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50 Ways to Start Your Own Business and Operate Completely Online

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The internet has paved the way for people to conduct businesses completely online. What’s interesting is that even if it may seem that all ideas have already been tried and tested in recent years, it’s never too late to start a business online and even go head-to-head with older businesses. With the right idea, proper implementation and enough hard work, you can become an online business owner even without a huge capital.

Start a Website

The simplest and cheapest way to start an online biz is through a website. Plus, you can set-up a website as quickly as under an hour with this free training and get the support and training you need to start making money from it. The secret of a successful online business is to focus on your strength, so depending on your skills, here are some types of websites you could build:

1) Travel blog – Those who love to travel can blog about their adventures and earn money through several channels. Aside from displaying ads, travel bloggers can also earn through sponsorships. The most successful travel bloggers no longer pay for most of their trips – they are invited by hotels or resorts, and given two-way tickets, accommodation, food and other freebies in exchange for writing their experience on the blog.

2) Photography site – If you don’t have a knack for words, but can take a stunning picture any time, you can have a future with a photography site. Focus on something you love. Take for example Japanese miniature maker Tatsuya Tanaka and his impressive works of art on http://miniature-calendar.com/. Don’t forget to join Instagram and feature some of your photographs there too – it’s quicker to make your posts viral through social media.

3) Review site – For true blue consumers who love buying stuff and reviewing them online, it’s about time you stop doing it for free on Amazon. By using your blog as a review site, not only will you get a chance for brands to send products directly to you, you’ll also never run out of topics to write. You have two ways to earn from a review site – affiliate marketing commissions or direct payment (ideal when your blog has a lot more following).

The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that you only need to post the link of the product you’re promoting and you can earn from anything your readers buy right after clicking that link. Yes, even if they bought a different product, or even if they bought something 3 days after clicking through your link.

4) Info Site – An info site, or niche site, talks about a very specific subject. For example, an espresso machine info site will review every new model that comes out in the market. Other topics may include tips for the perfect cup, cleaning techniques, accessories and more. Earnings from these types of sites may come from ads (like Google AdSense), affiliate commissions, or private ad networks. You can keep it small to below 20 pages, or grow it out into an authority site.

5) News Site – The best thing about news sites is that you can choose the topics you want to focus on. If you’re a movie fan, you can skip all the serious news and discuss only entertainment, film, and other relevant news. Fan of Apple products? You can write about nothing else but iPhones, iMacs, iPads and other Apple news. You don’t need to be a journalist to do this, as long as you stick with the facts.

6) Coupon and Group-buying sites – If you can’t commit to crafting long posts and photos regularly, a coupon site or group-buying site like Groupon offers a simpler business model. By setting up these kinds of sites, you offer people with discounts, deals, and group-buying vouchers. It’s a win-win: you develop a successful site, while people get to save money from deals you publish.

7) Job boards – While the initial set-up may be more complicated than ordinary blogs, a job board can bring in multiple sources of income. You may ask payments from job posters, plaster ads throughout the site, or even sell ad slots. The benefit of job boards is that owners don’t have to think about updating its content, since job posters will do this for you.

8) Podcasting Sites – If you’ve always dreamt of having your own radio show, a podcasting site can be the solution you’ve been waiting for. Like Steli Efti and Hiten Shah’s podcasting site “The Startup Chat” that discusses business and startup concerns, you still need to be an expert in something for your podcast site to work and have followers. However, once you do earn enough followers, only then will you get to try out several monetization options suitable for podcasting sites.

9) Video Sites – Videos are preferred by people because they’re easier to digest, even if you watch them continuously at hours on end. And since videos are perfect for entertainment, just as they are for teaching, you can build a video site with the content you prefer.

10) Forums or other types of online community – One of the easiest ways to produce user-generated content is to build a site that can serve as people’s hangout. Encourage them to spend as much time on the site by adding sub-categories and assigning special roles to members. There can be multiple income streams on online communities, but it depends largely on the size of your community.

11) Auction sites – Here’s one type of marketplace that doesn’t require you to sell anything. Auction sites like eBay and Facebook marketplace host users who either buy or sell items from the site. Your auction site can be as specific as “Siamese cat accessories” or as general as “cat accessories.” It’s entirely up to you. But you’ll be able to earn either through commissions with every sale, membership fees of users, or ads.

Start an eCommerce Store

Traditionalists who are on the fence of going through with an online business should take the ecommerce route. Because ecommerce is more like a brick-and-mortar business that operates with goods or services as product, starting a product-backed online biz wouldn’t be such a huge leap.  

If you want to get started in ecommerce, look no further than Proven Amazon Course. Jim Cockrum will teach you how to leverage the power of Amazon to build a six figure ecommerce business from the comfort of your own home.

If you’re looking for ideas, here are common ecommerce stores you could check out:

12) Craft store – You don’t need a production plant, or a ton of employees to operate a craft store. You can join art-loving communities like Etsy and ArtFire, where you can open up an online store there and sell handmade items, such as beaded jewelry, crocheted blankets, or anything your mind can create. Building a craft store has low startup cost, which makes it highly attractive to work-at-home entrepreneurs.

13) Branded merchandise (white label products) – Look no further than the store of National Geographic or your favorite online magazine to see how white labeling and branding makes a whole lot of difference when it comes to selling products. Because you can get readily-produced items and simply add your branding to products you choose, this technique works well for websites and online brands with an active following. You won’t have to spend money on equipment or extra labor required in product manufacturing, since technically, a third-party company will handle it for you.

14) T-shirts – The t-shirt biz will continue to be one of the most stable markets online. It’s a simple business concept, since you can double your capital regardless of how popular your brand is or not. You have numerous options on how to start a t-shirt company. If you have the talent for the design, you can join print-on-demand sites and wait for people to order a shirt from your catalog. If your goal is to double your capital as quickly as possible, you can be a white label provider by ordering plain shirts on bulk and marketing your products for other companies to add their branding onto.

15) Food – You don’t have to hold copyright over a specific type of food to get in on the food business online. But you can be a bit creative and find a way to enter the market. For example, target bakers and offer a monthly subscription box of the most “hard-to-find baking ingredients” or “cookie dough month.” This idea can even extend to drinks (alcoholic or not), preserves, snacks, or other pantry staples like “coffee.”

16) Affiliate marketing – If you don’t want to deal with inventory, one way to join the ecommerce industry is through affiliate marketing. In this business model, your job is only to promote other products you believe in. You can even do this without a website (stick with social media or perform e-mail marketing), whichever way you feel comfortable. To earn from affiliate marketing, you’ll need to setup an affiliate account from platforms like Amazon and Commission Junction (among others), where you’ll be collecting commissions based off customers you’ve sent their way.

17) Drop shipping – Like affiliate marketing wherein your business model doesn’t involve producing your own products, drop shipping can also be a cost-effective online business. The main difference of affiliate marketing and drop shipping is that you communicate directly with “dropshippers” and has a bit of control over pricing. To start a drop shipping store, you’ll have to choose a niche, find products to sell, check availability of dropshippers in that specific niche, and open an online shop selling products. In this scenario, you don’t have a warehouse for storage or even the products on hand. Instead, you forward a customer’s order to the dropshipper and they will take care of packaging, handling, and shipping the product for you.

18) Monthly Subscription Services – Crate boxes are heaven-sent for consumers who want shopping easy and stress-free, particularly for basic needs such as shaving or coffee. Dollar Shave Club and Misto Box are great examples of crate boxes. This type of packaged product even works with items that doesn’t necessarily fall under “basic needs,” such as movie memorabilia (lootcrate.com), food from all over the world (trytheworld.com), or the popular professional makeup/beauty kit… beautyfix). Because they’re subscription-based and often paid up front, there is less risks involved in starting this kind of business. However, you do need a good following for people to subscribe to what you’re offering.

19) Go for trendy – The problem with product-based ecommerce stores is that consumers spend according to various factors such as season, need, budget, and more. If you’re worried about these factors and want to offer something that’s guaranteed to sell, be on the lookout for trendy items and only offer those on your store. The advantage of this route is you’ll always be on-trend and selling the item like hotcakes during its peak. On the flip side though, it can be hard to determine what product sells way ahead everyone else. Plus, the risks of selling trendy items are higher compared to regular products that may be on-demand for a given period throughout a calendar year.

20) Customized Products – A store that gives its customers plenty of customization control over the items they wish to buy is always a great marketing pitch no matter the type of product you’re selling. It can be as simple as options for color or material, or as personalized as adding your own print, choosing your own style, or other advanced customization.

Provide a Service

Globalization has given entrepreneurs a cost-effective way of connecting with clients from all around the world. And since a service provider can perform his/her job even located from almost anywhere, he/she can build a service-based company and conduct business even with just a single employee.

You can be the boss and employee of your company. But the coolest thing about trying to expand your home-based company is that the overhead costs would still be lower than traditional companies.

Not sure if your skill set can build an entire company? Here are the most in-demand services that you can provide even when on-the-go:

21) SEO consultant – Many entrepreneurs and small companies that conduct their business online will need help with SEO (search engine optimization) at some point. Whether it’s for developing a long-term SEO campaign or just quick help with setting up Google Analytics, SEO skills are one of the most sought-after services online because any business benefits from a well-ranked website.

22) PPC expert – PPC ads are the most effective type of advertising online, but it can be tricky to understand the ins and outs of pay-per-click advertising. To ensure businesses and entrepreneurs don’t waste money; PPC experts help them “buy visitors” to their websites via PPC effectively.

23) Business coach – As a business coach, your goal is to help build or improve the profit of a company. It doesn’t matter if the business is a startup or established one. Your job is to assess competition, evaluate business operations, and find opportunities to earn more money or keep up with demand. Of course, extensive business experience is needed, so you can perform the work remotely.

