Are you blogging day in and day out and still not earning enough to cover your hosting fees?

There could be one really good reason for that — your content may not appeal to the visitors your blog attracts.

For example, if you are blogging about ‘how to play guitar’ and targeting all the right keywords to get traffic for that keyword phrase, you could do yourself a grave disfavor if the music you highlight is classical and your visitors are all teenage males interested in Lady Gaga’s music.

Here’s another possibility…

Your desert gardening blog is primarily attracting visitors from Canada’s zone 3 where we can’t grow palm trees for love nor money.

Or, goodness forbid, your mommy blog is pulling in the teen voyeurs with too many articles on breast-feeding.

So how do you get to know your audience?

Well, you could check your Alexa stats…

According to Alexa:

“Netprofitstoday.com is ranked #23,036 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Compared with all internet users, the site’s users tend to be over the age of 45, and they are disproportionately childless women browsing from home who have attended college and have incomes under $100,000. The time spent in a typical visit to this site is approximately three minutes, with two minutes spent on each pageview. Approximately 14% of visits to it are referred by search engines. Netprofitstoday.com has been online for at least six years.”

Or, you can check with Quantcast which in part suggests that following demographics for NetProfitsToday.

Notice how those two ‘authorities’ don’t agree?

What’s the BEST way to find out about your readers?

Communicate with them! Ask them who they are to determine what they need and really want from you.

Here are 7 polls that ask you questions about yourself using the WP-Polls plugin for WordPress which is super simple to install and use.

(See my guesses about your answers near the bottom of this post).

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
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OK, my bets are that the predominant answers to these questions are as follows:

1. Mostly male by about 5%
2. Between 35 and 45
3. Living in the U.S.
4. 1 – 2 Years of IM experience
5. Making a little money online
6. Classifying themselves as beginner
7. Caucasian by a slight margin

Am I right?

Please respond to the polls honestly. It’s better to be 48 than 45.

Thoughts? How well do you know your audience? What methods do you use to learn about visitors to your blog? Do tell!

Looking for a niche or a product to sell?

Well, some merchants share clues about the type of niche markets that work best for affiliates.

Here, for example is a partial email that I just received from CSN Stores:

CSN Stores is merchant on the ShareaSale Network and comprises over 250 specialized online stores that offer a wide variety of home goods including tools, office furniture, bedding, lighting, outdoor furniture, luggage, baby furniture & more.

… I (Eileen the Affiliate Manager) recently compiled a list of CSN’s most popular brands in 2010. I’d like to share just our top 5 with you. Since these brands were such best sellers last year they might have high conversion rates again this year so feel free to feature them if you wish! ‘Top 5′ is defined by net number of orders for the entire year of 2010.

CSN’s Top 5 Brands of 2010:

1. Wildon Home
2. KidKraft
3. Winsome (pantryware and lifestyle furniture)
4. Home Styles (furniture)
5. Midwest Pets

CSN’s Top 5 Brands of 2010 through Affiliate Sales Only:

1. Kidkraft
2. Wildon Home
3. DaVinci
4. JoJo Designs
5. Melissa and Doug

That should tell you that not only is furniture a good market, but specifically that relating to kids and pets.

Check your merchants’ emails frequently for good clues such as these.

And if they don’t share their data with you – ask!!

Are you a newbie thinking about starting the next great ‘make-a-million-online-overnight-at-home-while-you-sleep.com’ blog to rake in big bucks from the Internet marketing business opportunities niche?

Think again!!

PLEASE think again.

I’ve had numerous discussions with my colleagues throughout the many years I’ve been involved in the Internet marketing space — and we’ve all talked about ditching the niche entirely.

Seriously, the IM niche is NOT a fun place to be unless you have a LOTS of experience and unlimited grit. Even then it’s not really fun.

The only reason I and my friends remain in this market is NOT about love or money. We stay because we feel that there have to be at least a few of us who represent value, honesty and integrity in the space.

In a nutshell, we hate to see the many ways in which hopeful netpreneurs / online entrepeneurs get ripped off and totally disillusioned.

Here are just a few.

1. The products sold are mostly crap. In too many cases, products purported to be the ‘latest and greatest way’ to get a site to the top of Google’s listings, or build a list of ten million subscribers or make $17,398 (all overnight) is a rehash of a product that was first introduced in 2002, didn’t work at that time and has been relaunched every year since.

