You will often here the statement "Content is King!" This statement is completely true; content is amongst one of the most important things you will be adding to your website and yet it is one of the most common things which is often neglected or left out completely.

Building an affiliate site is easy, right? Well the answer to that is yes and no; building an affiliate site which will be very successful is very easy indeed but actually building a site which your visitors want to visit and spend time browsing and searching through is another matter entirely. Scripts such as BANS, storestacker and other affiliate store builders have made it incredibly easy just to slap an ugly, contentless, non-SE optimized site together in the space of around 10 minutes or less. This has meant there are a lot of people out there trying to build a site which works by putting a 'thinly vieled' affiliate site together in around 10 minutes flat. As I am sure you can guess these sites do not usually do very well and normally disappear from the SE listings.

There is one main thing which I always do when I am building a new site and that is sit back and ask myself, would I buy from this site or spend any time on this site if I happened to come across it during my search? If the answer is yes then the chances are that I'm are on the right lines.

There are two main reasons why getting your content right is so important and they are:

1) You want to engage your visitors, keep them interested and make them want to come back.
2) You want to please the search engines, this means don't try any deceptive or manipulative methods in your site building, the SE's will only penalize you for it in the long run.

When you are creating your content you obviously want to consider your keyword research which you will have been doing during your preparation process. The keyword lists you have obtained will generally dictate the sort of content you are going to place on your site.

Don't get too carried away with your content keyword density. What I mean by this is that you are building the pages for your visitors to read and not just for the search engines to give you a good ranking. It's no use whatsoever if you build fantastic pages which the search engines love if the content just isn't up to scratch from a reader's point of view. You have to find a balance between the two, of course you want the get good search engines rankings but you also want the content to be relevant and of interest to your readers as well.

Don't try to manipulate or fool the SE's. I have seen this in particular with WordPress, there are several plugins out there which insert small snipets of javascript directly into the text content which is only viewable by the search engine spiders. This little trick allows people to re-use content over and over again without being slapped for duplicate content. The fact is though that as much as you try to deceive the search engines there will come a point in time when they become wise to this trick and start to build ways to get around it. You also have to ask yourself the question why you would want a site full of content which has already been published around the web before. I know many of you will argue that duplicate content penalties only apply when your own site has the same content on multiple pages but Google quite clearly states that you should not 'create multiple pages, subdomains or domains with substantially duplicate content.' My advice is don't be lazy, do the work yourself and the rewards will come.

My advice would be the following:

• Always abide by the SE webmaster guidelines. The links for some of those are below:

For Google: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
For Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics

• For MSN: 18.htmlhttp://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-gb&project=wl_webmasters

• Create content which is both relevant to your visitors and rich for the search engine spiders. Find a balance.

• Create content for each page of your site and never leave pages with just affiliate listings on.

• Don't use duplicated content unless you have re written it and it now passes copyscape without any devious tactics and don't use duplicate content inside your own site.

• Always place content around your affiliate listings, above and below. Don't just place content above.

• Don't try and decieve the search engines with blackhat techniques, it will do you no favours in the long run.

• Ask yourself, would you visit your site and if so would you come back again.

• Write content related to your keyword lists generated from your extensive keyword research.

• Build your site slowly from the ground upwards, don't build sites too quickly, remember it's about quality and not quantity.

• Lastly, win the trust of the SE's and you won't go far wrong.

Finding the right keywords to use is often a task in itself and is something which I used to find quite difficult when I first started out on the internet. I have used many keyword tools, both free and paid for, and I can honestly say that Micro Niche Finder is probably one of the easiest to use tools I have come across. The fact that Micro Niche Finder is easy to use shouldn't put you off at all, I have found many high paying niches quite easily using it. What I found with Micro Niche Finder was that it has been a lot simpler to find niche areas which I could monetize and for me this tool is a must have.

