Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Gifts for Dogs and Cat Presents Ideas

Monday, November 7th, 2011

dog presents Gifts for Dogs and Cat Presents IdeasThe holiday season of the year is the time associated giving getting presents from the people close to us and from our loved ones. This is a fantastic event to make an unforgettable end of the year celebration for pets – be they cats or dogs. After all, they put shimmer to our lives each day of the year just by their mere presence and ask for almost nothing in return.

Listed here are some excellent gifts for dogs that you could take into account with some presents ideas for cats too.

Gifts for Dogs and Cats Ideas

1. Dog Safety Car Harness! Car harness for dogs are perfect gifts for dogs. Particularly because the holidays are time for travel. They hold the animal safe in a shifting car and are potential lifesavers for both man and animal to brake suddenly when touring at high velocity or if you are concerned in an accident.

2. Food Reward Card for Fido and Spot! Yes, these gift cards for food make very best presents for dogs and cats too. No extra tiresome journeys to the pet food store; get all the pet food and tasty treats in your pets delivered to your doorstep.

3. Your cat will bless you when to present it with a scratching post. You’ll add years to the lifetime of your sofa covers and all of the upholstery at home. For felines, scratching is next only to breathing. Get your cat a great cat scratcher and also you received have to have its claws clipped twice every week or contemplate the totally avoidable declawing procedure.

4. Take into account educating yourself on pet behavior, tips on how to handle pets, and sundry other things that a pet owner ought to know. Purchase an amazing e-book or two on pets. You’ll be shocked on the wealth of data that comes at your disposal. You possibly can study issues that can assist you to improve the standard of your relationship with your pet.

5. Should you bought a pet that may be trained and groomed then be certain it lives up to its potential by giving the animal the necessary agility, training, and grooming care.

6. Dog tags and leashes make for cool gifts for dogs. Present your canine a brand new leash, make him appear spruced up. If you wish to go the additional distance you can have an RFID chip carrying relevant data implanted into dog. Will increase the possibilities of finding the animal manifold.

7. Purchase a dog house in your pet pooch or construct a kennel as a rewarding do-it-your self exercise. Your pet little one will love you for giving it a really special non-public house that he can snuggle into for a nap, chew on a bone, while away the dog days of hot summer planning new mischief.

8. Cat beds and blankets are best cat presents to your feline pets. Cats would slightly spend their day sleeping than doing anything else. Give them their own mattress and blanket and their own private space. It is also an excellent apply to keep up hygiene within the house. The cat is aware of where it has to sleep and goes there.

Gifts for dogs and presents for cats needs to be on every pet owners vacation checklist for this year. They offer you so much and make you so happy each day of the year.

You CAN Make Affiliate Money without Spending on PPC

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

PPC marketing cookie1 300x224 You CAN Make Affiliate Money without Spending on PPC

 PPC is a great tool to get massive traffic instantly if used correctly.  However, PPC is just only one of the best way to get traffic and make money of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money by sending converting traffic to online sellers of products and services.

The key, that even a newbie marketer understands, is to get traffic that converts. And this is where the question of using different forms of advertising comes into the picture. Of course you can drive traffic to your affiliate marketing site using pay per click and other forms of advertising. A simple cost-benefit analysis done over a week and slightly mid-term like a month will tell you the kind of returns you can get with an advertising program to send traffic to your site.

You’ll learn from the accumulated data about the type of keywords you need to target and the extent to which you have to tweak your website to get quality traffic. This costs time and money. And most small affiliate marketers have just about enough of the former and little of the latter. It can be a little disheartening for a newbie or even an established affiliate marketer to learn about a successful marketer that attributes his success to PPC advertising. Well, different strokes for different folks. You can just as easily make as much money by totally eschewing ads to promote your affiliate site. And it can be a good thing too; for one it lets you put Google Adsense ads on your site, second it broadens your affiliate marketing basket. There are affiliate merchants that do not allow PPC, they prefer organically generated traffic or if they do allow, it is with a lot of restrictions on keywords.