24) Virtual assistant services – A virtual assistant (VA) is a modern-day secretary who performs mostly online-based tasks, such as checking e-mails, scheduling meetings, and performing a wide range of day-to-day tasks involved in the operations of a client’s business. The responsibilities and job requirements of a VA varies depending on the needs of a client.

25) Content marketing – Any kind of website requires a sufficient amount of content to build inbound traffic organically. As a content marketer, you’ll lead a group of writers in crafting engaging and relevant content for a site. This job requires advanced internet marketing knowledge and SEO skills.

26) Web design services – Probably one of the oldest type of service sought by clients online, web design continues to be an in-demand service since entrepreneurs and companies (both small and huge) still build websites to this day. Putting up a web design company may seem futile due to the number of web design services available online, but if you got the skills and can bring something new to the table, it will be easy for you to compete with existing web design companies.

27) Tech support – Online companies are able to conduct business over the internet, but if technical problems occur, one common issue is that these companies do not have in-house IT support. If you have the skills to provide tech support services remotely, whether as on-call basis or full-time, you’re in the best field since home-based tech support has amazing outlook in the next 5 years.

28) Social media consultancy – Social media has been proven a cost-effective marketing technique for any kind of businesses. A company that has no online presence would hire social media experts to create a customized marketing plan. It’s much cheaper to hire a social media guy or team than for companies to make mistakes in implementing social media strategy, so if you’re pretty savvy with social media and mastered the best tactics for maximum online exposure, take advantage of your skills and offer them to any individual or company that would bite.

29) App development – Apps have taken the world by storm and it’s not stopping anytime soon. As an app developer, you’ll cater to both individuals and companies getting into the app world. Coding skills is definitely one of the most in-demand skills today, so if you’ve been making apps for a while now, you can always start your own app development company from the comforts of your own home.

30) Video Editing Services – Video is the content of the future and it is expected to fill up about 90% of internet traffic by 2019. If you tinker with Adobe Premiere, Avid or Final Cut and consider yourself an expert in video editing, this business can become very lucrative if you target the right market. If you have no idea where to start, check out Wipster.

31) Bookkeeping – Online companies mostly survive with only a handful of employees. To ensure these businesses keep legalities checked and taxes paid appropriately, professionals like bookkeepers or accountants ensure the company’s cash flow is well documented. If you’re a certified bookkeeper with experience, you can balance books from home using accounting software like Quickbooks, Xero or Sole Trader.

32) HR services – One of the most amazing things with globalization is that even office-based tasks like job interviews can now be done remotely. As such, those with extensive experience in human resources could open up shop online and find third-party companies the right employees. Providing HR services can go beyond employment… and extend to other tasks such as developing talent programs or updating employment policies based on current laws.

33) Lead generation – Finding leads can be frustrating or confusing to many new online entrepreneurs or companies. It’s a special kind of skill that only experts in internet marketing or SEO can provide. The cool thing about lead generation is that the job is often localized, which means there will be fewer competition if you’re interested in opening a lead generation company. Plus, you can still conduct business completely online.

34) Customer Support Services – Companies that rely on paying customers shouldn’t just focus on getting new leads; they should also maintain these leads by taking care of their customers. An effective customer support program can do this for any company, especially online businesses with only a few employees. The program can involve traditional inbound/outbound phone support, or other methods like online chat, HelpDesk, e-mail and more.

35) Photo Editing – If you’re running a serious business, having a go-to person perform photo editing or manipulation can do wonders for your website, social media, or overall online presence. Those who have an eye for details will surely succeed in this field. Of course, you’ll need advanced skills in Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or other similar photo editing software, too! Setting up a photo editing business online is easy, since you only have to offer a list of services, prove your worth, and let the reviews of past clients do the talking.

36) Content Writing – Content will never fade away, no matter how much videos, photos, infographics and other types of media become popular. Whether a business relies on blog posts, product descriptions, daily news clips, ebooks, or other types of content, you’ll never run out of clients in need of stuff to publish on their websites. Writing isn’t easy, so you should have extensive writing experience and knowledge of keywords, LSI, and writing for the web.

37) Translation Services – If you can write or speak two or more languages with 100% accuracy, then you can offer translation services as your online business. The market for translators extends across different industries from publishing to IT, education, web development, and more. As long as there are clients looking for experts in a local dialect or foreign language that you know, your translation company will flourish even if you’re conducting the entire business from home.

38) Transcription – Transcribing documents may seem easy, but when you try it once, you’ll know that the precision, accuracy and speed involved in transcription can’t be done by just anyone. And if you have special transcribing skills with the ability to listen to any accent or language with ease, you can turn your talent into a full-blown company.

39) Language tutorial – If you’re good at teaching and are proficient in any foreign language, starting up a language tutorial business is definitely a natural progression from tutoring. English remains the most popular language, especially from students in Asian countries, but other languages like Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, German, and Chinese also have plenty of demand. Plus, you can start this business with just a couple of computers with microphone, headset, and a quiet space.

40) Life Coaching – Coaching people with their business, jobs, schooling, relationships, and other aspects of their lives can be good money for the right people. If you’re naturally helpful, wise beyond your years, and have the ability to see things outside the box, you can turn your side gig into a working company once you’ve taken in more than two clients at a time. You’d have to perform plenty of research with a life coaching business, but the rewards of helping people reach their goals can be absolutely satisfying.

41) Research – You’d be amazed at the amount of jobs available for researchers these days. Ironically, in the modern world where search engines have become advanced, the need for researchers remains as more information is uploaded online on a day-to-day basis. You can even start a research company that specializes in super-specific categories, such as collectibles (searching for antique dolls, etc.), go for consumer research, or develop your own niche in the research field.

42) Travel Agency – Building a travel-related business online depends largely on your interests and effort you’re willing to put in. For instance, if you’re excellent at creating travel itineraries with budget and customized recommendations, you can make a killing as an itinerary planner. If you worked as a travel agent for years and you wish to expand your career, you can also open up a full-scale travel agency from home, but this would entail more capital, equipment and effort.

43) Blog/Website Management – Managing and keeping a website updated can be a huge task, even for professional bloggers or small companies with a growing website portfolio. If you’re an expert in WordPress and other CMS platforms, online marketing, advanced on-page SEO, and daily tasks of publishing content and other media, you can be a website manager for other people. If you’re a web content writer already offering your writing services, you can bundle your service to include blog management as well. In some cases, like in an online store, you might need to update product information or process orders as well.

44) Graphics Design – If your creative skills go beyond photo editing, and you can easily create a poster, marketing banner, advertising material, infographic, logo, and other types of graphics, you’ll find a huge market in need of up-to-date visuals for their websites. The coolest thing about setting up a graphics design company is that you can start without any other staff member and expand your business by just relying on your own skills.

45) PR Agency – Who would have thought that an industry known for networking with professional contacts face-to-face can now be conducted remotely? If you have experience with helping businesses grow through tried-and-tested techniques involving media and public relations, you should build a PR agency and operate it online. It’s a competitive business, but if you choose to market your public relations services to a specific industry, a breakthrough in the field is still a possibility.

Find a Specialty

Here are 5 more business ideas that you might be interested in:

46) Online Courses – If you’re an expert at something you think people would want to read, watch, or listen to, you could build a business around this expertise by writing a book, producing videos, or recording podcasts. As long as you have valuable information that many will be willing to pay for, selling online courses or subscriptions can be lucrative to the right person.

47) Forex Trading – The stock market is open to anyone with internet access, so you don’t need to hire a broker to play the stock market. Because of this, people have turned Forex trading into a lucrative business. It does require tons of experience, trading knowledge, and practice, but if you’re confident with your trading skills, this business may be the right choice for you.

48) SaaS (Software as a Service) – SaaS is any online program that is designed to solve a problem of an individual or company. The users often pay subscription fees (either monthly or yearly) in order to continue using the online tool. A great example of this is Dropbox, so if you have an idea of a one-of-a-kind SaaS business, turn it into a reality and join the competitive SaaS community.

49) Flipping Websites – If you’ve ever heard of house flipping in real estate before, this concept has been adapted into websites. It means that you can buy a domain name, create a website, improve it, rank it, and promote it for traffic, then sell the website for profit. This business involves a lot of work, but if you’re up for the challenge and you have skills in web development, graphics design, and writing, you’ve got flipping websites in the bag.

50) 3D printing Services – 3D printing is one of the hottest trends today, so it’s understandable why you should check it out if you’re interested in building an online business from scratch. Of course, this business would require you to purchase expensive 3D printers, but since virtually no ordinary person will have a 3D printer at home, your business can produce 3D blueprints, prototypes, documents, and other projects that no other company can.

The Bottom Line

Starting an online business is easy, but deciding what kind of business to invest in is hard. If you’re planning to set up a business from the comforts of your own home, but want to make sure you’ve checked out every idea available before diving in head first, this list will help you discover what kinds of businesses are already out there online and hopefully guide you to the right kind of online business that’s perfect for your situation, interest, or skills set.

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If you found this article useful and you know of someone who is looking for a work at home job, please do us a favor and help us spread the word!

Improve Your Visual Search Now and Reap the SEO Rewards

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In the past, Google bots only recognized text, even for its Image Search, which is why the responsibility of adding alt text, image description, meta tags, SEO-friendly file names, and creating image sitemaps fell on the shoulders of the website owner. Today, this has changed quite dramatically thanks to technological innovations such as image recognition (CamFind), reverse image search (TinEye), and more.

Although Google has tried to make worthy changes in visual search, from its Google Goggles in 2010 and its own reverse image search in 2011, it was only within the last year that we saw product images and details launched on search results, similar item recommendations and style ideas.

Despite Google’s continuous development of its visual search technology, the search engine giant isn’t the one leading this particular innovation (for now). It’s interesting, really. Particularly since Pinterest and Bing have been aggresively developing their modern visual search modes for the past year, ahead of Google’s announcement of its mobile-based image search Google Lens in mid-2017.