   Another con job is when info marketers take someone else’s work (such as my Super Affiliate Handbook), outsource it for a rewrite and then try pass it off as their own product.

   Experienced Internet marketing niche researchers pick up on and report these thieves quickly.

   However, unless you’ve been in the IM niche for a long time, you won’t recognize either the players or their bad (or stolen) products.

   That leads to the next problem…

2. Selling crap will ruin your reputation. Many IM marketers in the last decade have gone down in a ball of fire after buyers publicly complained about the shoddiness of their products or total lack of customer support.

   Affiliate marketers who enthusiastically promote those products without doing proper reviews lost respect with their audiences and suffered a similar fate.

3. List mining. Too many newbies who learn enough about the Internet Marketing niche to successfully build a huge list of subscribers – completely dessimate their lists on the possibility of winning an XBOX or iPad during a big IM launch.

   Trading your list for an iPad will never replace what you will lose in terms of future sales… for a couple of reasons.

   Most marketers in the IM niche don’t pay for the leads you send them.

   Many others don’t pay on upsells.

   Their primary interest is NOT in how many sales you generate.

   Oh sure, you make commissions on the initial sale, they make money and that seems to be a good thing.

   In reality, however, it’s ALL about the qualified leads that you send that they capitalize on for years to come and are lost to you forever.

   They continue to sell directly to them over and over again — and you’ll never make another dime on the leads you took time to capture and cultivate.

These factors have become SO much more prevalent since the U.S. economic downturn began and the scam artists jumped on the opportunity to take advantage of those who’d lost their homes and/or jobs and were now looking for online business opportunities to shore up their incomes or avoid bankruptcy.

The situation has now gotten so bad that it almost makes me sick.

I learned my lessons in this industry the hard way — trusting my valued subscribers to those who turned out to be (or into) into scam artists. I finally refused to promote all but one or two — but you can avoid those issues right from the start.

Either stay out of the internet marketing “make money online” niche completely — or, spend gobs of time doing your homework to make sure that the business opportunities and products that you promote in the internet marketing niche are HIGHLY valuable to your subscribers.

The key point to remember is that you need to place your hightest value on the trust you build with your readers – don’t squander it.

Don’t get me wrong.

There’s plenty of money to be made online in SO many different niche markets — but opting for the Internet marketing niche is a big mistake for 99% of newbies for the reasons discussed above.

It’s not often that I read a book a second time, or watch a movie twice in 2 years – let alone twice in a week – but I did just that this week with Julie & Julia.

OK, granted, I watched it on the flight down to the Affiliate Convention in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Then, without asking if I’d seen it (I see all new releases on airplanes) Ed rented it yesterday — but the kicker was that I was actually keen to watch it again.

If you are unfamiliar with the plot line, here is the description from Netflix.

Amy Adams stars in this truth-inspired tale as Julie Powell, a disenchanted government secretary who decides to enliven her uneventful life by cooking all 524 recipes outlined in Julia Child’s culinary classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Based on Powell’s book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, director Nora Ephron’s heartwarming dramedy also stars Meryl Streep as legendary chef Child.

The Amazon review of Julie & Julia is much more descriptive about the movie, but it barely touches on the aspect that I found so profound about this movie.

Julie Powell wants to be a writer.

So, she starts a blog called the Julie/Julia Project on August 25th, 2003 to write about what she truly loves – cooking.

Her first post reads as follows:

“Mastering the Art of French Cooking“. First edition, 1961. Louisette Berthole. Simone Beck. And, of course, Julia Child. The book that launched a thousand celebrity chefs. Julia Child taught America to cook, and to eat. It’s forty years later. Today we think we live in the world Alice Waters made, but beneath it all is Julia, 90 if she’s a day, and no one can touch her.

The Contender:

Government drone by day, renegade foodie by night. Too old for theatre, too young for children, and too bitter for anything else, Julie Powell was looking for a challenge. And in the Julie/Julia project she found it. Risking her marriage, her job, and her cats’ well-being, she has signed on for a deranged assignment.

365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.

How far will it go? We can only wait. And wait. And wait…..

The Julie/Julia Project. Coming soon to a computer terminal near you.