Affiliate PPC ads can work if you are getting a hefty payment for every lead or sale but most affiliate niches don’t work that way. The best keywords for PPC have long been taken and cost quite a bit.

So why spend money on marketing and spend time fine-tuning your advertising when you can make money without spending a dime on PPC or placing ads on sites and forums. All you need is targeted content and good SEO practices. Moreover, spending on PPC cannot be a long-term solution because ultimately it is the content that will interest the search engines, pique the curiosity of other sites online so that you can back-links, and get visitors to bookmark your site.

The time you spend daily on planning how to make your advertising campaign work for you can easily be used to create great content pertaining to your niche and propagating the same on social media sites. Spend time leaving links on forums, prepare relevant videos for YouTube, create link-bait articles, these are long-term solutions that may cost you elbow grease but certainly no money. This way you can actually get traffic that is searching for what you have got to offer.

This is not to say that you don’t need to spend at all. You do need to pay for the domain name, hosting charges, and fees for any kind of content work that you may wish to outsource.

Creating a PPC campaign takes a lot of knowledge and skills on the dynamics of search engine  and keywords at work.

Maintaining Affiliate Hygiene – Prevent Lead Scrubbing and Commission Shaving

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

affiliate commission shaving 213x300 Maintaining Affiliate Hygiene – Prevent Lead Scrubbing and Commission Shaving

If you are an affiliate marketer, whether part-time or earning your bread and butter through affiliate marketing, you would have definitely come across situations when the same traffic converts into leads for one offer but nothing happens when another very similar offer is put up. It is unfortunate when such a thing happens but it does happen and the beast is known as lead scrubbing. It has an equally loathsome cousin – commission shaving. Both hurt affiliate marketer, not to mention the damage they do to the merchant’s image but some merchants feel they can get away with it, evade the tracking software, operate under the radar and make some quick money for as long as they can. They don’t worry about reputation.

One example of lead scrubbing is that a merchant assures the affiliate publisher of counting a “1st page submit” as a valid lead but does not do so or even if he does, he counts only those visits that fulfilled the necessary action and stayed on the page for a desired period of time after that. That’s a tough requirement. And, if you check online you will come across mentions of instances when affiliate publisher have ignored valid conversions because they choose to pay for a fixed percentile of all legal conversions. For them the bottom line is that they cannot afford to pay more than what they are earning from the leads. So instead of regulating it by cutting down leads commission or making their product and service more attractive to the consumer, advertisers choose to do this. One reason is that publishers seldom find out and even if they do, they do not have the time, money, and often the inclination to take the issue up in a strong manner.

Commission shaving is when they shave off your well-earned commission by either not paying you at all or paying less than what was promised. This can be done by crediting your legitimate lead to another account. Or the advertiser may use multiple signups from a single visitor for more than one offer and pay you for only one offer. If you notice that your conversion ratio does not change even after putting in more efforts then try out the same or a similar offer on another network. The results will tell you whether or not your commissions are being shaved.

Sometimes, commission shaving takes the form of traffic theft. If you have managed to generate a stream of targeted traffic with a keyword, you may find traffic going to your advertiser from competitors using that very same keyword; and that cuts you out of the picture. This can be a coincidence or you have been made a victim of commission shaving.

But What Can An Affiliate Marketer Do to Avoid Lead Scrubbing and Commission Shaving?

Anyway, these are merchants that you need to stay away from. But first try talking with the affiliate manager who is handling the program for the advertiser; he may be able to provide a reason or ask you to focus on sending leads from another source instead of the one you may be using at that point in time. Usually these things happen with the knowledge of the affiliate network, so talk to them as well and if it does not work out then it’s time to move to a more honest and profitable affiliate relationship.

The Top 8 WordPress Affiliate Plugins for 2011

Monday, October 3rd, 2011


Wordpress plug ins images The Top 8 Wordpress Affiliate Plugins for 2011Blogging is a great way to make money with affiliate marketing; WordPress is by far the best blogging platform. So it figures that if you’ve got a WordPress blog that you are using to generate affiliate income, then you are on the right track. And most definitely you’d be aware of how plugins can contribute to your business. These applications can put your affiliate marketing efforts into hyper drive. There are literally thousands of them out there.

