Here are some tips for surviving elance:

1. Be as accurate when writing a project description as possible. Mention every little detail - service providers should know what EXACTLY they apply for.

2. For a $25 deposit (which is refunded after you select a service provider) you can create an “Elance Select” project, which attracts more and better service providers. (Note: the budget of your project will have to be at least $250 for Select projects)

3. When setting the price of your project, look around in the marketplace for similar projects. If your bid is too small, it will attract less service providers. With a higher bid, you will have a large number of service providers to choose from (some of them might even underbid the original amount). Be careful not to overbid for the project though.

4. Each service provider is given a rating for each of his or her previous works. You should check out their history, and choose only from the providers who have at least a 4.7 or 4.8 rating. Anyone with lesser rating can be too risky.

5. Service providers who are experts in their specialty but who are new to elance can be a good choice. They want to establish their elance reputation with good ratings, and they’ll usually charge less and work better. Be sure to check out some samples of their previous work (before elance).

6. Always request some samples of the service providers previous work. If possible, send a private message to every possible service provider who seems to qualify for the project, ask them to do a short custom sample for you, and make your decision based on their sample work. Some of the providers will do free samples, while others might request a small fee.

6. Be sure to sign a legally binding contract with the provider (copyright ownership, non-disclosure, non-competition), especially if you are hiring a ghostwriter. Many writers tend to steal content or write articles by rewording others, so you should be legally protected. If you are sued, you can sue the provider as well. (In the worst case, of course)

Click here to go to elance.com!

The theme I use is the default Kubrick theme customized by me.

WordPress? What’s that? WordPress is one of the best blogging software out there. You can get a free account on WordPress.com or you can download the free source code and customize WordPress on your on server from WordPress.org. There are a great number of plugins and themes available for WordPress which makes it a very friendly blogging software.

So the plugins I use: (Note that these are WordPress 2 plugins)

• Adsense Deluxe for putting AdSense ads on my blog.
• CaptCha! for preventing spammers from spamming my blog with fake comments
• Dragon Design Sitemap Generator for generating my sitemap automatically (Also ideal for Google Sitemaps)
• WP-EMail for the sending this page to a friend link.
• WP-Print for the print this page link
• WP-PostViews for showing the number of times a post has been viewed
• Fuzzy Recent Posts for showing the last few posts on the sidebar
• Optimal Title plugin for putting the title of my posts before the name of my blog in the title bar
• HeadSpace 2 plugin for putting custom meta-tags and meta-description tags to each of my posts. (Ideal for AdSense)
• No Ping Wait plugin for pinging in the background (speeds up posting in WordPress)

I hope you find these plugins useful too.

So if you are thinking of exchanging links with or what’s worse, buying a high PR web site, always have the benefit of doubt - there is a slight chance that they’re only faking their Google PageRank.

And all those “gray hat” SEOs eager to know how to fake PageRank can check out SEOBlackHat’s article on the actual algorithm.

So let’s say you’re about to launch a new web site, and you want to get listed in Google as fast as possible. Just choose from the following solutions: (you can also combine them for increased effectiveness)

1. One of the fastest ways to get listed is having a link on a PR6 to PR9 web site pointing to you. Those sites get crawled almost every day by Google. The only problem is that it’s not that easy to put up a link on such a site - unless you own it of course. The solution: free classifieds. Craigslist.com is a PR8 site which lets you post small ads for free. For the best effect post an ad in the “small biz ads” section of the San Francisco bay area. That page is also PR6 and it gets crawled almost every day by Google. The URL is:

http://www.craigslist.org/biz/

A word of warning: Don’t SPAM that page!!! Right now it’s unmoderated and it can be used very effectively for our purpose. One ad will be more than enough for Google to find your page so don’t flood Craigslist with duplicate ads! If everyone started mass posting that section of Craigslist would simply become moderated - meaning no one could use it in the future.

2. Post a press release about your site to PRWeb.com. Press releases are different from normal ads or articles, so be sure to check out a few samples before writing yours. Generally, it takes 4 to 5 days till your press release is approved and goes live on PRWeb.com. You’ll need to register a free account but you can also pay to have your press release featured (IMHO, it’s not worth paying if you just want to get crawled by Google so you can choose the free option) Note: PRWeb.com doesn’t post press releases with any mature or adult related content. Once your press release goes live, Google will pick up your site very soon.