Julie Powell is a little rough around the edges – meaning she uses the “F” word a LOT. But her ‘colorful’ language certainly adds spice to her posts — especially when things aren’t going as well as she’d like.

She built a following and her readers loved her for being real in her day-by-day cooking adventure.

So much so that she starts getting financial contributions to her effort after she goes with her friends’ suggestion to place a PayPal button on her site — a good thing, ’cause seriously, I don’t know how she could have afforded all that expensive food otherwise. She also receives foodie treats from her fans. (Hint: I like food too.)

What happens within the next year (from a blogger’s point of view) as she cooks and writes her way through all those recipes is truly inspirational.

After blogging for nearly a year, on August 13th, 2003, her story was featured in the New York Times Dine & Wine section, in a piece by Amanda Hesser called A Race To Master The Art Of French Cooking.

That article launched both her book, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and the movie.

How cool is that?

And don’t believe it can’t happen to you.

My McGraw-Hill book, Make a Fortune Promoting Other People’s Stuff Online: How Affiliate Marketing Can Make You Rich was in large part a result of this blog. Sure, the good folks at McGraw-Hill had seen the Super Affiliate Handbook, but what made them approach me to write for them (and I did ask them why) was the fact that I blogged regularly on NPT and that my message was consistent, i.e. I didn’t focus on promoting products, I was sharing helpful information with my readers along with my honest views about this business.

I certainly didn’t expect that to happen to me… all I did was blog about a topic in which I was really interested.

And You CAN do that too!

And although it’s unlikely that anyone will ever make the ‘affiliate marketing movie’, maybe your story is just waiting to be a feature film.

I hope so!

Until then, get inspired – rent or buy Julie and Julie and watch it more than once. (BTW, I’d recommend the DVD version at $9.99 – Blu-Ray at $25.99 was great to see but a tad pricey.)

If you’ve already seen it? What did you think?

If you browse around the internet, you’ll notice that people all over the world are blogging and making money doing it!

These are people just like you; people with little experience, without a background in computer science, or a big bank account to dig into. They used programs like Google Blogger (blogger.com) or WordPress (WordPress.org) to quickly and easily set up their blogs, often at no cost. Now all you have to ask yourself is what hobby or niche should you blog about?

A recipe blog can be the perfect choice for people who have tried recipes and thought they could do something different, more exciting, or just plain better.

It’s a great way to tell others about new recipes, ideas, and products available in the world of cooking, as well as sharing regional specialties. But, don’t worry if you can’t cook. You can write a cooking blog for others who are learning to cook. How much fun would it be to share your successes as well as your “hope you don’t chip a tooth” muffins? Starting a recipe blog can be a wonderful way to share your interest and make money in the process. If cooking is your passion (or even if it isn’t) — a recipe blog may be a profitable way to get a taste of online business.

The skills needed to start blogging about cooking are simple.

You need a talent or love of cooking. You don’t need to know all the fancy gourmet cooking terms; you just need to know how to put a dish together that tastes good.

You also need to be able to write your recipes in an organized, concise, and easy-to-follow format. You may want to be able to use a digital camera, or find someone who can, in order to take pictures of your food, or you could use publicly licensed photos of food that you find on the internet. Of course, you’ll need patience. Every blog has a unproductive period at first, so don’t get discouraged. It will take time for your blog to build and for people to find you.

There are several ways you can turn your recipes and cooking blog into a money-making business. You can choose just one of these options or do a mix of them.

Here are some ideas…

Make Money by Selling Products: A person who loves to cook, often loves all the kitchen paraphernalia that comes along with it. If you have gadgets and cookbooks available to purchase on your blog, you can reap the rewards that the retail markets are enjoying. You can share your recipes, cooking tips, opinions, and sell products all at the same time. Nice little income producing idea.

Make Money by Selling Advertising: Once your blog gets noticed, and traffic starts coming your way, you’ll find advertising on your blog to be a nice, profitable way to generate income. This is something to keep in mind, but you won’t really hit your stride making money with this method until you start getting readers. Just file this idea away so you can start making your plans.

Make Money by Selling Your Blog: If you’ve been noticed by the search engines and media, you have arrived! Now may be the time to consider selling your blog for the big bucks. (Some blogs have sold for millions.) You can also create blogs for sale when you get this good.