 

Here we present you with a list of the eight best affiliate plugins for 2011 –

 

  1. Shareyourcart – A boon for affiliate marketers. You can use this plugin to motivate satisfied customers with incentives for spreading the word! It helps you set discounts / rewards / coupons to offer on various social networking sites. You can drive targeted traffic to your site with this plugin.

 

  1. Fotomoto – If you have a photoblog, here is your chance to monetize it. This plugin turns your blog in to a fully-featured e-commerce store. Great for budding artists and commercial photographers. Make money from your creations. There is a huge market for photos and this is your chance to tap it.

 

  1. Cleeng content monetization – If you’ve got something to sell then this plugin lets you sell it with ease. Sell your own articles, instructional videos, downloadable PDFs, and more. Be your own boss. 55 payment options and facility to protect your unique content.

 

  1. WatchCount.com – Affiliates have grown rich selling on eBay and this free plugin helps you get greater returns by displaying the top-selling products on eBay. The items and auctions displayed are real-time information. You can customize the plugin to reflect the auctions from a particular seller – like the one you are promoting on your site.

 

  1.  Amazon affiliate link localizer – A super cool plugin that helps you multiply your earnings from Amazon manifold; there isn’t a single Amazon affiliate who hasn’t wondered about missed conversion opportunities because of his affiliate link pointing to an Amazon store for a particular geographical destination. The alternative was a time-consuming link addition to more than one store; the result was multiple affiliate links on a single post. But this plugin automatically converts your Amazon affiliate links to point to the Amazon store serving the visitor’s country, just put in your affiliate ID once and watch magic happen.

 

  1. Ad Injection – If you want to control who sees your ads or manage the number of ads that are displayed, then this is one great plugin that helps you target your affiliate content better and offers you the choice of working with more affiliate merchants without cluttering up your page. Configure ads by IP, referrer, post length, etc.

 

  1. SEO Smart Links – This plugin provides you with SEO benefits such as controlling the nofollow parameter and designating URLs for selected keywords. You can choose to automatically link keywords and phrases with other posts on your blog. Good for internal linking and creating affiliate links on the fly.

 

  1. uContext – A totally hassle-free addition of links to the tons of products on Clickbank. Add your Clickbank tracking ID and you are good to go with this free plugin. These in-text links do not demand any extra effort from you; they are created using already present contextually relevant text. A simple way to earn additional income from one of the world’s most popular affiliate marketing systems.

 

 

 

 

Pet Oxygen Masks, They Could Save Your Pets Life in a Fire

Friday, September 30th, 2011

pet oxygen masks” src=”http://www.revenuecurve.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/pet-oxygen-masks.jpg” alt=”Pet oxygen masks” width=”204″ height=”248″ />

Pet oxygen masks are a piece of equipment that should be in every pet owner’s home; these most certainly are becoming a part of a fireman’s kit who can use them to save hapless pets trapped in a fire.

If a fire breaks out, humans can communicate with one another and negotiate a safe passage; dogs and cats too may be able to get out of the dog-door but if they are trapped then the situation is worse than what it would be for humans. This is because, surrounded by fire and unable to breathe, animals can get disoriented and do something that may only precipitate the situation for them. Small animals trapped in a fire hazard are at risk not only from the flames but also from the fumes. Insufficient combustion generates carbon monoxide which is deadly poisonous; cats and small dogs can get knocked out by the carbon monoxide fumes or choke on carbon dioxide and other noxious vapors that may be emitted from the burning of plastics, furniture treated with chemicals, etc. Even if firemen succeed in bringing out a pet that has passed out from inhaling fumes, it is often very difficult to revive the animal in the absence of an oxygen mask.