But you know Google is deep in development in this space, since its own company DeepMind (under the Google banner) is at the forefront of visual search innovation. Google Lens will reportedly be linked to both Google search and Google Maps.

What is Visual Search Exactly?

Visual search has been around for many years, but it had relied on text-based query to find the best picture to match the user’s request. With the modern visual search, everything will be based on images (you input an image, you get images as output) thanks to complicated algorithms, a combination of schema and multi-step networks that rely on patterns to identify images.

The technology has been hard to incorporate into search engine algorithms, simply because unlike the human brain, machines require multiple tests in order to identify objects based on size, color, shape, and other factors. There’s no human intervention with visual search (no human assisting the machine which factor to prioritize when identifying objects), which is why Google, Bing, and other leaders in this field have been mastering their version for quite a while now.

Facebook has used some kind of visual search technology with its tagging feature, which is why it could recognize a friend’s face immediately when you upload a photo. But it can still fall short sometimes.

In terms of accuracy of visual search results, Pinterest Lens has been making impressive progress with its app’s newest tools and partnerships from ShopStyle, Refinery29, Olapic, Curalate and Project September. By uploading a picture, users can now “shop the look” straight off Pinterest from brands like Target, Macy’s, Amazon and more.

Bing is also making a bit of noise in this space since it relaunched its visual search in July 2017. It’s available on desktop and provides accurate object recognition. Plus, Bing is open to advertisers using its visual search for product placement.

Visual search in 2018 will continue, as companies strive to bring user experience to the next level. And while huge companies like Google and Bing works on becoming the go-to visually-focused search engine, anyone with a website should take notice and find a way to get in on this trend.

2018 SEO Strategy for Visually-Focused Content

For ecommerce websites, it is now the best time to work on rich visuals and engaging content. But beyond adding photos to your site, you’ll need to optimize these visually-focused contents for SEO and reap the rewards in 2018. How do you do it?

First, you need to understand that like text-based search results, visual search results are also algorithmically ranked, which means an authoritative site that features the particular product being searched will rank higher than other sites. Of course, Google may also prioritize a particular product type over others when ranking for visual search.

If you’re selling a product online, working on SEO for visual search should be your priority. Even if visual search on Google, Bing, Pinterest and other search engines are still being improved, you can already work on these 10 things:

1) Don’t forget Meta Data Description

Meta data goes beyond a proper image file name. It should also include important keywords and additional relevant details, such as price, availability, currency, and more. Since search engines are still going to give you some points with a complete meta data description of your images, there’s no harm in going through this tried-and-tested SEO technique.

2) Post Tags and Keywords Help with Visual Search

With proper keyword research, you’ll be able to use keywords throughout your site not only to help with regular web search results, but also with visual search. Aside from squeezing in keywords into a photo’s meta data, you should also incorporate them on post tags. Don’t forget to use synonyms and similar phrases that your target audience may be using for search.

3) Continue Adding Alt Text and Captions

Alt text tags (HTML codes included in image descriptions) that help search engines with “understanding” what a picture contains. Captions provide the specifics (names of people, locations, brands, and so on). Both alt text tags and captions also help visually-impaired users who may be using screen readers to search through your site.

4) Go for High-quality and Appropriately-sized Photos

Make sure you seek balance when re-sizing your photos. Make it too big, which can affect your page load speed. Make it too small, but it could prevent search engine bots to recognize patterns and shapes. Finding the right balance will help your photos rank on search engines. This is also a good SEO practice in general.

When it comes to picture quality, experts like MarketGoo marketing manager Larissa Murillo advises on keeping pictures simple without noisy backgrounds. Avoid blurry subjects, focus on products (if you’re selling a product), and use all-white background whenever appropriate. This is because visual search algorithm is increasingly capable of “recognizing” shapes based on an object’s edges and categorizes this object into similarly-shaped objects. Keeping your photos clean help search engines determine your photos’ content.

5) Photo Placement is also important

You may have added meta data, keywords, and alt-text tags successfully, but if this isn’t enough to rank your photos, you could check photo placement throughout your site. When you place a photo near text that describes that particular photo, it helps search engines identify additional details about the photo.

For example, your photo of a Lenovo tablet has the proper Lenovo-modelnumber-tablet.jpg file name with captions and meta data description. But if you placed it near your content that describes the size as “small,” color as “yellow,” or category as “kid-friendly,” your photo might be selected as one of visual search results for those looking for a kid-friendly yellow Lenovo tablet.

6) Implement Schema markup properly

If you want your product images featured on visual search results, you have to make sure that schema markup is properly implemented. This pertains to file category related to your site, may it be for products, recipes, thumbnail images of videos, or any other multimedia content.

You can check if you’ve implemented it successfully and included SEO-friendly information with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Note that depending on the search engine, it could take about a week for bots to crawl a particular site. In addition, creating a schema markup doesn’t guarantee that your items will be displayed on visual search results. But Google does give you credit if you’ve implemented a quality markup.

There’s another way to check if Google has indexed your images. You can perform a YourSite.com query on your mobile browser (mobile should be your priority instead of desktop) and see if images included in your markup appears on the results. If not, you might have implementation issues and need to repeat the process.

7) Take Advantage of Google Maps and Geo-tagging

Geo-tagging your images based on a particular location can provide users performing local searches with relevant query results. Google and Pinterest both have search engines that can filter out results based on location. While this may not be appropriate for every picture, it’s beneficial to include it with your site’s “photo guidelines” for instances where it fits.

Those with brick-and-mortar stores should also take advantage of Google Maps and pin their locations on the platform. Upload relevant photos and list down company information, contact numbers, and other important details as well.

8) Infographics are the most shareable multimedia content

The best thing about creating infographics is that people love this kind of content. They love it so much that if your infographic ends up in the visual search results, there a good chance that they’ll visit your site for more. Which means you’ll have more visitors and possibility of a sale.

9) Add Open Graph Tags on Your Images

The open graph tag is an HTML code that lets you control how your content is shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other websites. Adding this tag creates a dedicated image, which ensures that your chosen image will be featured whenever someone shares your content on third-party sites.

10) Pinterest Isn’t Just For Personal Use

Don’t leave Pinterest out of the picture of your SEO efforts. What used to be a platform for hobbyists to pin their dream homes, craft projects, recipes, and other to-do lists, Pinterest has now been turned into an image-centric platform where businesses can post their entire product inventory without charge. And reap SEO juice from it.

The most interesting tidbit about adding photos on Pinterest is that the social media network has one of the most advanced visual search programs today.

The Bottom Line

The future of visual search is here and the applications to them in the ecommerce world are far and promising. Search engines may not have perfected the algorithms yet, but you can be sure that Google, Bing, Pinterest, and other sites will crack it soon. It wouldn’t harm you to get ahead with the SEO planning and testing to give your photos a real chance at ranking on visually-focused search results.

Blogging as a Business: 10 Ways to Earn Passive Income through Your Personal Blog

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Blogging has been around since the late 90s with the creation of free blogging platforms LiveJournal and Blogger, followed by WordPress in the early 2000s. At the time, blogs were used as an online diary of sorts with political views, and mostly personal stories shared to everyone. But when Google released the AdSense advertising platform in 2003, people saw the money-making potential of blogging and began taking blogs seriously.

By mid-2005, 50 million blogs have been created (compared to only 23 in 1999) and with about 23 million blog readers from the U.S. alone. Since then, individuals have been cashing in thousands of dollars monthly with their blogs. Popular ones like Mashable.com earns a whopping $2 million + a month, while many niche-specific bloggers earn anywhere from $5,000 to $150,000 a month. What’s their secret? Their blogs earn passive income.

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is income that comes from regular cash flow, which is obtained with minimal to no extra effort done by the recipient. In real world, the best example of passive income is monthly dues collected from rental properties.

When it comes to online earning, passive income follows the same concept, except there’s no brick-and-mortar business. If you’ve read popular blogging-focused blogs, you’ve probably read the term “making money in your sleep,” which is actually what passive income is all about. So if you’ve been working hard on your blog and want to earn money while you sleep, here are 10 tried-and-tested, passive income-generating methods you can try:

1) AdSense and other Contextual PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Ads

One of the easiest ways to earn from your blog is by placing ads for your readers to click on. Regardless of the ad network you choose, whether it’s Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), or any other network, you’ll only need to place a code for the ad to become visible on your site and that’s it. While you’ll only earn cents for every click on the ad, imagine if you had 10,000 readers. The amount will add up quickly.

Of course, you have to test ad placements and ad formats (size, color, font, etc.) regularly until you find the right one for your blog. Make sure to track these tests properly and one at a time, so you’ll know which one works and which one doesn’t.

2) Affiliate Marketing

If you look at income reports of many successful bloggers today, you’ll find out that the chunk of their passive income comes from commissions of products sold through affiliate marketing. If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, we’ve got a comprehensive guide about it here and an advanced guide to affiliate marketing here.

Simply put, affiliate marketing involves joining a marketplace like ClickBank, Amazon, or Commission Junction, among others. When you’re writing a blog post, you can find products on these marketplaces that fit your topic, and once you do, you include a link going to the sales page. Every time you direct a reader to the sales page and they buy from the marketplace (even after a week or so since they clicked the link), you earn a commission.

Commissions are small and depend on the marketplace you choose. For instance, Amazon pays roughly 5% to its affiliates. Like AdSense, these small commissions could add up pretty quick if you have a big audience.

The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that it is highly adaptable regardless of niche. For example, a cooking blogger can share a recipe and list down ingredients (with recommended products linked to Amazon), or a parenting blogger who’s reviewing a new toy.