With some focused time and creativity, you should be able to develop a recipe blog that is uniquely yours, a place to post your favorite family recipes, restaurant secrets, cooking disasters, or other information you want to share in the world of cooking. But, thinking isn’t doing — you’ve got to act in order to succeed.

Yes, you Can make money with a Recipe Blog. Need recipes for your new blog? Check out Yummy PLR Recipes.

Note from Ros: This is the 2nd in DinerDave’s series. Click here to read the first, Affiliate Site Case Study: Introducing Diner Dave

In order to determine what content to put in the pages and posts of DinerDave.com I need to figure out what my target market is looking for on the search engines. Fortunately, there are lots of great tools out there to help with this market research. I used a couple of reputable keyword research tools from Ros’ post on “10 HOT Market Research Sites“, Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Since I want to provide helpful information on locating restaurant coupons, gift certificates, and reviews, I decided to test these aforementioned keywords first. Here is just a sample of the keywords I plugged in to both Wordtracker and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to determine what type of traffic I could expect. I selected these keywords because each one has an affiliate program associated with it (ie Restaurant.com and Entertainment.com).:

1. Restaurant
2. Restaurant Coupons
3. Restaurant Discounts
4. Restaurant Gift Certificates
5. Restaurant Gift Cards
6. Restaurant Reviews
7. Dining Coupons

The results showed a VERY viable market for these keywords! I’ve included a couple of screen shots from Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Tool to illustrate:

As you can see Wordtracker shows 1,113 searches yesterday on the keyword phrase “restaurant coupons” and Google Adwords Keyword Tool shows 550,000 searches done on the same keywords last month. I wondered how this discrepancy was possible and, after doing some research, I found that Wordtracker gets its data from Dogpile and Metacrawler as opposed to Google Adwords, which is ALL Google searches. Here are the results from my research on some other keywords I plan to use in DinerDave.com:

OK…So what do all these numbers ACTUALLY MEAN to me when preparing content for my blog? After reviewing the data, I made the following deductions:

1. When writing content for my site it will be very important to incorporate the word “restaurant” and “restaurant coupon” several times. According to the data these will be THE most popular keywords to include on DinerDave.com. I was planning on using the words “diner” and “dining” frequently throughout the site, but there are relatively few searches for any variation of “dining”. Good to know!
2. I’ve researched these keywords over the last 3 months and I’ve noticed that, even though the numbers change from month to month, their popularity remains consistent. “Restaurant coupons” always ranks higher than “restaurant reviews” and “restaurant gift certificates”. Therefore, I need to allocate more posts to “restaurant coupons” than any other category on my site. This is great news because my top 2 merchants, Restaurant.com and Entertainment.com, have high conversion rates on these keywords!
3. According to Google Adwords Keyword Tool there is a TON of competition for the top keywords I will include on DinerDave.com. Obviously, I will not be able to outbid other websites for these very popular keywords. However, I have the advantage of marketing my affiliate programs to a 15,000 subscriber email list! This will be the first order of business when making the transfer from DinerDeals.com to DinerDave.com. Plus, there are other less costly methods of marketing my site to fans of dining out (social media, visiting forums, back links, etc…)
4. Even though there is stiff competition for these top keywords, there are still opportunities with other restaurant related searches such as “restaurant gift cards”. “Restaurant gift cards” had 6,600 searches last month, but the competition was not as fierce for these keywords. I could write an entire post on reviews of the best restaurant gift cards available online. I have already signed up for the affiliate program for GiftCertificates.com and will incorporate that link to monetize that post.
5. When I reviewed the Wordtracker data on “restaurant coupons” I noticed some interesting variations I would not have thought of otherwise. For example, I would not have thought to include the keyword phrase “PRINTABLE restaurant coupons” in my content…but it fetched 469 searches in ONE DAY! Not too shabby. I’ll definitely be using that phrase too.

There you have it…and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I now have a list of over 250 keywords and phrases that I could use in DinerDave.com to drive traffic to the site using just these 2 keyword research tools.

Now I just need to incorporate these keywords into my site. In the next post I will explain how I created content on DinerDave.com by utilizing google alerts, email newsletters and reviewing affiliate sites.

If anyone had told me that I was destined to become an entrepreneur with a highly successful online business, I would have scoffed at the notion.