As far as fire departments are concerned, pet oxygen masks are not allowed to be purchased using tax dollars as they are not meant for human safety. Therefore, these organizations depend upon the zeal and goodwill of individuals and organizations to provide them with this piece of equipment that can make all the difference to an animal’s chances of coming out alive from a fire hazard. A pet parent is likely to be devastated more from losing a pet in a fire than from having his possessions burnt down.

Pet oxygen masks are reusable and carry a warranty of up to 2 years depending upon manufacturer and make. The good thing about these masks is that they can fit any animal, even a bird or a new-born pup. The masks are also useful in the treatment of ailing pets that require in-house oxygen therapy, pets involved in traffic accidents, and those that suffer a heat stroke. .

How to Protect Your Affiliate Earnings

Friday, September 30th, 2011

affiliate earnings How to Protect Your Affiliate Earnings

Affiliate marketing provides a lucrative source of income for many online marketers. And there are many who make a comfortable living forwarding leads and customers to affiliate merchants.

 

For website and blog publishers, this form of marketing is here to stay and its reach is growing day by day. However, as with everything related to money, there are freebooters who want to take unfair advantage of all the hard work that you have done in coming up with content and putting up affiliate links.

 

There are people that want to deprive you of your affiliate earnings and often times you won’t even be aware that this is happening. The net result is that not only will you lose income you will also not be able to correctly asses your affiliate marketing efforts. In the absence of sales or income as desired by you, you may incorrectly presume that the content you are placing or SEO that you are doing is not working. You may proceed to tweak an already optimized page.

 

A plain affiliate link is open to being replaced by affiliate links pointing to other websites. Often, an affiliate link does not inspire confidence in the visitor by virtue of being too long. If a person bypasses a perfectly normal affiliate link because he thinks that he is being spammed or that the link constitutes a security risk then you are losing a potential sale.

 

The solution is to use link cloaking techniques. The include simple HTML redirects that you put up yourself, free link cloaking online, WordPress plugins, and sophisticated cloaking software that you can purchase. The tools are easy to use and work by hiding your affiliate information and the destination address.

 

One big advantage of link cloaking is that your site will not give the impression of plugging a merchant’s product or service, unless you want it that way.

How Do I Calculate My Affiliate Marketing ROI

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

affiliate ROI 300x199 How Do I Calculate My Affiliate Marketing ROI

Affiliate marketing works just as any other business; you put in time and money to make more money. If you are aware of the aspects of affiliate marketing that need financial input then you can play around with the amount you invest so that you get the maximum return on investment or ROI.

ROI is a crucial parameter to monitor. You want greater returns on the amount you put in. And if you form the habit of tracking your ROI, you will be able to divert investments to those activities that are contributing most to your ROI. You will be able to target your audiences better.

In its simplest form affiliate marketing ROI can be represented thus –

ROI = (Gross profit – Investment) / Investment X 100

Here are the investment costs that a website owner into affiliate marketing may incur –

• Pay per click ads to drive traffic to his affiliate site
• Cost of hiring writers to create content
• Outsourcing SEO for website and optimizing landing page
• Website hosting cost
• Getting your own affiliate creative done – text, flash, banner, etc

The same formula works for an advertiser or business that chooses to run an affiliate marketing campaign that will be picked up by affiliate publishers.

In the case of a business the affiliate marketing investment expenses consist of –

• Joining an affiliate network or hosting your own affiliate program
• Preparing a creative inventory
• Appointing an affiliate manager
• Cost of generating product feeds

In the case of businesses that use affiliate marketing, it is not uncommon for the gross profit to be far greater than the investment resulting in a very healthy ROI.

How To Become A Super Pet Affiliate

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

logo with black paw to use  How To Become A Super Pet Affiliate

Affiliate marketing has become a popular way for people to generate an income by promoting other people’s products and services. Becoming a super pet affiliate is easier than you may think.

If you have a passion for animals and a website already dedicated to pets, whether it’s your blog or an actual website selling various pet products, you are part of the way to become a super pet affiliate.

