Affiliate Programs

Your head hurts.

Your eyes are burning.

You feel a little sick to your stomach.

Yep. That's right. You just spent the last two hours searching for 'free myspace layouts' and you came up with bumpkiss, nada, zilch, zip, nothing. You may even be a little astonished that such a burgeoning scene can be so bereft of a truly valuable contribution. One would think that the arena would be overrun with opportunists trying to take the internet by storm producing whole collections --not just one or two here and there-- but whole collections of quality premade MySpace layouts.

One would think.

Well after engaging in some serious clanging of swords on the front lines of the MySpace layout battlefield for the past year, let me tell you where it's at.

Free MySpace layout makers generally fall into one of three categories:

The Good
Although these are few and far between, a small (and I mean very small) group of web designers will actually put some major effort into producing a collection of attractive and truly original MySpace layouts. The backgrounds are worked up from scratch and they are customized to fit well with MySpace profiles. On top of this, great care is taken to make sure the colors selected for the fonts are properly coordinated with the background image to make the text easy to read (a big problem on MySpace).

The Bad
A much larger group of web designers (and I use this term loosely here) will scour the net and download any and every image they can lay their mouse finger on. They focus heavily on celebrity and product photos (cars, motorcycles, beer, etc) and all of them, of course, are copyright protected. So what this essentially amounts to is theft, plain and simple. These images are then used in conjunction with some boilerplate CSS code which converts them into MySpace backgrounds. In some cases, these layout makers will even use the original web address of the 'found' image in their layout codes. So in effect they are not only stealing the image itself but they are also stealing the bandwidth of the website they found the image on. All of the above takes absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever so touting the finished pieces as 'original' or 'handmade' MySpace layouts is an utter sham.

The Ugly
This group of MySpace layout makers use the same tactics as 'The Bad' but will go one step further and use any and every black hat search engine optimization (SEO) trick in the book in an attempt to 'game' their MySpace resource sites to the top of search engine results pages. And unfortunately, many of them succeed. Search engines like Google and Yahoo still have a ways to go when it comes to weeding out websites that employ unscrupulous methods like keyword stuffing and multiple site networking.

HOPE

On the bright side, search volume for the keywords 'free myspace layouts' is actually declining while searches for other related keywords is on the rise. This means that MySpace users are finally starting to realize that using the word 'free' is a waste of a good search term since 99.9% of MySpace layouts are free anway (assuming you don't count all the time you spent trying to find a good one). MySpacers are now starting to become much more descriptive with the adjectives they tack on to the keywords 'myspace layouts' in an attempt to find something that will truly adorn their profiles with an original, classy or professional look.

Hopefully this trend will continue and eventually make it a lot easier to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Robert Darrell is the webmaster of ironspider.ca where he provides tutorials covering all aspects of web design. He also provides a fine collection of MySpace layouts which are 100% original (no copyright violations).

You can find his collection of MySpace layouts here: http://www.ironspider.ca/adv/myspace/

There are countless ways to make money online only to be let down time and time again by products, services and 'get rich quick' schemes that have not delivered their promises of money and success.

And if you are into affiliate marketing, there are commission payment issues to be considered especially if you are from outside the United States. There is no denying that withdrawing your fund (in this case your commission earning) from United States is really a hassle unless of course if your are a US citizen. Even though are a few reliable payment gateway that support international memberships, transferring your hard earned commission to your Malaysian bank account can be time consuming and costly.

What could be beneficial to Malaysian keen affiliate marketer? Obviously you need a product that is developed and targeted specifically for Malaysian market. And since it is for Malaysian, getting your commission paid to your local Malaysian bank account is a breeze.

This affiliate program offers commission for converted sales on an ebook titled " Jason Tan's Char Kuey Teow Secrets" and as usual, you need to bring in visitors to his website via your own landing page. Becoming his affiliate is free.

To be successful in affiliate marketing, you would need a set of powerful and effective marketing tools. This affiliate program live up to its mark by providing excellent affiliate marketing aids ranging from Traffic Monitor and various Promotion Stuff. Traffic Monitor is a hit tracking analysis which is breakdown by day and including the IP source. This is very crucial to monitor the number of visitors hitting your affiliate landing page and where they come from (useful if you are running an advertisement). The Promotion Stuff includes various type and size of banners, sample advertisement texts and even email templates.

What make this affiliate program suitable for Malaysian affiliate marketer is that it paid the commission to their affiliates via bank transfer to local Malaysian bank namely (Maybank, RHB, CIMB, Public Bank, Bank Islam, and Bank Raykat). For international affiliates, they paid the commission to their affiliates either through Paypal or e-gold.

Overall, this affiliate program is comparable to than other well-know international affiliate programs, if not better.

About the author:

Richard W Sinyem is an internet entrepreneur. He researches and promotes various affiliate programs and online opportunities to make money in the home-based business industry.

His website is http://www.EzRich.ws and his chronicles of internet entrepreneurship activities are blogged at http://ezrichproject.blogspot.com