3) CPM (cost per impression) Ads

When compared to AdSense and other pay-per-click ads wherein readers have to click on the ad for you to earn, CPM (or cost per impression) ads require no action from your readers. This means your readers don’t have to buy a product or click on a link; instead, they simply need to visit the page where you place the CPM ad and you’ll earn with every page view.

The main problem with CPM ads is that new bloggers can’t join CPM ad companies like Tribal Fusion so easily. Their blogs have to meet certain traffic requirements, such as 100k page views monthly, in order to display CPM ads. But if your blog is already established, send an application (that takes around a week to complete) and reap more passive income from CPM ads.

4) Sell eBooks

If you’ve been blogging for months consistently, creating an eBook would be a walk in the park. The main different between blog posts and an eBook is that eBooks are formatted similar to traditional books, so you’d have to think of your table of contents and write as comprehensively as possible. Because you’d be writing the eBook once and reaping from sales for months (or even years) to come, selling eBooks is a passive income technique you should try.

This may not work quite as well for new bloggers, but if you’re an authority within your niche, you can make a killing if you release an eBook to your loyal readers. A great example of this is ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse who cashed in $72k within a week of releasing his eBook.

5) Audiobooks

And while you’re at it, turn your eBooks into an audiobook and earn additional passive income. You may have to invest in an audiobook a bit more, especially if you’re going to hire a voice-over artist. But the future of audiobooks is bright, with more and more people embracing the technology and taking advantage of being able to finish a book while on-the-go.

If you host your audiobook on services like Audible, you’d receive commissions amounting to 10% to 20% of your ebook sales. Pretty good for a one-time effort, right?

6) Produce Courses for Paid Members

If you’re already an authority on a particular subject, there shouldn’t be anything stopping you from creating a course that would benefit your readers. The great thing about selling courses straight from your website is that you’ll skip fees you’d have been required to shell out if you hosted them on Udemy, Teachable and other sites that host and market courses in exchange for a cut.

When you offer 6-month or 8-week course on your website, you can make this available exclusively for your readers who are willing to pay. You are completely in control of the amount you want as membership fee, but consider factors such as number of visitors, complexity or uniqueness of the topics on your course, niche, and your expertise.

7) Create a Paid Private Forum

Like for-member-only courses, adding a private forum to your site gives you an additional source of income. Unlike courses that you only have to work on once, you’ll need to invest time sharing content on the forum. If this isn’t possible, you can always hire someone to man the forum for you, but make sure he/she is just as competent when answering questions on the forum. Remember that the reason people joined the forum, even with a month fee, is to pick your knowledge about issues they may face.

8) Add More Videos on Your Site

If you’re not making any videos for your blog, start producing them now. Not only does adding other types of multimedia content on your blog help with SEO (search engine optimization) or getting traffic to your site, it also gives your audience more reasons to stay.

Plus, you can join the YouTube Partner Program and monetize your videos. The only problem is that YouTube only lets you earn from your videos once your channel reaches 10k views collectively. (It’s a 2017 policy, so if you joined early on, good for you!) The money you make from every view isn’t a lot, but if it turns viral, or viewed by thousands of people, you’ll get to take home a nice passive income from years to come.

9) Extend Your Blog Money-Making Efforts to Social Media

Setting up an account on the major social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest) doesn’t take much time. You can even automate and schedule posting with a tool like Hootsuite.

You won’t be directly earning passive income by having an active presence on these networks, but sharing your blog posts across social media gives you additional audience who might be interested with your content, eBook, audiobook, private forum, and other money-generating techniques you use on the blog.

10) Find Partners

When you’ve proven your worth after a few years of blogging and have become an authority figure within your niche, it’s easy to partner with other companies that you wholeheartedly believe in. These partnerships work like affiliate marketing, except you only promote one company. A great example of this is Neil Patel’s partnership with Bluehost. Every time someone uses the Bluehost coupon he posts, Neil Patel earns a portion of the sale/subscription.

The Bottom Line

These 10 ways of earning passive income is easily achievable, especially if you’ve been blogging for years. If you’re new to the blog world, you can still join in on the fun with AdSense and affiliate marketing, but the longer you blog and bigger your audience, you’ll have more monetization options that will let you earn even while you sleep.

9 Profitable Ecommerce Ideas You Can Try in 2018

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It’s never easy to pick a business niche, especially when there are tons of great ideas already in development. But if you’re planning to set-up an ecommerce business in 2018 (Proven Amazon Course will show you how), you can take a cue from technology trends, in-demand products and customer-centric preferences. Whether you’re looking for products to sell in an online store, or a service to offer, here are some ideas you could check out:

9 Ecommerce Niche Ideas for 2018

1) Drones – Drones having been reaching new heights throughout 2017 in various industries and is expected to become a $17 billion industry in the coming years. Aside from military use, drones are making a big splash on journalism/film (aerial photography), logistics (express delivery), disaster management (sending supplies, gathering information or conducting rescue operations), agriculture (precision crop monitoring), law enforcement, and more. Of course, drones will continue to its increase its popularity in the travel/photography industries for personal use.

2) Organic Beauty Products – Consumers are becoming more aware of the health and environmental effects of beauty products. Sales of organic or natural beauty products have been dramatically increasing up to 20% per year since 2015. Check out food-, oil- and vegetable-based hair and skin products with a focus on key ingredients like essential oils, vitamin C & E, seaweed, oatmeal, honey, coconut and other fruits.

3) Product Customization – For anyone who wishes to expand an ecommerce store, there’s a huge opportunity for product customization in 2018. This will work depending on the industry, such as clothing, shoes, cosmetics, furniture, or gifts, among others. And since technology has advanced to the point where customization is simpler at less the cost, business owners can add another income stream without having to develop new products.

4) Urban Farming – People are realizing the convenience, environmental importance, and health effects of farming in urban settings. Vertical farming, in particular, is a growing sub-niche that has been embraced all over the world through 2017. Even the government is on board with this upward trend with laws being amended in various states to accommodate urban vertical farming.

5) Subscription-based products and services – The success of subscription-based steaming Netflix isn’t done yet even if its streaming service has exploded in the last several years. Aside from a projection that this industry will reach over $200 billion by 2019, Netflix has inspired many companies that now provide a subscription option with its products or services. A great example of this is Dollar Shave Club, which earned over $615 million within 5 years; by shipping its members shave kits on a monthly basis.

6) Essential Oils – The natural health and wellness industry is all about essential oils in 2017 and it will continue to be a big deal in the years to come. What’s interesting about the popularity of essential oils is that consumers are welcoming them with open arms as they become more aware of natural health, even if the FDA continuously published reports against it.

7) Apps – App development has been a booming industry for a few years now, but there’s more to be invented or copied. Yes, even copycat apps can become successful in the app world. Just look at Uber clone Gofer or Tinder clone Igniter. The best thing about creating apps is that anyone with the right idea can jump into this world (for example: Yahoo!’s $30 million acquisition of Summy from a 17-year-old). With the right app idea that aims to solve a particular problem, an app can sell for millions of dollars.

8) Wedding – This multibillion dollar industry may feel saturated with tons of businesses already in operation for decades, but note that as the trends change year by year, more business opportunities open up for startups. Photobooths, mobile bars, venue decorators, and other sub-wedding niches weren’t always a part of the wedding industry, but brides and grooms ate them up when these businesses were introduced.

9) Custom Fitness Products – The fitness industry is a massive industry that has always had an impressive outlook, but customization of fitness products seems to be an exploding trend in the late 2017. If you have an ecommerce business in this field, try adding a customization option to accommodate the growing needs of consumers to “own” the products they buy.

Turn Your Idea into a Business

Coming up with an idea is half the battle. Turning your idea into a revenue generating business is another feat entirely.

One of the best ecommerce training platforms I’ve come across is Proven Amazon Course. The platform and online community comes highly recommended. Jim Cockrum teaches his students how to leverage the power of Amazon to build successful six-figure ecommerce businesses. Head there now and get moving today.

The Bottom Line

The cool thing about these business ideas is that it can apply to any kind of capital you may have. If you wish to have a product-based business but don’t have enough capital, dropshipping (where your partner with wholesalers who handle everything from stocking to shipping) can help you solve your financial dilemma. Service-based businesses also require a smaller investment that the product development route.

If you do try any of these ecommerce business ideas, remember that mobile usage will contribute the biggest chunk of ecommerce sales in 2018, so make your websites mobile-friendly or develop an app to support your business. Other technology trends you can incorporate into your ecommerce business include the use of virtual reality or 3D shopping, artificial intelligence, customer-centric automation, personalized shopping, one-click payment, and the merging of online and offline shopping.

SEO Audit Checklist: 20 Website Elements You Should Fix for Better On-site SEO

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If you’ve been focusing all your SEO efforts on social media engagement, forum posting, guest blogging, and other off-site SEO tasks that aim to get a link back to your website and in turn, increase visitors and conversions, it’s all good. But if you’re doing all these and your organic searches are still getting dismal numbers, it’s a huge sign that you’ll need to double-check your website and fix on-site SEO issues.

On-site or On-page SEO involves dozens of small tasks that help turn an ordinary website into a search engine-friendly website, but here are the 20 most commonly forgotten website elements that you should check out:

1) Proper use of No-Index Tag – When the “noindex” tag is applied to any post or page, search engines will not index those pages. If that is your intention, then so be it. But if you’re not aware of such a tag exists, make sure to remove the no-index tag now.

2) Attention-grabbing titles – Titles should stir the curiosity of visitors and make them click the post. Of course, the title should be relevant to the entire content. If possible, include the keywords on the title tag, but ensure that it would make sense and not added just for the sake of keyword placement.

3) Meta description – Meta descriptions provide search engines and potential visitors with additional information about a post. It is the first 140 characters posted on search engine results, so make sure they count by including important keywords and giving an interesting summary of your post.