Merchants offer their products to affiliates to promote on their behalf, this may be any product, but when it comes to pets, you may have pet sitting services, dog harnesses and flea control programs. All these items can be linked from your website and as soon as you have interested someone enough that they click the link and visit the merchant’s site, you are on your way to success.

Some merchants pay per visitor, while others pay per sale generated. Good SEO and copy writing knowledge will build your affiliate business and make you a super pet affiliate.

The key to success is finding the right niche market, this you can do by social media sites, your blog or your website. Writing good SEO blogs with links to the merchant site is a big draw card, you need to entice the customer and get them to want the product or service.

Always use the affiliate link in your email signature. This way you can generate interest every time you send an email.

Becoming a super pet affiliate is easy, never illegally distribute any materials and always offer an opt-out link when sending promotional emails. Spamming can not only ruin your reputation, but also the reputation of the merchant, so take special care when promoting via email.

Super pet affiliates always abide by the terms and conditions laid out by the affiliate network, this way they never go wrong and cannot be held liable for any damages to the merchant or affiliate network at any time.

Signing up is easy as one, two, three. You complete an online application form, where you are required to fill in all your information including your address and telephone number. The application form will probably ask you for your blog or website URL and some other relevant information, such as how do you intend promoting these affiliate products.

Once the form is completed you submit it and wait approximately two days for an answer. If you are accepted you are on your way to making money.

You can then start promoting merchant’s products and services on your site, depending on the pet products you believe in and trust. Don’t try and promote items you have no faith in, this will lower your enthusiasm about the product and make it harder for you to sell.

A super pet affiliate knows about wording to promote a product or service, if you have copy writing skills, then you are set to go. It may be advisable to hire someone with copy writing experience to write some information for your site relating to each product or service you are affiliated with.

Get the buyer on your site, interest them in the merchant’s product, get them to visit the merchant’s page and ideally buy the product and you are then a super pet affiliate.

Keep your Favorite Buddies Safe With These … HOWL-OWEEN SAFTEY TIPS

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

I was lucky enough to see a private screening of the is cute family movie and if you have kids, they will love this new movie

Spookie buddy and me 300x225  Keep your Favorite Buddies Safe With These … HOWL OWEEN SAFTEY TIPS

In their all new adventure, Spooky Buddies, everyone’s favorite talking puppies get into the spirit of the Halloween season! This spook-tacular holiday is perfect for every buddy in the family to dress up, visit neighbors and enjoy parties and treats. Follow these simple safety tips to make your Halloween adventures a howling success for you and your canine companions!

I. COSTUMES

Puppies:
Your pet may like getting dressed up with the rest of the family, but make sure their costume is safe.

• The outfit should not be too restrictive or tight.

• Have a “dress rehearsal” a few days before Halloween to make sure they can move about easily.

• Inspect the costume for loose or small parts that they could chew or swallow.

Kids:
• You may want to be as mysterious as possible with your costume, but make sure you aren’t trading mystery for safety.

• If wearing a mask is part of the costume, make sure your vision is not obstructed.

• Costumes shouldn’t be so long that you can trip over it, or so bulky that it’s hard to walk in.

• If your costume is made up of black or dark clothing, add some reflective tape to sleeves and shoes so you will be easily visible to others.

II. GREETING TRICK OR TREATERS

Puppies:
• If your dog likes to greet every doorbell ring with enthusiasm, work with them before Halloween night. Have several family members ring the doorbell several times in a row do your dog can get used to the noise.

• If your dog still seems to be getting over-excited and worn out greeting each trick-or-treater, put them in a quiet rooms with a few toys until the rush is over.

Kids:
Make sure an adult is nearby when answering the door to trick-or-treaters. Even if all the visitors are friendly, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by unfamiliar faces.

Have an adult open the door, then you can help hand out the treats.

III. TREATS

Puppies:
• Keep a supply of doggy treats on hand for your own pets and any four-legged trick-or-treaters who show up at your door.

• It’s important to know that chocolate and other candy treats can be harmful to our canine friends, so make sure they have their own doggie-treats and keep the human treats out of reach.

