you need have a FeedBurner account and set up an RSS feed. Since Google now owns both Blogger and FeedBurner, setting up feeds is a snap on Blogger.

Once you have your feed setup up, log into your FeedBurner account and click your feed name. It will take you to a “dashboard” like screen.

Next you’ll want to click the “Publicize” tab and then the “Chicklet Chooser” link (which is about half way down the page on the left).

You’ll then be taken to a screen that has several chicklets as well as the standard feed button. Click on one, and scroll down the page to see the HTML code. You’ll want to copy the HTML code (all of it) and then paste it into your web or blog template where you’d like the chicklet to appear.

You can only display the HTML code for one chicklet at a time. So you’ll either have to copy and paste one at time into the template or you can open a plain text document and paste them all in there (this way you can copy the lot over to the template).

Don’t forget to republish your blog after adding the chicklets.

Effective affiliate marketers know that “deep linking” to merchant products will increase their conversions. But often times the resulting URL is quite long (some of mine have been over 300 characters long).

Not only are these URLs cumbersome to work with, but are often truncated by software applications (like Adobe Acrobat) and other programs - and the end result is a link that doesn’t work (which in turn means lost commissions)!

This problem happens because many programs can’t handle the “%” and “&” symbols in the long URL’s.

One way to work around this problem is to convert your long URL into a smaller one. There is a great free web site that will do this for you. TinyURL.com is the place to create shorter URL’s - and it’s quick, easy, and FREE!

Here’s an example of how it works.

Super affiliate Rosalind Gardner sells a printed version of her best selling book, “The Super Affiliate Handbook“. To create an affiliate link to the book using Amazon.com, the resulting URL would look something like this (just the URL, not the HTML code) …

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A
%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSuper-Affiliate-Handbook-Selling-Peoples%
2Fdp%2F0973328738%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D11844402
60%26sr%3D1-1&tag=myaffiliateid&linkCode=ur2&camp=1
789&creative=9325

This affiliate URL is 253 characters long! If I were to paste it into an email or a PDF document, it would most likely get truncated - which would defeat the purpose!

But if I convert this long URL into a tiny one, the resulting URL would be something like …

http://tinyurl.com/3cldw9

That’s a huge difference! Not only is this URL guaranteed to work in email and other software programs, but it’s a lot easier to type into a browser if you want to spell it out for your potential customer.

Is there a downside to shortening URL’s like this? Yes, there can be.

ith so much internet fraud, many folks are now leery of a URL that doesn’t contain the parent domain name in it.

In other words, if you are directing people to a product on Amazon.com - they expect to see “http://www.amazon.com/blahblahblah…” in the first part of the URL. If they don’t - they may not click on it for fear of fraud.

This is a risk. But if you’re building a good relationship with your customers, you may be able to educate them to the fact that URL’s created with Tiny URL make things easier for them by allowing you to share a link is guaranteed to work (won’t get chopped up) and is easier for them to type (should they need to).

And of course, there are still plenty of people who won’t even notice the URL at all and will click through to the product.

TinyURL.com is a great free internet marketing tool which certainly has it’s uses. Next time you need to shorten a URL, give it a try!