Before I continue just take a look at some of the features of Micro Niche Finder:

Micro Niche Finder enables you to:

• Uncover niche markets with low competition.
• Find profitable affiliate programs related to the niche market you are searching within.
• Find out the strength of competition (SOC) for a particular keyword phrase so that you can see at a glance whether or not it's worth even trying to monetize.
• Generate keyword/keyphrase lists and sort by varying options such as 'Exact Search Count', 'Strength of Competition' and 'Online Commerical Intent to Buy'.
• Easily manage, save, export and import searches, both current and past.
• It has an automated brainstorming tool if you're stuck for ideas.
• Has a broad digg and narrow digg feature to find keywords which may have even better profit potential.
• Get Google trend information for a keyword phrase.
• Find license free commercial and non commercial content for any keyword phrase which can be re written or used as a guide for your own website content.
• Easily see the number of websites competing for a given keyword phrase.

The main thing that Micro Niche Finder enables you to do is quickly and easily find keywords and keyword phrases which have a low volume of competition and a decent or high volume of searches, making it quite easy to spot a niche area which you can go on to monetize. Over and above this there is another feature which allows you to immediately see whether or not a particular keyword or keyphrase is worth monetizing or not. Sometimes even if you see that a keyword/keyphrase has a small amount of competition and a large number of searches it may still not be possible to do well for that phrase because the strength of that small amount of competition is so high. Mirco Niche Finder enables you to automatically see the strength of competition which allows you to determine if that keyword phrase is worth using or not. This strength of competition is indicated within Micro Niche Finder in the form of a green, orange or red image - green meaning go ahead and use, orange meaning proceed with caution and red means there is too much competition to rank well enough in the search engines. The Strength of Competition score is generated from the inAnchor Count, intitle Count and inurl Count links from google.

There are also a few other great features inside the tool like being able to search e-zine articles, the Clickbank marketplace, Amazon marketplace and Google marketplace all from inside the tool. In addition you can search for commercial and non commercial unlicensed content related to the keyword phrase you are investigating along with a direct link to Google trends and the domaintools.com website. Once you have done your keyword investigation the tool will allow you to export the results in several formats to easily use and save on your computer for use or future reference.

Overall I rate the tool at a 9/10 basically because no tool is perfect and there is always room for improvement in the future. If you are stuck with which keyword tool to use, you have difficulty in finding niche markets or you are building a niche affiliate website then I recommend you check out James L Jones Micro Niche Finder tool videos from the links below:

Video 1: Create Simple Little One Page Articles to Promote Affiliate Products

Video 2: Create Adsense Content Pages that Pay You Residual Ad Revenue

Video 3: Create Niche Market Private Label Rights Packages and Sell these for a Quick Profit

Video 4: Create Squidoo Lenses and claim your share of the profits generated by the traffic

Video 5: Create eBay feeder pages and make money when new users register for eBay

Buy Micro Niche Finder Here

People often choose to promote affiliate programs with no prior research or consideration, you will often see internet marketers all jumping on the same bandwagon as soon as any old product comes out before they have actually even tried it themselves. For those of you who know me then you will know that when I talk about, promote or recommend any product it's because I've used it myself and had success with it or find it useful.

There are several things you need to ask yourself before joining and promoting any affiliate program. I use a ten step system when choosing who to affiliate with.

The 10 Step's to Choosing the Right Affiliate Program

1. Is the affiliate program FREE to join?
2. When will you recieve your payments?
3. How many click through's do you need before you get paid a commission?
4. What is the cookie life of the affiliate program?
5. Do you have a range of affiliate stats to monitor your statistics?
6. Will the affiliate program pay you for clicks and impressions along with the sales?
7. Who is the retailer or seller you are about to promote and do they have an online presence?
8. What tier system exists in their affiliate program
9. If the product is a system or piece of software, have you had any success or used it yourself before?
10. 10) How much commission will you earn?

Is the affiliate program FREE to join?

Most of the affiliate programs out there are completely FREE to join, if you are promoting someone's product for them why would you want to pay to join an affiliate program. I personally have never paid to join an affiliate program and I know that I never would.

When will you recieve your payments?

The majority of the affiliate programs tend to pay out at the end of the month and are usually 30 days behind, so if you earn a comission at the beginning of January then you will most likely get paid at the end of February. Of course this differs from program to program but its worth your time finding out. You should also find out how payment is issued to you, is it in the form of a check or direct deposit and do you have to have generated a minimum affiliate commission before you get paid?

How many click through's do you need before you get paid a commission?