Being someone who hates to sell (and STILL hates to sell) I just didn’t see myself as a businessperson.

As it was, I became an entrepreneur entirely by ACCIDENT and it wasn’t until much later that I realized that running my own online publishing business (as an affiliate and ebook author) was absolutely PERFECT for me.

I now set my own schedule, write honestly about what I’m interested in, can reach for the sky in terms of income and get to help others do likewise.

PERFECT!

But as I said, I stumbled on my Utopic biz purely by accident, and I doubt I would have found a career or business that matches my strengths, interests and desires had I actually been LOOKING for it.

You, however, don’t need to be so haphazard in the search for your PERFECT business.

At the Underground Seminar, I spent quite a bit of time talking with millionaire entrepreneur, Steve Little.

Steve’s heart is definitely in the right place when it comes to helping new entrepreneurs find their PERFECT business. What he hates most is to see people waste their hard-earned money on hyped up bizops that just aren’t right for them.

FREE Survey Helps You Choose the RIGHT Business Model for YOU

So, to help you avoid getting into the WRONG business, Steve created a fantastic FREE 48-question survey which tells you all about your individual entrepreneurial strengths. Then he teaches you how to leverage those strengths into the success you desire with a series of 20 excellent video lessons.

And he’s made what it all available to you for free.

So, go check it out. It only takes a minute to get your survey results but the insight you get is invaluable.

And BTW, it doesn’t matter if you’re looking to start a business right now or not, you’ve got to hear what he has to say.

How do you know what people want buy online?

Fortunately, a number of sites make answering that question very simple by publishing weekly, monthly, and annual trends; interest comparisons, top lists and market research reports. Various online services publish the number of times keywords and phrases are searched over a given period of time.

Here are 10 of my favorite market research sites and services.

1. Google Trends lets you compare the world’s interest in your chosen niche markets.

   For example, I entered ‘coffee’ and ‘tea’ and discovered some significant spikes in the interest in coffee (shown in the graphic below).

   

   You may enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time. It also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.

2. Google’s Insights for Search lets you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. Check out the examples of how you can use Google Insights for Search accessible from the homepage – you can go DEEP with this one!

3. Magazines.com lists their 10 Top Titles on their homepage.

   At the time of writing, these included Sports Illustrated For Kids, Time, People, InStyle, Woman’s Day, Money, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Women’s Health and Disney Adventures.

   So what topics do we see there? Sports, general news, women’s issues, fashion, kids and finances.

4. eBay Pulse is a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay, listing popular searches, largest stores and most watched items.

   Alhtough eBay Pulse page shows an overview of the entire eBay marketplace, you can use the drop-down menu to refine and filter the lists to show content for specific categories on eBay.

5. Yahoo’s Buzz Index focuses on the entertainment industry, providing their most popular searches on a daily basis for actors, movies, music, sports, TV and video games.

6. comScore Networks provides insight into consumer behavior and attitudes by compiling reports based on a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.

7. JupiterResearch provides research, analysis and advice to help guide technology vendors and service providers on market opportunity. Guest access is available, however, to quickly gain access to salient sections of recent Jupiter Research reports, try Googling “jupiter research ____” (_____) being the name of the topic you wish to study.

8. Amazon best sites for doing market research. Search any of their departments, i.e. books or baby or and you’ll see either a link for Bestsellers or Top Sellers as well as:

• Hot New Releases
• Most Gifted
• Most Wished For
• Movers & Shakers

9. Google Adwords Keyword Tool is also a free tool that reports on search performance and seasonal trends on keywords and keyword phrases that you enter into the search box. Statistics show the relative amount of users searching for that keyword on Google.

10. WordTracker shows you exactly what people are looking for online by showing you exactly which keywords and phrases they’re searching for. Wordtracker’s suggestions are based on over 330 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days.

    Although Wordtracker offers a free trial, I recommend that the week-long pass for $27.59 is really worthwhile if you want to do justice to your market research!

Whether it’s golf, gardening or grandfather clocks you want to sell, use the sites recommended above to find out how much of a potential market exists BEFORE you make the leap to a full-scale site on the subject.