4) HTTPS – In 2014, Google announced that they are weighing secured sites more when it comes to ranking. Since then, studies from Moz and other SEO industry sites have shown that over 75% of websites on first pages use HTTPs.

5) Header tags – Header tags are used for sub-headings throughout a page. They are named from H1 to H6, but search engines read H1 the most. As such, it’s important that words, phrases or sentences with the H1 tag convey additional information related to the overall content of your page.

6) LSI – SearchEngineJournal defines LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing as a “mathematical method used to determine the relationship between terms and concepts in content.” In short, LSI refers to synonyms of keywords. Since search engines can now understand the concept of synonyms, using LSI for content can improve SEO rankings without using keywords with the old-and-tired robot speak style.

7) Multimedia content – Search engines can only read text, so all pictures, videos, and audio content that you upload won’t have any bearing when it comes to ranking. However, if you follow proper formatting for these types of content, it could benefit your SEO efforts significantly.

8) URL – By default, all posts published via WordPress and other CMS (content management systems) are given a specific URL or permalink structure with a random number like domain.com/p=1234. Simply changing the end of your URL with a more specific word or phrase like domain.com/Onpage-SEO-guide can make a huge difference.

9) Underused or overused anchor texts – Anchor texts are the clickable texts in a hyperlink. When linking to another page within the site, or a third-party site, it’s important to use keywords relevant to the page. Not on does this technique reduce bounce rates, it also helps search engine bots “understand” what your content is about and index your page properly.

10) Keywords – If you’re still stuffing keywords all over your posts, you should trackback and edit them out or change them into LSI instead. It’s no longer acceptable to trick search engines into checking out your pages with keywords splashed all over a page. Search engines can see through this, so make sure to write with your readers in mind.

11) Encourage engagement – To reduce bounce rate (the amount of time visitors spend on your site’s page), encourage your visitors to check out more content from your site by installing “similar posts” plugins, adding social-sharing buttons, encouraging them to comment, posting more multimedia content and more.

12) Sitemap – Does your website have an XML sitemap to help search engines crawl through your site? If you answered yes, double-check if it’s still functional. Add sitemaps for photos and videos as well to bring more SEO juice via your multimedia content.

13) Canonical URLs – In cases where pages are doubled with the same content, adding the HTML link tag rel=canonical into the page you deem more important. Once you’ve done this, it merges the two (or more) similar pages into one without having to delete any of the pages and being tagged with duplicate content.

14) Responsiveness and Site speed – Slow-loading websites may be due to unnecessary plugins, web hosting, and other causes, but this is often easily fixed. Make sure page loads is under two seconds and pass mobile-friendly tests.

15) Fix broken links – SEO is all about user experience and making it easier for search engines to find your site. But when your site has 404s, non-indexed pages, and other errors, not only do these errors lead to demotion from search engines, they also cause bad user experience.

16) Incorporate semantic search concept – Google’s Hummingbird update updated how search engines understand keywords. The literal keyword/phrase used for SEO in the past (example: New York personal injury attorney) can now be forgotten completely since Google takes a cue of the searcher’s location and intent of the search. Adapting to these changes can improve rankings and boost site visitors.

17) Robots.txt – One of the most basic, yet overlooked site element is the robots.txt. This allows or disallows web-crawlers to crawl a part of your website or not. It is the first thing search engines look for when examining a website, so make sure yours was done right with proper instructions.

18) Ads – Wrong placement of ads can turn any webpage unreadable. Make sure to study the size of ads, try out ad placements, and examine ad loading times whenever you decide to monetize your website with ads.

19) Navigation – Your site menu should be organized properly so that the most popular pages are featured where visitors could easily view them. Take advantage of the internal linking opportunity from every navigation space available, either at the main one on top, side or bottom.

20) Mobile-friendly – Mobile search is the future – the number of people using their mobile devices for searching the web has overtaken desktop users. Updating with the times avoid turning off your visitors with an outdated site.

On-page SEO is just as important as link building or Off-page SEO. Use the checklist above and give your site a free website audit to determine if your website is doing alright, SEO-wise or if it needs to undergo some changes. You’d be amazed that even the slightest changes could improve your site’s traffic and conversions significantly.

How White Labeling Can Save Your Clothing Ecommerce Store a Ton of Cash

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Anyone who has built a clothing business, whether big or small, will have to decide which path to take: whether to create products from scratch or buy white label products instead. It’s one of the many decisions fashion brands and clothing stores should consider early in the business planning. And rightly so, because this decision would greatly affect the company’s budget, marketing, and other future endeavors.

The term “white label” originated from the music industry. In the past, when DJs and radio stations receive demos from artists, they place white labs on the discs or tapes to keep competition from seeing the details of the new music they just played. The term has since reached other industries and is used to describe business deals wherein manufacturers produce a particular product and distributes this to multiple resellers. The resellers simply receive the products with their own customized, branded labels.

White-labeling has been used in ecommerce more than any other industry. In retail and fashion, the white-label term refers to the white label where the company’s logo and marketing is placed.

It’s the Secret of Huge Retailers

Big retail stores are able to sell various items with their branding, even without finding suppliers and going through the entire production and quality testing processes. Because the third-party manufacturers will be the one sewing labels into the product, retail stores are able to sell the clothing straight from delivery.

The main advantage of white-labeling is the low cost involved in stocking items to sell. This is particularly useful if you’re starting out your online clothing store without funds to pay for equipment, labor, and technology.

However, companies have two options when it comes to white-labeling. They could either:

  • buy white label (what huge retailers do)
  • sell white label (what smaller companies do)

Buying White Label Clothing

As a newbie in the fashion industry, going with a white label route reduces the chance of issues from sourcing to production. Other benefits and disadvantages of buying white-label clothing include:

PROS

  • No huge investment required for equipment, labor and technology
  • No need to conduct trial-and-error
  • Focus on other important stuff, such as marketing products
  • Save money by buying in bulk

CONS

The downside to buying white label clothing is that there is no customization involved in the process. This means you can’t dictate a manufacturer about things like fabric material, design, fit changes and so on. You’re only given a catalog of stock clothing to choose from.

This route is ideal for companies that prefer to begin the business with a bang. Because their initial investment can all be used straight to buying white-label clothing, the chances are high that the first round of products are professionally made as if the company has been doing this for years. Even reputable companies can suddenly switch to buying white-label clothing during busy seasons or whenever supplier issues occur.

Selling White Label Clothing

Smaller companies that want to expand their market, but don’t have much marketing experience can sell white label clothing to increase sales. However, this isn’t a perfect business model either.

PROS

  • No marketing involved – once the items are delivered to the purchasing company, they’re already sold
  • Only sell products you know how to produce
  • Increase sales with every third-party company that buys your clothes
  • Focus your energy with what you love, whether it’s hand-sewing wedding dresses, or producing clothes in bulk manually
  • Save advertising/marketing money

CONS

If you’re only starting out and have no experience with clothing production, it may cost your company a lot money when you’re still looking for vendors, equipment, or people. In addition, if your company has little manpower, they may not be able to handle higher volumes of clothing production. In most cases, the purchasing company dictates the project deadline.

If your clothing business already has a following, don’t expect to get credited for your work because as soon as you decided on selling white-label clothes, you can’t tell anyone if a huge retailer is selling these clothes with their own label.

This route is ideal for small companies who wish to expand their market quickly, but don’t have enough funds to accommodate an expansion. By selling white-label clothing, companies will be able to increase their demand, meet more third-party companies willing to stamp their labels on white-label clothing, and sell more items at a faster turnaround rate than going the retail route.

The Bottom Line

Whether you’re buying or selling white-label clothing, the bad news is you’ll lose some control over the project either at the production level or marketing level. But if losing this control means your company will be able to benefit from the potential for partnerships and business growth white-labeling could offer your clothing line, then maybe you should look into this business model.

3 Underrated Tips to Help Double Your Dropshipping Revenue

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Dropshipping can be a lucrative business due to the low investment involved, but your success in this field depends largely on how much work you put in. If you’ve set-up an online store with the idea that “if you build it, they will come,” you’re bound to fail. Because this business model has plenty of competition, what makes you different from all the rest who are doing the exact same thing is how smart you handle your business from inside and out.

For online store owners who have had mild success with dropshipping, but are experiencing roadblocks, here are 3 unpopular tips that could help double your dropshipping revenue:

1. Automate the Process, but not Customer Service

Dropshipping has been a business model for decades, even before the web existed. The difference with today’s online dropshipping version is that online store owners don’t need a warehouse to stock products because the wholesaler/manufacturer/dropshipper does everything from fulfillment to shipping for you. The downside is that you receive a smaller profit per transaction. The only way to succeed with this business model is to scale, and in order to sell as many products as possible, you have to automate operation.

Using automation software is a widely-known and extremely effective dropshipper technique. With a dropshipping automation software, you don’t have to:

  • Forward sales orders every time a customer places his/her order
  • Manage inventory by connecting to your supplier’s inventory system
  • Choose which suppliers to fulfill a product (if you’re dealing with multiple suppliers offering the same products)

Automation is the key to scaling your business to another level, but in order to double the number of return customers, you have to leave the customer service side of your business as human as possible. If your budget permits it, hire someone to handle e-mails, live chats, or other contact options. Customers feel better if they know a real person is trying to solve their concerns.

2. Offer as Many Payment Options Possible, but Skip Bank Deposits

You won’t believe how many people cancel a potential sale when they discover that their chosen mode of payment is not available.

There are plenty of payment gateways that can be used for your standalone ecommerce site, Shopify store, or other third-party hosted stores. Examples of payment gateways that accept cash, credit card payments, Bitcoin, and other currencies include Authorize.net, 2Checkout, Payza, Payever, Stripe, and PayPal, among others.