3. If you have a high PR web site, you can simply put a link to your new site for a few days / weeks till Google picks it up. In my experience, a PR4 web site (and PR4 is not hard to reach for a site) gets crawled once or twice a month, and the frequency of Google’s visits increases as your PR goes higher. (as I mentioned, PR7-PR8 sites get crawled almost every day)

4. You can also buy a high PR link from www.text-link-ads.com, www.textlinkbrokers.com or www.linkadage.com. Be careful with these services: some sites advertised on them are pure scam, so be sure to check them out thoroughly before paying for a link. It’s more than enough to have the link up for one month, then you can cancel it.

5. Do content-based advertising with Google Adwords. Content based ads are featured on various web pages, and if you advertise for a month or so, Google will pick up your link from their own ads on one of those pages. This solution works best if you would use Google Adwords to advertise your site anyway, so you can combine the two steps and get crawled in the process.

6. Get your site into DMOZ.org or the Yahoo directory. This will get you listed within a few days. DMOZ.org is a free service and it can take months till you get listed (and of course there is no guarantee that you’ll DO get listed). Yahoo charges you $299 ($600 for adult web sites) per year for a listing, but they process your request within a few business days. They have strict guidelines, so be sure that your site meets them before submitting your URL and paying hundreds of dollars.

7. Post some of your articles to related forums. Be sure that the forum is open to the public and it gets crawled by Google occasionally. Don’t spam the forums and always stay on-topic. Simply mention that you’ve found a useful article you’re reposting with permission, and that the article is courtesy of [yourlinkhere]. Usually, this won’t bother most of the moderators but always double-check their rules if you don’t want a bunch of crazy webmasters chasing you with their keyboards

Note: Google’s link submission form (http://www.google.com/addurl/) isn’t worth using. It won’t speed up the process and without any links to pointing to your site from other sites, you aren’t likely to get listed. (If you read that page carefully, even Google itself doesn’t guarantee anything)

Important! Once you’ve done any of the steps above and you have a link pointing to your site, be patient. Even if Google crawls your page today, it may take up to a week till the changes appear in their search results.

Tip: For the first time, Google will crawl only a few of your pages (if not only your main page). If you want to have your site deep-crawled, you can use Google Sitemaps.

A sitemap is a page containing links to each and every page of your site. Just take a look at my sitemap here. A decent content site should have a sitemap, since it also makes navigation and searching easier if one of your visitors is looking for a particular page.

In my experience, Google will index all your pages within 10-15 days if you use Google Sitemaps. (Of course it might vary by site and it could easily take a little less or longer) Without Google Sitemaps it could take much longer, and there is no guarantee that the Googlebot will find all your pages. With Google Sitemaps you can also give a “value of importance” to each of your pages. (It goes from 0 to 1 where 1 is the most important) The most important pages will be crawled more often.

Note: Posting your sitemap alone won’t get you listed in Google, unless you have links pointing to you from other sites. So be sure to use Google Sitemaps along with the techniques I outline in my other post, “How to get listed in Google within the shortest possible time“.

Google Sitemaps won’t only help you get your page crawled faster, but it also provides some invaluable tools, including detailed crawl and search statistics.

To learn how to create your sitemap, refer to Google’s guide on the topic.
You can post your sitemap here. (you’ll need a free Google account)
Here is the entire Google Sitemaps documentation.
There is a free online service here, which will automatically create a sitemap from your pages.

Recently, more and more people have started to talk about the phenomenon referred to as “The ClickBank Refund Problem”. As their site states: “ClickBank will, at its option, replace or repair any defective product within 8 weeks from the date of purchase.” This is not only a guideline but a very strict rule that vendors have to mention on their sales pages.

When it comes to having your own merchant account, your biggest fear is a “chargeback”. Credit card companies do everything to protect their clients, and when someone walks into his or her bank and requests a chargeback, most of the time their bank will issue it. Of course, the cost of the chargeback will have to be paid by the merchant of the product.

ClickBank will do everything to avoid chargebacks: if there was a large number of chargebacks, they would be forced to close their merchant account. Thus, when a ClickBank customer requests a refund, 99% of the time, they will issue it without asking anything - just to avoid a potential chargeback.

Lately, some people who don’t like to pay for digital products have started to abuse this policy. They will buy a product they’d like to have, and request a refund within a few minutes of the purchase. Many product owners have voiced their worries that “The ClickBank Refund Problem” would eventually force them to close their business or switch to another payment processing company.