This is something worth finding out, what is the hit per sale ratio? Basically all this means is how many hits on a particular link or banner does it take to generate a commission. Why is this important? This factor will give you an indication of how much traffic you may need in order to make a sale. This is particuarly relevant if you are promoting a product or program using any paid advertising such as google adwords. You will need to know an estimated cost of advertising before a sale is made to ensure that the product is going to be worth promoting financially.

What is the cookie life of the affiliate program?

You need to find out how referrals from an affiliate's site are tracked and for how long. The cookie life basically inidicates how long an affiliate referral is tracked after the person clicks through your banner or link. This is important because not all people will buy straight away. For example if we take the Amazon affiliate program and the Overstock affiliate program as two examples, Amazon have a 1 day cookie meaning that click through's will only be tracked for 1 day, so you only have 1 day to generate a commission from that potential customer. In contrast, the Overstock affiliate program has a 14 day cookie and so you have 14 days to generate a sale from that potential customer after they have clicked through. This is one of the reasons people are so adept to promoting the Overstock & eBay affiliate programs over the Amazon program because of the potential commission you can generate from returning customers.

Do you have a range of affiliate stats to monitor your statistics?

Does the affilite program offer any kind of statistical tracking system whereby you can see number of impressions and clicks. Both of these will give you an idea of how many times your banner/link has been viewed and how many times you have generated a click through.

Who is the retailer or seller you are about to promote and do they have an online presence?

Find out who you are going to be promoting, don't just promote them for the sake of it. Get to know the products they are selling and if it's a peice of software or an information product use it yourself & find out if it works before promoting it to other people. The more you know about the retailer and the product you are promoting then the more you will know if this affiliate program is really for you.

What tier system exists in their affiliate program?

A tiering system is a great way of generating extra income with an affiliate program. A single tier system will only allow you to generate affiliate earnings from sales which you have generated whereas a two teir or multiple tier program will pay you for your own generated sales and will also pay you a commission based on the sales of another affiliate who you sponsor in the program. Some affiliate programs, like the eBay affiliate program, will pay you a 'new user commission', eBay for example will pay you anything up to $40-50 per signup depending on campaign quality.

If the product is a system or piece of software, have you had any success or used it yourself before?

One thing I hate seeing is all the big so called guru's promoting new products when they are released into the market just so they can earn a 50% or higher affiliate commission from it. They are all too quick to tell you how great the product is and how it can change your life, have they tried it themeselves? I very much doubt it. If you are going to start promoting a product yourself, particularly software and info products, make sure you have read it or tried it for yourself first. Ask yourself a few questions:

- Does it do what is says on the 'tin'?
- Does it give value for money?
- Does it work?'
- Would you or have you used it yourself? If you haven't then in my opinion you shouldn't be promoting it, simple as that.

Treat your potential affiliate customers with respect and generally you will find they will trust you more for it.

How much commission will you earn?

This is the final thing you want to know, how much are you going to earn by promoting this product? Is it going to be worth your time? Many affiliate programs will pay at least 20% per sale nowadays and some pay anything up to 100%. Jus bear in mind the above 9 things before you make your decisision. Don't just choose to promote a program because it gives you a 75% return, this will only loose you trust with your potential affiliate customers and in the long run it will do you no favours.

Keep these 10 things in mind when chooisng the affiliate program to promote and you won't go far wrong. One last thing to remember, if your going to promote it, would you buy it?

It looks like all of the speculation surrounding Overstock and it's affiliate program can now be laid to rest. Overstock have just sent around an affiliate newsletter to announce that Overstock will be moving it's affiliate management through to Commission Junction in the next few weeks. Here is a copy of the letter which was sent:

"We are delighted to announce that the Overstock.com Affiliate Program will be transitioned from the LinkShare network to the Commission Junction network. As many of you are aware, we have had a long and mutually successful partnership with LinkShare, but feel at this time it is in the best interest of our Affiliate Program to make this change.  We look forward to and appreciate both networks' commitment to ensuring that it is a smooth process for our publishers. The transition to Commission Junction will begin within the next three to four weeks.

Further details regarding our migration plan will be forthcoming. In the meantime, we intend to operate the business as usual.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us."