Kids:
Have an adult inspect your treat bag when you arrive home. If you receive any “homemade” treats from unfamiliar homes, you may want to discard those. Then, sift through all of your treats and divide them up into smaller snack bags so you can enjoy having a few treats each day. You’ll enjoy the fun even longer!

IV. TRICK-OR-TREATING

Puppies:
Don’t leave your dog outdoors alone while trick-or-treaters are out and about. A careless child (or adult) could forget to latch the gate when leaving your yard, giving the dog a chance to escape.

• Also, rambunctious trick-or-treaters may tease your dog as part of their play.

• If you are going to take your dog with you while you trick-or-treat, make sure they are on a leash and have current ID tags, just in case they become separated from you.

Kids:
• Likewise, although you don’t have to be on a leash, make sure you have an adult or older sibling with you on your trick-or-treat rounds.

• Be especially careful when crossing streets

• Stay with your group throughout the evening

V. HALLOWEEN PARTIES

Puppies:
• If you plan a Halloween party that includes dogs, have it during the day in your regular dog park (where all the dogs know each other) or in a big backyard, where there is room for them to run and play.

• Don’t leave a group of dog unattended for any reason. Make sure there is plenty of water and shade so they don’t get overheated.

Kids:
• Planning a costume party for your family and friends can be a fun way to celebrate Halloween.

• Plan your menu and decorations carefully – no open flames or sharp objects.

• Set the mood with fun music like, “Monster Mash,” and “Thriller” and be sure to have a dance contest along with a best-costume contest.

• Pair teenagers with younger children for activities such as scavenger hunts and pumpkin-carving contests.

Now that your ready for Halloween, give your whole family a special “treat” with a screening of Disney’s new movie, Spooky Buddies.

PS the photo is one of the stars from the movie, I just loved the photo shoot.

Favorite Female Cat Names of 2010

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Main coon kitten images  Favorite Female Cat Names of 2010

When looking back at 2010 and thinking of the most popular female cat names, you wonder where they originated from or what they mean. Maybe you’re wondering why your friend chose that name for her new pet and are taking the time to shock her into the meaning.

The top ten choices are similar for both dogs and cats and have held the top places for the past few years with many of them remaining firm favorites for 2011.

In first place is Sassy. Sassy is of French origin and means pretty girl. It’s a fantastic choice for any kitten. Being a common choice for 2010 it remains in the top list for 2011 as well.

Precious is in second place and means virtue with Latin origin. Precious is also common due to the fact that it is something we call an item or thing that we hold dear, which is the main reason so many female cats are called this.

Third place is Maggie, which is a common choice for both dogs and cats. This is of Greek origin and means Pearl.

Lily is in fourth place for 2010 and is also of Green origin. Lily is flower and is a common choice for kittens.

Fifth place goes to Lucy which means light and is of French origin, while Coco takes sixth place. Coco means coconut and is of Spanish decent, though many kittens are named Coco due to their dark coats and are related to the color of cocoa beans.

In seventh place is Cleo, a common choice for all types of pets. This is of Greek origin and means Glory of the father.

The most common name for cats, whether male or female is Whiskers, this name is of English origin and means exactly what it says, and it stands for the long hair on a cats face.

In ninth place is Callie. Callie means female ruler and is of Tentonic origin. A popular choice among feline owners, Callie is a firm favorite in 2011 as well.

Tenth place goes to Holly, which means exactly what it is. Holly is the holly bush that is so famous at Christmas time. It is of English origin and a great choice for any pet.

When choosing your new kitten’s name, why not take the time to get to know them first, figure out their nature and personality and then choose the right name for them? Doing this you can take the time to research your choices and find the relevant meanings. A very pretty kitten will benefit from the name Sassy, while a kitten that is demanding and trying to be the boss would benefit from Callie.

Whatever your choice is, remember your kitten has to have it for the rest of their lives and if other people know the meanings it can give the wrong impression of your beautiful pet. Knowing the meaning and naming accordingly can be a great way to choose the ideal name for your new cat.