Although the problem does affect certain niches (mostly internet marketing and money & business related products) a little bit more, but it’s not really a “ClickBank-wide” issue. I’d say that on average, about 0.5 to 2% of the purchases are made by “refund hijackers”. The rest are honest people who really didn’t like your product.

So if your refund rate is over 2-3%, you are likely doing something wrong.

Here are a few tips for lowering your refund rate:

1. As plain as it sounds, a quality product will always have much less refunds. Of course you won’t be able to create a product that satisfies all of your customers, but your #1 concern should be QUALITY.

2. Offer some bonuses, including unadvertised bonuses that you don’t mention on your sales page. Once I’ve tried a little trick: I split my 100-page e-book into 3 parts: a 70-page book and two bonus booklets of 15 pages. The result? My refund rate decreased from 10% to 5% - just by offering two little bonus booklets.

3. Make sure that your contact information is CLEARLY VISIBLE on your thank you pages. Some angry customers who can’t download the product will contact ClickBank for a refund instead of searching for your whois information

4. There is a wonderful e-book by “ClickBank Guru” Harvey Segal. Stop Those ClickBank Refunds is not only dirt-cheap, but very useful. You even get some tips on how to make a customer change his or her mind about a refund.

Now, I don’t want to ruin Harvey’s business by revealing every technique taught in his e-book. That’d be simply unfair. But if your refund rate is more than 3-4%, I honestly urge you to grab a copy. It’s a short but very useful read - believe it or not, I’ve purchased it myself. So can you.

Click here to visit Stop Those ClickBank Refunds

Your affiliate program will be the main source of your income. Your affiliates help you sell your product by doing the marketing and in turn they get a commission from the price. For digital products, this commission usually ranges from 40% to 75% of the total price. Normally, maintaining an affiliate program requires a strong back-end with expensive scripts and monthly fees. With ClickBank, they do all the work for you and manage your affiliate program.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of ClickBank.

Advantages:

• If you were to get your own merchant account, you could spend thousands of dollars each month just to have it. With ClickBank, you just need to pay a one-time, $49.95 setup fee and you are ready to sell your product. No monthly fees whatsoever. ClickBank will send you a paycheck twice a month with your earnings.
• ClickBank is VERY RELIABLE. You and your affiliates always get your checks in time, and their servers are almost never down. (The worst that can happen to you is losing money due to the fault of your payment processing company)
• Affiliates can sign up to ClickBank for FREE. Once they get their account, they can start advertising your product with a simple affiliate link.
• ClickBank already has thousands of affiliates. When you start selling your product, you can choose to get listed in the ClickBank marketplace. The best products in the marketplace are picked up and promoted by good affiliates.
• You can set up an unlimited number of paylinks and sell multiple products within one ClickBank account.
• ClickBank now processes PayPal payments too.
• Visitors sent to your site by your affiliates are tracked with hoplinks. (A special system which places cookies on the visitors’ computers) Since cookies stay on the visitors’ computers for a while, your affiliates will get their commission if even the visitor purchases weeks later.

The disadvantages of ClickBank:

• Compared to PayPal for example, they charge a lot. Typically $1 plus 7,5% of the total amount goes to ClickBank per transaction. So if you sell your e-book for $40, you’ll only get $35 per sale. (The good news is that sales processed by affiliates are charged a little bit less)
• It’s very easy to get refunds from ClickBank due to their rigorous refund policy. You can expect a 3-5% refund rate of all purchases. (Depending on your niche and the quality of your product) This is the cost of doing business
• You can only sell digital, downloadable products with ClickBank. No off-line goods are allowed.
• When they send you a check, they’ll withhold a 15% deposit that you’ll only get after 3 months. From time to time, getting paid with checks can be a pain in the ass.
• You can only set one affiliate commission percentage per ClickBank account. When doing joint-ventures or selling multiple products from one account, this can make your life a little bit harder.
• ClickBank isn’t available in all the countries, worldwide. They DO process credit cards from ANY country, but they don’t send affiliate and merchant paychecks to certain countries. (Like Malaysia for example)

Although it has some minor downsides, ClickBank is still the BEST SOLUTION for selling your digital, downloadable products and managing your affiliate program. Unless you expect to make at least $15.000-$20.000 in sales per month, you won’t find an alternative for ClickBank.

Click here to visit their web site and to learn more.