We are well aware that some of you who are currently using phpOStock may have concerns over the changes but we can assure you that we will be adapting the plugin to accomodate any changes that occur and any current users will recieve their updated versions.

We will try our best to make this transition as smoothe a process as possible.

It's important that when you are first setting up your WordPress affiliate site you get a few things right in the admin area setup. This will include tweeking a few settings and installing a few plugins, the plugins I recommend are ones which I have always seen as essential to any WordPress site.

1) Setting your permalinks

The first thing I always do whenever I am setting up a new site is set my WordPress permalinks. Okay so what are permalinks? Permalinks is basically another name for permanent URLs to your individual posts/pages and categories within your WordPress site and there are many ways you can set these up. As standard when you create a post you would see a URL which looks something like this: http://www.example.com/?p=34, which isn't very nice looking and neither is it great for the search engines. So what we want to do is make our URLs more search engine friendly and more visually appealing and we do this from our WordPress admin area, simply do the following:

- Login to your WordPress admin area
- Click on the option on the left which says 'Settings'
- Click on the option which says 'Permalinks'
- In the content area of the page you will now see a list of options under 'Common settings' and this is where you set your permalink structure.
- In the 'Custom Structure' box add the text '/%postname%' and click save changes.

There are a few permalink settings you can use but this is the one which I use and find most effective in my WordPress affiliate sites. To see a list & to read more about permalinks you can go here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks

2) Creating a static home page

You will want to create a static WordPress home page for your site if you are aiming to use the site in an e-commerce style. This static page will usually contain information about your site, it will tell us what your site does and what is offers, you may also want to place some images on there as well. To add a static page is really simple. The first thing you need to do is go ahead and create your static WordPress page, now it doesn't matter if you don't have your content ready for that page yet you are just setting the page ready. So go ahead and do the following:

- Login to your WordPress admin area
- Click on the option on the left which says 'Pages' and then 'Add New'
- Enter your page title and enter your page content, you will then notice that   a 'Permalink' option has now appeared between the page title and the page content, this is where you can now specify what you want your page URL or   permalink to be by clicking the 'Edit' button.
- Once you have done this simply click 'Publish'.

Next...

- Click on the option on the left hand side which says 'Settings'
- Click on where it says 'Reading'
- Then in the content part of that page you will see an option which says 'A static page (select below) ', simply select your desired front page from the 'Front page' dropdown list and click on the save changes button.

That's it, you should now have a static home page to your WordPress affiliate site and your permalink structure is correctly set.

3) Recommended Plugins

Next there are a few plugins you should be using in your WordPress site as standard, these are:

- XML Sitemaps Plugin

This plugin allows you to easily build a sitemap for the search engine spiders to find their way around your WordPress site, this helps to get your site pages indexed in the search engines and consequently get visitors to your site.

- DDSitemap Generator

This plugin will generate a visual sitemap on a page of your WordPress site which is there purely for your visitors to help them find their way around your site.

- WordPress Spam FREE & Askiment

This plugin is helpful in blocking spam to your site, trust me once your site has been indexed in the search engines and starts to get traffic you will need some kind of spam blocker. WordPress Spam Free not only blocks spam to your site but it also allows you to build a simple spam friendly contact form for your site. I currently have this plugin installed right here on my own blog and it does a great job. ASkiment does a similar sort of thing but in order to use it you need a WordPress API Key which you can get from the link from the configuration screen of Askiment.

- All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is a great little tool and a must have on any blog. It's simple to install and configure and works straight out of the box, automatically generating meta tags for your site and titles for the search engines. All of which can be manually overridden.

- Sociable

Sociable adds buttons which link to social networking sites, these buttons are then used by visitors to bookmark your blog posts/pages which gets your site pages/posts indexed quicker as well as being a great source of traffic.

- WordPress Database Backup

For me this plugin is a must, no matter whatever else you do make sure you always backup, backup & backup. This plugin allows you to automatically set your site to send a database backup to your email address at intervals you choose. I set mine to send me backups every Sunday which I then store in a specific backup folder, this way I know that if any of my sites go down I have the core material needed to get them backup again.

- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

Pinging is a great feature of the WordPress platform which sends out a type of call to the blog directories and SE's everytime your site content is updated. The only problem with this though is that a ping is sent out when you schedule, edit or or publish a post and soon without realising it your site has been banned from the pinging services. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer solves this problems and ensures that the WordPress pinging service works correctly.