I wasn’t at all surprised to hear the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) announcer mention that some dating sites have reported up to 70% increases in paid memberships since the economic turmoil began in earnest a few months ago. Match.com (CJ and Linkshare) announced that November was its strongest in more than seven years and December saw a 22% increase over the same month a year prior.

The desire to pair up is basic human nature, so matchmaking will always be in vogue, no matter what the economy. But in tough times, building new relationships can become a necessity in order to cope either financially or emotionally.

“One of the hardest emotional feelings is being in the midst of bad news by yourself,” said Dr. Pepper Schwartz, chief relationship expert for leading dating site Perfectmatch.com (a Commission Junction merchant). “We are all generally better as a team and appreciate someone who shares our values, goals and lifestyle, and that’s why we’ve seen increased traffic to top dating sites in the current economic climate.”

As to finding true love, a bad economy is actually GOOD for the dating set. Couples who can’t afford to spend money on entertainment will actually talk more during their dates and thus build better, more intimate relationships. Talking intimately to build relationships – what a concept – and a great selling point too!

Dating Service Memberships are an Easy Sell

It’s easy to convince the lovelorn that a dollar a day (and sometimes even less) to join a proper matchmaking site like Eharmony or Chemistry.com is a better investment in their future than wasting time trying find a needle in a haystack on a free dating site.

You don’t need to start a completely new site dedicated just to dating to take advantage of dating affiliate programs — you can simple dovetail dating into your existing site. For example, a site for parents or moms would be remiss not to promote a site like Single Parents Mingle and a Mexican cooking site could entice their audience to find Latin lovers at Amigos.com. Use your imagination.

Get Those Dating Promos Out NOW

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, this is definitely the time to ramp up your dating promotions as most merchants are offering customer discounts and affiliate incentives.

For example, Yahoo! Personals (Commission Junction) has it’s February Bonus program, in which they’ll double your commission if you generate 5 or more subscriptions in February. Just note that you’ll have to contact them via email to qualify for and receive your prize.

Take advantage of the season by making gift products such as flowers, chocolates, jewelry and lingerie available to your audience as well — and be sure to focus on how the products you list will save your visitors money either through time-limited discounts or free-shipping.

• Amazon is offering an extra 30% off at check on Select Jewelry from the Amazon.com Collection until Feb. 14, 2009.
• American Greetings (Commission Junction) is letting folks send Free eCards to their loved ones.

Note: I wrote this article when when President Obama was launching his “Green Energy Agenda”. There is no better time than today to get out there and sell green products.

“Global Economic Meltdown”, my eye.

Despite record drops in retail sales, skyrocketing unemployment and economists predicting that this recession/depression will last anywhere from twelve months to more than seven years; I’m predicting that the catastrophic failure of the me-first greed economy is the long-awaited “Great Opportunity” for the green economy — and no, I haven’t been smoking ‘organic’ cigarettes. Fueling my Utopic vision are a number of factors; including proposed government action, me and the other granola-crunchers in my neighborhood, and well… the cost of fuel.

Let’s start with the latter.

Factors Fueling the Green Revolution

With gas prices $4.00 per gallon and higher last summer, American drivers logged 10.7 billion fewer miles in September 2008 than they did the same month a year earlier, according to data issued by the Federal Highway Administration. Although holiday revelers rejoiced and took to the road again over Thanksgiving after the cost of crude dropped 62 percent from July’s record of $147.27 per barrel, consumption again remained lower than during the same period in previous years. Perhaps the price crunch increased folks’ appreciation for stress-free bus travel. Or, maybe there’s been a collective realization that gas prices will again skyrocket when worldwide demand for oil outpaces production by a significant margin in a few short years and we’ve amended our wasteful ways.

Now enter proposed government action.

Amidst the turmoil of economic collapse and rising concerns over U.S. dependence on foreign oil and energy security, President Obama is seizing the opportunity to rebuild the U.S. economy through investment in clean technologies such as wind, solar and fuel-efficient cars. Declaring that “few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent” than fighting climate change, he outlined the framework for an ambitious new plan intended to “transform our industries and steer our economy out of this economic crisis by generating 2.5 million new green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced“. The promise of strategic long-term investments to solve energy security, economic stability and greenhouse gas emission problems marks a significant shift from ‘green movement’ to an all-out ‘green revolution’.

Green Products: Big Expense or a Good Investment?