As many dropshipping businesses would point out, it is best to choose a payment gateway that offers would-be customers numerous ways to pay. However, an uncommon tip is to stay away from the bank-deposit option. Here are several reasons why:

No more impulse buys

When customers choose bank deposit, many of them don’t follow through in transferring payment. This can be due to various reasons from procrastination to buyer’s remorse. Whatever their reasons may be for not fulfilling payment, the result is the same: your business suffers from unfulfilled orders left open.

Checking bank payment is a lot of work

You may argue that online banking makes it easier to check bank deposit payments, but here’s where it gets tricky. Some customers use their spouses’ bank accounts for deposits; others don’t include notes when fulfilling a payment, which means you’d have to check with customers every time a payment arrives.

If given a choice, customers will choose bank deposit over credit card payment

Everyone knows that the bank deposit option is one of the safest ways to pay, so if you give customers this option, they are more than likely to choose this route, even if they have PayPal or an active credit card.

3. Learn all about On-Page SEO

SEO should be a part of any website, but not many dropshipping online stores implement these useful techniques to increasing traffic. If you’re trying to double sales, or increase visitors to your store, why you should be learning all about on-page SEO because:

  • Planning keywords give you an edge over your competition
  • Using a manufacturer’s product title and description not only limits your store’s potential to be seen as “different than the rest,” it can also cause Google to label your store as ‘spam’ and not include it in search results.
  • URLs, META tags, internal linking and planning site navigation based on a comprehensive keyword research can dramatically improve traffic to your store.
  • Usability is a deciding factor for most site visitors. The more user-friendly your online store is, the higher chances a customer would trust your store and make a purchase.
  • Bad links may cause customers to leave your store completely.
  • Search engines love sitemaps – build one for your store.

The Bottom Line

Follow these three underrated tips seriously and watch how your sales improve over time. What’s great about these methods is that they’re long-term: implement them on your dropshipping biz now and you’d still be reaping what you sow for months or years.

WordPress Page Builders 101

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One of the biggest complaints that new WordPress user have is how hard it is to get a post or page to look “just right”.

While WordPress is pretty easy to use, this is a justifiable complaint if you’re trying to create a post that isn’t in a simple blog style format.

In order to create something a bit different, you would need to learn CSS and HTML at the very least to achieve your desired look.

The beauty of WordPress though is that there are thousands of clever people out there looking to solve peoples problems and of course they listened and created plugins called Page Builders.

What Are Page Builders?

These plugins allow you to create complex looking post and pages through an easy to use drag and drop system.

Often these are done from a front end point of view, where you actually see your site and drag and drop elements on to the page so you can see the content forming in front of you.

Some page builders are slightly less fancy though and utilize a backend system where you add multiple modules to create the same effect but without the visual feedback.

Page builders allow you to add all sort of things to your pages, including:

  • Text content
  • Images
  • Columns
  • Widgets
  • Galleries
  • Counters and Timers
  • Call to Actions
  • Optin forms
  • And many more

Not only that but most page builders offer pre-built examples that you can load and modify to your needs.

This flexibility, especially with the ability to create sections and blocks on the page make page builders incredibly powerful.

When to Use a Page Builder

Page builders fill a void in WordPress and allow people, even those who might not know a lick of CSS and HTML, to create beautiful looking pages.

This can lead to some people getting a bit carried away with using page builders, often when it’s not needed.

What then are ideal candidates for page builders?

#1 Home Pages

If your theme doesn’t allow you to create a complex, beautiful looking home page (which to be fair a lot do nowadays), then a page builder is the perfect option.

Simply create a new page, build it up with the page builder and then assign it as your home page and you’re done.

#2 Landing Pages

If you’re interested in marketing with your site, then you likely know the power of landing pages, and page builders make these a snap to build, especially builders like Thrive Content Builder which seem to focus more on landing pages.

#3 Complex Posts

Most of your content is going to be pretty straightforward text with some image thrown into the mix.

There are occasions though when you need more than that.  One type of post that I personally find hard to do in the WordPress editor is lists style posts where you want images on the left and content on the right.

Trying to get them even and orderly is a nightmare, but page builder make this easy with their row and column structures.

When Not to Use a Page Builder

One thing I consider a mistake when using page builders, is using them for everything!

If you have an article that is basic text with a few images, using a page builder is overkill. Not only does it make it slightly longer to produce the said article but using it on every single post and page can potentially have a negative effect on site speed.

Problems with Page Builders

It’s not all rosy with page builders, there are definitely some considerations to make before you use one.

#1 SEO issues

A lot of page builders generate quite a large amount of additional HTML that gets added to the page making it less semantic which may affect SEO.

#2 Speed

Some page builders make use of shortcodes to load and display your content, some simply have extra calls to the database. Both of these add weight to a site which can slow down page load speeds.

#3 Locked in

Like using a theme with too much functionality, some page builders make it very difficult to stop using them or to swap to another page builder. I’ve seen it where if the page builder plugin is disabled the content is simply gone. That’s not an ideal situation. Even if the content remains, it could be strewn with broken shortcodes or simply just plain and lacking the detail you added in.

#4 You don’t learn

Page builders make it easy for newbies and non-techies to create wonderful looking pages but that comes at the price of never learning basic HTML and CSS. Those skills are advisable for any marketer or site owner to learn, even if just at a basic level to help in situations where a page builder cannot be used.

Top WordPress Page Builders

There are lots and lots of page builder plugins available for WordPress, but here’s a selection of what I think are some of the best ones that you can use (in no particular order).

Beaver Builder

Beaverbuilder

Jam packed with features and templates, Beaver Builder is one of the best page builders out there.

It uses front end views and one thing I love about this builder is the fact that once disabled, the content remains.

The main downside to this plugin is the price; at $99 it’s not the cheapest option. It does however also have a free “lite” version available on WordPress.org.

As well as that the cheapest option does not support multisite, so if you need that be prepared to pay $199.

Elementor

Elementor

This page builder is relatively new to the field but it does offer a lot of different features and templates. I couldn’t see anything that specifically wowed me, but there was an overall sense of quality to the plugin.

That being said it does lack in some areas, especially editing inline text.

Still it’s easy to learn and use and at $49 it’s affordable for most budgets.

Page Builder by Site Origin

Siteorigin page builder

What’s impressive about this page builder is that you get all the features and easy to use systems that other page builders have, but it’s free.

It actually confused me because as a marketer my first question was how do they pay the bills? The answer is via premium addons to the plugin!

This plugin does have some flaws in that it’s perhaps not quite as easy to learn as others and the front end editing isn’t as fluid as other plugins, but for free these are minor concerns.

Divi Builder

Divi builder

Bundled with the popular Divi theme, Elegant Themes also provide the functionality in a separate plugin.

The problem with the theme is that if you decide to change theme and used the builder, you’re stuck! This plugin changes that but only slightly as the content is still locked to the plugin.

That aside, Elegant Themes have created an excellent product here with lots of features and templates thrown in.

At $69 it’s middle of the road price wise.

Visual Composer

Visual composer

If you’ve ever browsed themes on Themeforest or even bought some, you might have come across Visual Composer. It’s often bundled with themes and is still the best selling plugin on Codecanyon, Themeforest’s sister site.

As a plugin it performs excellently with yet again numerous features thrown in.

Downsides would definitely be the use of shortcodes to generate the content and some possible conflicts with other plugins.

At the price point of $34, it’s definitely the best value for money out of the premium plugins listed here.

Thrive Content Builder

Thrive content builder

The final plugin I’m going to mention get’s a lot of use from marketers as it has a higher focus on marketing related aspects rather than more general use.

That being said you can still use it to create beautiful pages even if you’re not marketing with your site.

The front end view is simple to use and deceptively powerful.

The Bottom Line

Not every one will need a page builder, and you should really look at your needs before opting for one.

Ultimately most page builders are similar in what they offer, which makes it hard to choose between them.

As such it’s important to test each page builder out to make sure it definitely has everything you need before buying – most plugin developers offer demos nowadays.

Used with care and selectively, page builders are an excellent addition to your WordPress toolkit and can help take the design and look of your site to the next level.

Making Money from Others: Building a Marketplace Site

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As an online entrepreneur you generally have two choices: sell your own products/services or promote other people goods as an affiliate.

These are both great and profitable options, but what if there was a way to create a scalable business that requires no creation of products or inventory?

Well there is, it’s called a marketplace.

What is a Marketplace?

A marketplace is simply a place where people can buyer from multiple sellers in one location, a town market or malls are perfect real world examples.

Online is no different: a single site that allows sellers to add their products and purchasers to browse said products.

This is defined as a Two Sided Marketplace.

There are lots of already well known marketplaces online:

  • Amazon – allows anyone to sell their stuff, and reach a wider audience.
  • Etsy – a marketplace for craft and handmade goods.
  • Airbnb – connecting private accommodation owners with short term renters
  • Themeforest – providing a home for WordPress theme developers
  • Fiverr – showcases a wide variety of cheap tasks and services

Why 2 Sided Marketplaces Work

Creating a two sided marketplace has a number of benefits for an entrepreneur.

First off is profit. Depending on the business model you choose, you can skim off the surface of both sides by charging people to list and by adding to the transaction charges for customers.

Obviously you may not want to do one or the other instead of both, but the option is there.

Secondly is that once a marketplace like this is set up, it can become very stable. Sellers have a tendency to stick with the marketplace as moving is difficult and costly.

Take Themeforest for example. If a seller leaves they then need to do their own marketing and if they sell the products on Themeforest and their own site, they get a lower percentage of any sales on Themeforest which could cost them thousands.

This tactic by Themeforest might be heavy handed but it helps keep sellers working with just them.

For buyers

The centralized location makes it much easier for customers to work with: there’s no need for them to go from site to site and waste time on search engines when they can just visit your site and find exactly what they need.