- WordPress Automatic Upgrade

This plugin is a great little plugin but I have found a few compatibility issues when it comes to adding plugins directly to your site via the new automatic install feature in your admin area, so for this reason I always keep it installed but deactivated for when I need it. The plugin makes it simple and easy to upgrade your WordPress blogs in just a few simple clicks.

Now, there are many other plugins you can install and which people will recommend you install but these are just the ones I always have installed on my sites when I first set them up.

I hope this post has been of some use to you if you are new to the whole WordPress affiliate site concept and I will look forward to seeing you all getting some of your sites up and running.

I am going to be submitting a longer and more detailed post later on today about setting your inital WordPress settings and which basic plugins to install but for now I just wanted to let you know about something really useful which was launched a few weeks back. Its a really useful resource for any web user but in particular WordPress newbies, this resource is WordPress TV. If you have not yet checked out WordPress.tv yet then I have to ask you why not. WordPress.tv was announced quite recently as a new site where you can watch videos related to WordPress. There are loads of videos on there which will help you to get started. Simply do a search on the site and you are sure to find something to help you along.

I hope you find this resource useful, visit it today at:

www.WordPress.tv.

It appears that at this very early stage of our phpOStock plugins life we have encountered the first roadblock.

News is starting to break on the web that Linkshare have resigned as the affiliate network for Overstock. This looks to be a move similar to what many of us saw last year when eBay parted ways with Commission Junction.

There are currently a few stories out there on the internet with speculation as to why Linkshare may have decided to part ways with Overstock. However, at this stage there are no additional details, and I have no idea whether they are going to appoint another affiliate network to take over, or whether they are going to do their own thing like eBay did with EPN. I'm sure as affiliates we can all see that there are pro's and con's to both avenues. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if Overstock did move their program in house since they have maintained a large array of resources for its publishers in the past.

What is being said though is that the 'breakup' between Linkshare and Overstock is not due to:

1) New York Amazon Tax Concerns
2) Pressure from OneCause Flap
3) Diversification of Overstock's Online Initiatives

It is said that Linkshare decided to move with the announcement when it became clear that the differences between them could not be resolved but what these differences were is not yet known. Rest assured though, that whatever route they take myself and Alan will work very quickly make the necessary changes are made to the phpOStock plugin.

Linkshare have stated that they will work with Overstock to ensure a smooth transition to the new network and I have just tested links on our own sites, and they are all working fine. In addition they have stated that commission payments will also continue to be made.

So for now just carry on using phpOStock as you have been and we will do what we can our end to ensure that the process goes as smoothly as possible.

We are monitoring the situation closely, and I will continue to keep you updated as it unfolds.

Many thanks to everyone that is using both the Pro and the Lite
versions of phpOStock. We really appreciate your support.

Kind Regards
Ben & Alan

If you build an e-commerce style WordPress affiliate site then the last thing you want on your site is the all of the stuff which makes it look like a blog, things like the author's name, date, time of posting and comments etc. Removing them can be a bit of a pain, particularly if you are quite new to using WordPress and not used to wading through source code. So I have tried to make your life a little easier. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to spend the time in today's post talking about the basic components of  WordPress. I know that when you first start using WordPress it can be a little hard to understand, particularly for the newbie web users. I hope this post will make things a little clearer for you and hopefully gives you more confidence to go ahead and start using WordPress.

Installing WordPress

There are two ways to install your WordPress affiliate site, there is the long way and the short way. If you have cpanel web hosting and you have a program called Fantastico installed then installing WordPress will take around 2 minutes, no more than that. If you don't have cpanel web hosting or you don't have Fantastico installed then I'm afraid you will have to install it the long way. This will involve downloading the WordPress script directly from here, once you have done that you will need to follow the installation instructions accompanied along with it. It's not too complicated to install and if you have never installed a web script before you may find it difficult but its worth learning so that you don't have to rely on other people to do it for you in the future.If you do have any problems installing the script then feel free to drop me an email and I will happily try and help you out. There is also a large community of WordPress users and developers over in the WordPress community who I am sure will be more than happy to talk you through any problems which you come across.