At this point you might be thinking that green revolution or not, rising unemployment will stymie demand for environmentally friendly products which typically sell at premium prices. Well, this is where my neighbors and I enter the picture. With small or no mortgage balances and jobs in health care, policing and other essential services that aren’t affected by economic turmoil, we are all keenly focused on not only preserving capital during the economic storm, but in making long-term investments that bode well for both our pocket books and the environment. Dinner party talk usually leads around to results of the latest energy audit, completed and planned home improvements to reduce consumption, as well as available tax grants and credits for energy renovations. We also invariably trade information about where to find the best deals on energy-saving appliances and products — and more often than not, we purchase those products online.

For example, the prospect of saving up to 75% on lighting costs (typically representing approximately 25% of a home energy budget) convinced me to outfit 98% of the lights in my home with compact fluorescents when the product was first introduced. Now, 10-watt LED bulbs that last up to 50,000 hours and are equivalent to 100-watt incandescent bulbs are available for home use. Those who have already replaced 150-watt incandescent bulbs with the 10-watt LED spotlights are reporting better and brighter task lighting in addition to the benefit of increased savings.

Although the initial outlay of $60.00 to $100.00 per bulb seems pretty pricey, taking a longer-term view and applying some simple math reveals that each bulb $400 to $500 in electricity savings over the life of a bulb – based on a median cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. That’s not a cost — it’s a no-brainer investment. Replace ten incandescent bulbs, save $4,000.00 (or more), invest those savings in the solar retrofit and pretty soon the local hydro-electric utility will be sending you a check every month for the power that you send back to the grid!

Green Product Availability

Alas, not so fast. You can’t buy an LED light bulb that isn’t attached to a Christmas string for love nor money here in Backwater, British Columbia. So, this is where YOU come in. You can promote those bulbs as an affiliate. Do a search for “LED bulb” and “affiliate program” and merchants such as Smarthome (partnered with Linkshare) show up at the top of the Google search results. Smarthome reports that their average sale is over $200.00 and they pay 8-10% sales commissions.

Go beyond the bulbs and check out the plethora of energy-saving products that are available for promotion through those and other merchants with affiliate programs. Visitors who might be loathe to drop $70.00 on an LED light bulb can be sold a $34.00 sensor-activated switch that dims conventional and fluorescent bulbs by up to 50% and extends the expected lifespan by up to 35 times. While you’re at it, point that visitor to programmable thermostats that save 10 to 20% on the annual heating bill and cost as little as 40 bucks. For the still-skeptical, there are electricity usage monitors that display consumption by the kilowatt-hour and calculate electricity expenses by the day, week, month, or year and are an easy sell at $19.99. Put them on a list and they’ll come running back to your site for the real energy-saving tools once they gain perspective on their current usage and potential savings.

Add Value – Make More Green

The already-converted will appreciate full-scale reviews and comparisons of tankless water heaters that were in widespread use in Europe nearly 30 years ago and are only now gaining popularity in North America. Sold at both TanklessWaterHeaters and GreenandMore.com (Commission Junction merchants), the efficient heaters range in price between just under $200.00 and up to $800.00. Truly committed eco-warriors who think they have done all they can do to save the planet from meltdown, will surely jump at the chance to buy insulating paint additives that block interior heat loss by over 20 percent in winter and prevent solar gain in summer.

To achieve the highest possible conversion rates with green products, you should first appeal to consumer thrift. As in the example I gave above, provide your visitors with projected energy cost savings for each product you promote. Better still, let them factor in their actual per kilowatt hour electricity prices for the region in which they live with a javascipt caluculator and you’ll give those in California and the backwater regions of Canada even more incentive to go greener.

To improve your conversions even more, add ‘nice to know’ information about the topic that does not necessarily lead to a product review. Doing so helps establish your trust and credibility with your visitors, thus making them more likely to buy the products that you do recommend. The easiest way to do this is to re-publish syndicated content from a non-commercial site within the space, but you’ll see more sales with your own informational articles written from real-life experience.

To sum up, the demand for green products is about to explode as are affiliate marketers’ opportunities for making a LOT of green in this market. And although I don’t want to appear overly dramatic, the future of the planet and all its species depends on you leaping aboard this wide-open opportunity and convincing everyone who visits your site to be and buy green.