For sellers

A place to list their products with (in theory) no marketing needed to bring in traffic, no need to handle payments and refunds and a targeted audience. It’s perfect for one person or small companies to get their products out there with little work or risk.

It Ain’t Easy

Getting started with an online marketplace is possibly one of the hardest routes to take with ecommerce, but the profits can be incredible.

The Chicken and the Egg

Which came first? It doesn’t really matter of course, but the issue is that if you don’t have sellers, you have no buyers. If you have no buyers, you can’t attract sellers!

This conundrum is the most difficult aspect to overcome.

There are ways though, through what’s called “seeding”. Seeding is effectively jumpstarting a marketplace when you are just starting.

Focus on One Side First

The most common way to start a market place is to build up one side first. For example OpenTable which is a company that handles reservations for restaurants started by just offering restaurants a way to handle reservations electronically.

Only after it got enough restaurants on board did it open up the booking system to customers.

It built up one side, the restaurants, and then let the flood gates open by introducing the customer element.

Offer Something Better

By offering tools or systems that are better than your competitors you can entice sellers/customers over which will bring the other half as well.

Airbnb got traction when they included a tool to post to Airbnb and Craigslist at the same time. With Craigslist’s own posting tool being difficult to use, the easy to use Airbnb system enticed renters with both ease of use and the ability to post to two sites simultaneously.

This allowed them to bring renters over to their platform, while reducing the risk to renters (they still get to post on Craigslist). Having renters posting, meant that customers would actually be interested what they have to offer.

Build Around an Existing Product

This is really only going to work if you’re the owner of said product otherwise you might run into legal issues. The basic idea is to have an extensible product that others can create for; software is great for this. They then sell the products on your site’s marketplace.

The ecommerce systems Woocommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are excellent examples of marketplaces built around a single product.

It’s Slow Going

The thing with marketplaces is that it’s a long haul, there’s no quick buck to be made with them. It takes time to build and seed the marketplace so it’s at a stage where it becomes the de facto place to go for that niche (Etsy for handcrafted stuff, Themeforest for WordPress themes, etc.).

While a lot of marketers expect to get a return within 6 – 12 months for a project, a marketplace can barely even be growing by the time a year has passed.

This makes it difficult to know whether what you’re doing is actually working or not. Pivoting too early means you might lose out on the site blossoming into a marketplace. Hanging onto a dud project may mean an increased financial loss.

Your Niche Matters

Let me be blunt: it’s highly unlikely you will build the next Amazon!

Building a varied marketplace like Amazon takes a lot of time, and money to do. Even Amazon started small and focused on specific products. Even Amazon started off by just selling books.

Instead take a hint from other successful online marketplaces and focus on a niche.

Whatever niche you go with you must make sure it’s a two sided niche that has enough potential or existing sellers to draw from.

Marketplace Platforms

The great thing about building an online marketplace right now is that the costs are much lower than they used to be: no longer do you have to spend thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on a custom built site.

The get a Minimum Viable Product up and running to test out your idea is as simple as creating a WordPress site, and installing an e-commerce plugin and a marketplace theme such as the awesome Marketify.

As well as WordPress most hosted and self-hosted e-commerce systems have a multi-vendor system that allows you to create a marketplace: Magento, Drupal, X-cart and Shopify all have different options you can use to create a marketplace.

As there are so many options available, there’s something for everyone’s budget.

The Bottom Line

As with any online venture building a marketplace has risks, perhaps more than any other way of making money online.

It will take time and dedication to start seeing a profit, but once built marketplaces are incredibly stable and long term businesses.

E-commerce Coupon Guide: To Coupon or not to Coupon?

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Everybody loves to get a deal whether they are buying online or not. In fact people are more willing to open their wallets when they think they are getting a bargain.

This can have a tremendous effect for your e-commerce site, helping you to increase sales, shift stock and create brand awareness.

Coupons are by far the easiest type of discount to use as most e-commerce platforms allow for a discount code to be entered. As well as that they are perhaps the most flexible too.

Coupon Pros and Cons

As with anything there are two sides to the story and while coupons can be very useful, they also can have negative effects.

Pros

  • Easy to implement
  • Quick injection of cash
  • Can help shift stock
  • Removes a barrier to entry for first time buyers
  • Help increase brand awareness when shared

Cons

  • If done wrong, they can be costly
  • Not a sustainable method of promotion
  • Can have a negative effect on branding
  • Customers wait for deals if used too much

Types of Coupons

Coupons generally focus on price, but can also be used in other ways:

Percentage Based Discount

This is probably the most common discount coupon around, and it’s where you offer a percentage (e.g. 10%) off the cart amount. You can also offer a discount on a specific item rather than the cart.

Dollar Amount Discount

Similar to percentage, but this is a flat amount (e.g. $10) off the cart/specific product.

Free Shipping

Put in the code, get free shipping!

Free Gift

By using this code, your customers would have an item added to cart with a 100% discount.

Where Should You Display Your Coupons?

Now you have an idea for the type of coupon to use, how will you let people know?

Popups

Popups appear on your website and are a great “in your face” way of letting people know that you have a coupon available.

Call to Actions

A more static way to display coupons, these can be large images, sidebar images, or highlighted content areas within blog posts and product pages.

Emails

Using emails to notify people about your discounts helps spread the information and get people back to your site.

Coupon Sites

Often people will add items to their cart and then go hunting for a coupon. Adding your coupons to the various coupon sites out there is a great way to share the discount. We have a list of some of the best coupon sites here.

Social Media

Tweet it, Pin it, Share it – social media not only allows you to touch base with your followers, but can help increase the number of people who fins your discount.

Other People’s Sites

Bloggers and niche related websites are also an awesome way to share coupons, especially when tied with an affiliate deal.

Different Ways to Use Coupons

Just offering a flat 10% discount at all times doesn’t really help you or your customers. Instead why not use coupons selectively to help maximize excitement and sales while minimizing the costs to your business.

Daily/Weekly/Monthly

Offering a regular discount code can be used to help even out poor performing periods and help shift under-performing products. Be careful with this though as discounting too often can have negative effects.

Pre-launch

If you haven’t launched yet, or if you’re soon to be launching a new product/product line, then offering up a pre-launch discount can help to create hype and sales, especially if combined with a pre-order system.

Holiday/Seasonal

Valentines, mother’s/father’s day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are all popular periods for discounting, and perfect time for offering coupons.

As well as those, you could look to offer coupons for niche related “holidays”, such as National Sci-Fi Day, National Ferret Day and National Leave the Office Early Day (there’s pretty much a national day for everything…!)

First Time Shopper

Offering a discount for first time shopper is an excellent way to sway those that might not be ready to make a purchase yet.

Customer Loyalty

Tracking your customer sales is easy with most e-commerce system, so why not reward a loyal customer by sending them a coupon code just for them after they spend X amount in your store.

Post Purchase

After someone has purchased with you, send them a coupon code for future purchases. This can not only increase customer satisfaction but could help improve the chance of repeat custom.

Exit Intent

If you’ve ever looked into marketing techniques you may have come across Exit Intent. This system detects when a customer moves their mouse outside of the browser window (which usually means they are going to close the window or go to another site.

Offering a discount at that point could sway people to stay and buy.

Email Subscription Lead Magnet

A Lead Magnet, or in plain speak a bribe, is a method of sweetening the deal to get people to sign up to your mailing list. Often these take the form of free e-books, email courses and the like, but as an e-commerce store you can also offer a discount coupon.

Abandoned Carts

One of the main areas where e-commerce sites lose potential money is when a customer adds to cart and then abandons the cart.

There are many reasons for this, but if the customer is logged in and known you can perhaps save the cart by sending them a discount code. It’s a wise idea with this system to also save their cart content so that they can go back to the site with the cart content intact which reduces further barriers to buying.

Volume

If you’re looking to sell as much as possible why not offer a coupon that provides a discount for bulk purchases.

Cash for Credit

This is a type of cash back method, but one that keeps people tied to your store. The idea is that when the coupon is entered, and a purchase made, they receive an amount of store credit that can be used for future purchases.

E.g. if someone spends $100 they may receive $20 in store credit. This effectively turns the coupon into a flat dollar amount coupon that can be spent on anything in store.

Social Sharing

Instead of spending money with a social media company to increase your social presence, another idea is to give your customers a coupon if they share your (pre-written) message/page/etc on social networks.

Exclusive Offers to Social Followers

This method of using a coupon is to reward your social network followers. You can do this as a flat reward to thank them for being there or tie it to social shares.

Retargeting

This method of advertising has been proven to work at keeping your brand in front of people’s noses.

Not only can it work to bring back visitors to your site, but combined with a coupon code just for those visitors it could help entice them to buy too.

Influencer / Partnerships / Affiliates

Giving certain social media influencers, business partners or affiliate coupon codes can help drive new customers to your door.

Referral

Referral marketing is when you ask your existing customer base to refer a friend or family member to your site. You can use coupon codes to help facilitate this, both as an incentive to the new customer and as a reward to the referrer.

A Word of Caution

Using coupons to increase sales and brand awareness is definitely a useful strategy for any e-commerce site. I mentioned the cons earlier but I want to expand on a few things that you really need to be aware of.

Use Expiration Dates

Limiting the time that a coupon is active for not only adds a sense of urgency in the customers mind, but also helps to reduce your own liability.

Imagine a coupon that has no expiration, and suddenly 6 months later it goes viral, just when your own cash flow is perhaps not the best. That could turn into a really bad situation.

Using expiration dates means that you won’t get hit with unexpected surprises down the road.

An alternative to expiration dates is to limit the number of coupon uses, but this is harder to manage and needs to be clearly stated so there’s no customer backlash.

Run the Numbers

Make sure that your business can afford the discount! If your margins are already low, why make them lower? In that case I’d suggest trying an alternative method of generating sales.

Of course, sometimes it’s worth making little or even nothing if it means shifting a slow selling product.