Following Your WordPress Install

Once you have installed WordPress on your new domain name then you are ready to get started configuring your WordPress backend. The first thing you need to do is login to your admin area, by default this will have been set to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin unless you changed it during the installation process. Once in your WordPress admin area it's quite a good idea to take the time to familiarise yourself with its overall layout and with some of the main WordPress functions, I will go through most of these during the rest of today's post and also in a future post.

Understanding Your WordPress File Structure

Understanding how your WordPress site is structured in the way of folders, i.e. what goes where, can be quite useful. If you connect to your site via ftp (file transfer protocol) you will see your core files in the root of your WordPress site, the folders you should familiarize yourself with are the 'templates' folder and the 'plugins' folder since these are the ones which you will most probably be uploading to the most. Generally you will locate these folders by navigating through the folders in ftp and looking for:

Plugins - wp-content/plugins
Templates - wp-content/themes

Understanding WordPress Themes

There are a massive range of WordPress themes available for FREE in the WordPress community. By default your site will have two themes already installed, these are both pretty basic themes and so you will probably want to search and find your own theme. If you do a Google search for 'Free WordPress Themes' then you will find there are lots of sites out there offering free WordPress templates for download. All of the themes usually come with full installation instructions, again try and learn to do this yourself as it will save you having to pay or rely on someone else to do it for you. Themes will differ from each other not only in the way that they look, i.e. colors, images etc, but they will also differ in the way they are structured, one example of that is where themes allow you to display widgets. Widgets are essentially blocks which can be added into a section of your site (usually the sidebars) and display & arrange content. You can look at the widgets you have installed by going to the Appearances > Widgets option in your WordPress admin area from the left sidebar content. It's then as easy as clicking add into the section of the theme you want to add your widget to.

Understanding Pages & Posts

In the WordPress platform you can insert content into your site in the form of WordPress posts and WordPress pages but what's the difference? WordPress pages will contain static content, pages do not contain the dates & times when they were created and do not show details of the author who wrote the page. In addition pages do not contain WordPress tags, tags will be discussed shortly. Pages will contain information which will remain static on your site, so this will be something like an 'About Us' page or a 'Contact Us' page. You can easily add a page to your site from the admin area by clicking on the Pages > Add New link in the left hand menu of your site. Most page fields are pretty self explanatory, you will need to add a page title and content, in addition you will see an attributes box over on the right hand side of the screen, this allows you to add a 'page parent' if you want a particular page to appear under the heading of another, it also allows you to set page order. You can display a list of pages in your left or right navigation bar using the 'Pages' widget in the Appearances > Widgets option of your WordPress admin area.

WordPress posts are completely different to pages, posts by default are listed in chronological order in the blog home page. A post will contain the post date, time and author within the top content of the post. Links to your WordPress posts can be displayed in your left navigation bar by using the 'Recent Posts' widget in the Appearances > Widgets option of your WordPress admin area. In addition posts can also be categorised into your own custom categories, these can be managed in the Posts > Categories option of your WordPress admin area, you can then display a list of these categories in your left or right navigation by using the 'Categories' widget which can be added in the Appearances > Widgets option.

WordPress Tags & Categories

WordPress tags are different to WordPress categories but generally it doesn't matter if you use one or the other or both, but what is important is that you use them in the right way. Categories should have longer worded names which help your visitors find categorized information on your site, so for example if you had a site on grill reviews then one of the categories may be Weber Gas Grills or Black Gas Grills.

Tags should be more specific and should only include 1 or 2 keywords which are related to the post you have made, so in the case of the grill site you would have the model name of the grill you were reviewing in that particular post. The most important thing is that you shouldn't be using the same names for your tags as your categories. You can display your tags on your site using a 'Tags' widget which can be added in the same way as a 'Categories' or 'Pages' widget.

Overall these are the main parts of WordPress which you need to know about first. There are other areas which I haven't covered here like 'Custom Fields& 'Trackbacks' but I will cover these another day. What I wanted you to do was to get a basic understanding of WordPress and the WordPress admin area before you start building your site. I know all of this information is going to be a bit daunting but essentially the more you use WordPress the more comfortable with it you will become.

In the next few posts I will be covering setting your WordPress options & choosing the right plugins.

I want to try and cover the setup of WordPress and a WordPress affiliate site but because I don't want to try and push it all into one post I am going to be covering this topic across several posts, if you want to keep up to date don't forget to subscribe to my blog.

Many people find WordPress quite daunting initally when they look into it, they don't understand it and don't fully appreciate its true power. A common question which I get asked is how do I set up my WordPress affiliate site properly and what settings/plugins do I use?

In this post I want to cover a few basics of WordPress, so what is WordPress? WordPress is an online blogging/content management system platform which allows almost anyone to get an online presence using the easy to use wordpress admin backend and outstanding community of free support, plugins and themes. The platform originally started off very simply and it was only when community members started to add to the source code that wordpress began to develop into the platform that we see today. WordPress as a script came from humble beginnings back in 2003 and is now approaching 2 million downloads so far this year, with almost 200,000 plugins and rising currently available for download in the wordpress community. WordPress is a very flexible platform, when I say WordPress to most people they think blog, but this isn't neccesarily the case. I have several very successful income generating WordPress sites which are not based around the blog model but are infact based around other models such as the ecommerce model. With WordPress you need to think outside the box, I often see very successful WordPress affiliate sites and their success is usually in part down to the fact that no one else, or very few people are using the same model of site build.

Secondly, what is a WordPress plugin? You will hear this phrase knocked around the web and maybe you have no idea of what a plugin is, if this is the case then let me explain. WordPress plugins are essentially addons to the WordPress platform which give it extra functionality without tapping into the source code of WordPress. Originally WordPress would have its core code modified to do whatever the person wanted it to but this caused major problems when it came to upgrading WordPress sites to newer script versions. There are several plugins which I use for a standard install when setting up a WordPress affiliate site, some of them are plugins which I think only an affiliate site needs and others are essential in helping your site succeed. I will outline these in a later post.

Essentially you want to build a site which is of interest to the group you are targeting, which is why people often talk about building sites around an area you have an interest/knowledge base in. If you know enough about a subject then the chances are you are going to find it easier to build a whole site around it and more importantly you are going to enjoy doing it. This will show through in your WordPress site and people who are interested in the subject of your site are going to be far more likely to keep returning on a regular basis.

In the next few posts I will be talking about the mistakes to avoid when setting up your site and the general plugins and settings to use.

If you know me then you will know that a lot of my online income comes from WordPress affiliate sites but it hasn't always been like that. At the very beginning of my online career I guarentee you I tried 90% of the programs & techniques which were on offer then, and are still on offer in some form today, and for me none of them seemed to work. At the time I attributed this to the product itself, in some cases I think that was fair, but in many it really wasn't. As human beings, we are all too quick to blame the tools we have or don't have when we fail but when we succeed we usually say its because we had the skills, or had acquired the skills, needed to achieve whatever it was we were trying to accomplish in the first place. In the world of psychology this is known as intrinsic and extrinsic attribution and it's something I see on a day to day basis, particularly in the world of internet marketing. People are all too quick to blame their tools when things don't work out for them, even though these people may not have put much work into making them succeed.

I am a person who truly believes that anyone can achieve whatever they want too, providing they believe in what they are trying to do. So if you believe you can realise success online and give up your day job then you will do it providing you believe in it enough and are prepared to work hard enough for it. I can sit here and tell you how to build a WordPress affiliate site and how to get it making a few hundred dollars a month in a couple of months, but the truth is that if you don't believe in yourself and you don't put the hard work in then you will not succeed no matter what.

Internet marketing is far from easy and I disagree with anyone who says that it's an easy alternative to the day job, it may be a more enjoyable alternative to what you are used to but it will require hard work.