Your use case will always be unique but just make sure you know what sort of financial situation you will be put in if you use coupons.

Generic or Specific

If the numbers look bad for using a coupon that can be applied to any product, try running the numbers with the coupon for just specific products or categories – that way you can generate sales without losing money.

Don’t Get Carried Away

Some business owners think that using coupons is an everyday thing, but it shouldn’t be. Not only can it ruin a brands reputation (especially for higher priced goods), but people can come to expect your discounts and wait for a discount before buying. This can put additional strain on your finances.

Instead, use coupons sparingly and know exactly why you are offering a coupon and what benefits you want to gain from it, before offering it.

Bottom Line

Hopefully this article has provided you with some idea on how to effectively use coupons with your e-commerce site.

Do you use coupons in different ways? Let me know in the comments.

10 Alternative Selling Platforms to Amazon, eBay and Half.com

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Amazon, eBay and eBay’s book-selling platform, Half.com, are what most people think of when they want to sell their stuff, unwanted holiday gifts, books or other inventory.

Unfortunately, each one of these platforms has been steadily increasing its seller fees over the years, to the point that many sellers can’t make enough of a profit to justify the time and energy spent on listing.

eBay is a prime example of a platform that has been steadily jacking up its rates over the years. Currently, the platform lists the following basic fees for its auction-style and fixed price listings:

ebay

Unfortunately, there is more than meets the eye when it comes down to just how much money you will eventually pay in the form of commissions. In addition to the 10% final value fee, you must also consider Paypal, which is the payment system that eBay now requires all sellers to use.

With Paypal, you’ll be paying an additional 30 cents per transaction, plus a 2.9% fee on the amount transferred in from the buyer. Furthermore, that 2.9% is charged on the entire monetary amount -which could include a significant portion devoted to shipping costs. So, if you’re selling anything heavy, like a textbook, beware: You might just end up giving your merchandise away for free!

In the past, a safe(er) haven for sellers who wanted to sell big, bulky books was the Half.com platform. Here, you could list your books as long as you wanted. If something sold, you paid a more reasonable commission, and you also were reimbursed for shipping costs by the buyer.

Well, Half.com must’ve realized that it could squeeze a lot more money from its sellers because I received the following email today. The bad news? Some fee tiers are about to increase by as much as 200%!

half

As for Amazon, it doesn’t fare that much better. Sellers who don’t have subscription plans with Amazon and who are just looking to sell a few low-priced items are in for a surprise:

amazon-com-help_-fees-and-pricing

Fortunately, other selling platforms have emerged in recent years. These alternate platforms are not as expensive to use as Amazon, eBay and Half.com, yet they offer many of the same key benefits.

1. Etsy

This well-known arts-and-crafts site charges listing and final value fees on its fixed-price listings; however, the fees are significantly lower than those of eBay and Amazon. With Etsy, you pay a 20 cent listing fee and just 3.5% on the final value of your sold item. Also, for the same price, your Etsy listings will run four times as long as those posted on eBay.

2. Bonanza

Like Etsy, Bonanza offers sellers a platform where they can sell unique and quirky items at a fixed price, yet the items don’t necessarily need to be homemade or “crafty.” Also, the site also doesn’t charge any money for simply posting a listing. Once an item sells, Bonanza’s average fee per sale is as low as 3.5%.

3. eBid

If you’re looking for an auction-style platform, give eBid a try. This easy-to-use, intuitive platform charges no listing fees whatsoever and asks for just 3% of your item’s final value. Best of all, if you’re looking to constantly sell items online, you can become an eBid “lifer” for just shy of $50.

ebid

4. Ealtbay

This site looks like eBay, but it isn’t. For starters, Ealtbay doesn’t charge sellers any money to list their products on the platform. The final value fee charged for all items, regardless of their tier, is just 1.60%. And finally, Ealtbay doesn’t force you to use only Paypal as your sole payment method.

ealtbay

5. Craigslist

If you have bulky and/or heavy items to sell and wish to avoid exorbitant shipping costs, your best bet might be to list those items on Craigslist. This platform caters to local sellers who pay no money whatsoever for listing their items for sale. When those items do sell, these sellers don’t pay any final values either. In other words, Craigslist is completely free to use.

6. Facebook Marketplace

This platform operates much like Craigslist but offers both the seller and buyer additional information about each party, ensuring a better sense of personal security. Like Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is completely free to use. Most sales transactions and item pickups occur locally; however, you could potentially list your items in several geographic regions, then pay for shipping charges out of your own pocket.

facebook-marketplace

7. Nextdoor

This neighborhood-based social network platform and app enables neighbors to message each other about area crime, curb freebies, school news, and items for sale. With Nextdoor, there are also no listing or final value fees. Best of all, you may already know a good majority of your buyers.

8. Newegg

This site started out as a place to buy and sell computers and software, but it has since expanded and now offers other product categories such as apparel, hardware, toys, jewelry, etc. The site has much of the same look and feel as Amazon but without the huge seller fees.

newegg

Newegg features reasonable seller commissions ranging from 8% to 15%; these commissions include credit card processing fees. Perhaps best of all, Newegg offers an Amazon FBA-like service called Shipped by Newegg.

9. iOffer

This platform operates very much like eBay and has been around since 2002. There are no listing fees with iOffer, and the final value fees range from 5-10%. If you have lots of items priced from $25-$100, this is a good site to use because you’ll pay only a 5% fee on sales.

ioffer

10. eCRATER

This online marketplace is not only free to use, it even offers a free online store builder. Sellers have the option of using Google Wallet at checkout and can also import their listings from eBay.

ecrater

Don’t put up with high seller fees

As a seller, you don’t have to tolerate unreasonable seller fees and other required commissions from online marketplaces. Luckily, there are many other selling platforms out there that don’t gouge you for trying to make money by selling your items online.

How to Prevent, Spot and Stop Affiliate Fraud

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If you are a merchant and are selling your products online, you might also be working with fellow affiliate marketers and paying them a commission for every click, conversion or referral they direct to your website and its products. Unfortunately, anytime there is money involved, there is the risk of affiliate fraud.

What is affiliate fraud?

In brief, affiliate fraud refers to the cheating of merchants, affiliate marketers and/or buyers out of money and/or product using illegal practices. Typically, affiliate fraud involves tricking merchants into paying out affiliate commissions for nonexistent purchases.

Affiliate fraud occurs a number of ways. In some cases, the tricksters employ third parties or software to click on CPC/PPC ads while they collect the profits (i.e., click fraud). In other cases, fraud affiliates hijack a sale and redirect it to a duplicate site that then accepts the buyer’s information. As a result, the merchant pays a commission to the duplicate site (and the fraudster behind it) instead of to the original affiliate marketer who generated the sale.

Some entrepreneurial fraud affiliates go as far as using stolen credit card numbers to make purchases from the merchant. Those purchases are eventually refunded to the buyers, but the affiliate commissions have long since disappeared to the perpetrators of these bogus sales.

Buyers can be affected by affiliate fraud too. In some cases of fraud, buyers are directed to checkout pages that contain a typo in the merchant’s domain. These fake checkout pages not only steal buyers’ money upon checkout, they eventually lead to a high rate of chargebacks, resulting in merchants losing out on their profits.

Other fraud affiliates clone entire product pages and redirect traffic there, harvesting clicks and conversions.

Fraud affiliates can also combine their deception strategies, such as by tricking buyers into clicking on a merchant’s banner ad in order to ‘learn more’ about the product or to contact support.

How to spot affiliate fraud

In many cases, you can determine that there is affiliate fraud at play. If your CPC ads are suddenly experiencing a sharp increase in clicks yet their conversion rates remain low, then you might just have affiliate fraud. If you see massive increases in traffic from locations that aren’t your typical customer base, you may have an unethical affiliate on your hands.

You can do due diligence to a point, such as by regularly checking referring URLs to spot typos. You can also examine payments at the transaction level to better understand where that transaction originated and who the buyer actually is.

However, such vigilance only works up to a point and will take up more and more of your time as your affiliates and buyers grow. To this end, your best bet is to invest in affiliate fraud detection software. There are many different platforms available, including ScrubKit, CPA Detective, Improvely, Corsearch, RiskIQ, TypoAssassin, and PlanetPayment. Some of these platforms, as their names suggest, focus on one key aspect of the affiliate marketing process, while others are more generalized and detect many types of fraud.

Also, some affiliate networks, such as Clickbank, offer their own fraud detection solutions for merchants. Before you sign up with various affiliate networks, ask them how much fraud protection they offer as one of the perks of being a member.

How to prevent affiliate fraud

It is highly recommended that you “vet” new affiliates before working with them by checking out their websites and finding out if that website is related to the products your selling.

It also doesn’t hurt to sign up to your own affiliate emails and promo offers to spot spamming issues and/or marketing practices that don’t fall in line with your established rules. Naturally, you should maintain separate and dedicated email addresses for this exercise so that you don’t end up flooding your own personal inbox with email.

Consider having a yearly sales conference with your affiliates to find out how they are doing and to bring them up to speed with developments and issues.

You should also maintain a list of affiliates that you have rejected or excluded from your network. Such affiliates often reapply by simply plugging in a different website or IP; however, if you have some key information on them, you’ll rediscover them long before they start pitching your products.

In some product industries, merchants maintain files on affiliates who have engaged in fraud. It’s useful to ask about such possible records, and to keep those violations in mind should those same affiliates come knocking on your virtual door.

Is affiliate fraud avoidable?

Affiliate marketing is now in its tenth year and shows no signs of decline. Because it is a big business, fraud and scams are naturally going to become part of the equation. However, you can take steps to spot and stop con artists from taking advantage of you, your legitimate affiliates, and your customers. Affiliate networks are also growing more cognizant of affiliate fraud and ways to prevent it.