I am here to tell you that you can succeed online this year, just believe in yourself and your ability, if you want it enough and you work hard enough it will happen for you. Take my advice, do what I do at the beginning of each year and set some goals to keep you focused on your desired outcome. To do this properly get a pen and a piece of paper and spend 30 minutes or so thinking about what you want to achieve and where you want to be in 12 months time. The most important thing to remember is that you must make your goals S.M.A.R.T:

• Specific: Set specific goals you want to achieve.
• Measureable: Set target dates to achieve each goal and stick to it, make sure you set yourself a very specific criteria so you know when that goal has been achieved.
• Attainable: As I have said previously, you can achieve anything you want to provided you put your mind to it, believe in yourself and work hard to acquire and polish the skills needed to achieve whatever you are trying to. Just remember to set attainable goals, don't set a goal you know in 2 months time you will fail to achieve as this will only put you further back.
• Realistic: You must be realistic in the goals you set; I believe that any goal is realistic providing you believe it can be achieved.
• Timely: Give yourself a time frame - will you achieve what you want to in 3 months, 6 months or a year? Set yourself levels at given times, for example set yourself goals for each month or for every other month. Whatever the case just make sure you keep all of the above in mind.

There is only one person in this world who will make you succeed and that person is you. Stick with it, believe in yourself and your own ability, work hard and prosper. Here is wishing you a prosperous and successful 2009.

It's been a long time coming but after a lot of hard work and preparation we are happy to announce the release of phpOStock. phpOStock is a new and powerful WordPress affiliate plugin that has been developed by myself and Alan Lewis. For those of you who use phpBay you will know Alan as the creator of the fantastic accompanying plugins to phpBay such as search2Post, piggy bank, revenue share & the phpBay auction title re-formatter.

We have been working on this plugin for around the last six months now, trying to perfect it, in that time we have added a bunch of fantastic features to it which make it an easy to use and highly configurable plugin.

Why Affiliate With Overstock.com

The first question I know some of you are going to be asking is who are Overstock and what are the benefits of affiliating with them. Overstock.com are a massive online retailer who specialize in close down and liquidation stock, they stock a wide range of items from well known and less well known brands from around the globe. Their main categories include Furniture, Bedding, Clothing & Shoes, Electronics, Sports, Jewelry & Watches, Electronics, Sports, Books and much more, they stock over 600,000 items, have an alexa traffic rank of 616, a google PR of 6 and rising and supply a number of countries worldwide. View their sitemap here: http://www.overstock.com/sitemap

So now you know who they are but what about their affiliate program? Their affiliate program is available through linkshare.com, its main features are:

1) Earn up to 7% commission on sales
2) Take advantage of a long (14 day) cookie life
3) Lots of weekly discounts
4) A range of affiliate banners and promotions to complement phpOStock

The Plugin

We have created the plugin so it should be really easy for anyone to set up and use but it also has a good deal of features to go with it including a range of FREE template listing styles. We have released the plugin in a Pro version and a lite version, the lite version is available completely FREE and the Pro version for a small introductory price of $30. phpOStock Pro will allow you to list up to 50 items per page/post/sidebar widget in your WordPress site using any of the following parameters to specify your listings:

* The item keywords (can be left blank to list whole categories plus negative keywords can also be used)

* The maximum number of items to display

* The store number

* The department number

* The category number

* The sub-category number

* The minimum price of the items that you wish to display

* The maximum price of the items that you wish to display

You can also display a range of information in the returned listings which is all controlled either by the code you place in your posts/pages/sidebar or by the global configuration screen in the admin section of your WordPress site. To read more about these you can visit our sales page at www.phpOStock.com.

Something for Affiliates

Of course this being a plugin which is designed to be used by affiliates we couldn't leave out our own affiliate program could we. We have set up a FREE affiliate program which will allow you to earn 20% on all phpOStock sales generated through your link. To read more about the program, join or take advantage of some of the great banners we have provided for you then please visit our affiliate page: www.phpOStock.com/affiliates.

Customer Support

If you have any problems or questions we have also setup a support ticket center which can be reached via: www.phpOStock.com/help-desk. We will always treat your support tickets as a priority and will always answer as soon as possible.

Buying the Plugin

If you don't want to purchase the Pro version first but you want to have a play around with the Lite version you can get it on our sales page by simply entering your email into the signup form towards the bottom of the page.

If you would like to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity then again you can purchase the plugin by visiting our sales page here: www.phpOStock.com.

We would just like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to look at phpOStock, we hope you enjoy using it as much as we have. We appreciate any customer feedback so if you have any comments or suggestions, functions you would like to see then please email us through our support desk and we will consider any suggestions for future versions.

Ben & Alan