If you've got a web site, you can make money with Amazon.

When Amazon.com started out, books were their main focus. The appeal was you could find pretty much any book in the world through Amazon. It was a good deal. So good, in fact, that Amazon decided to branch out. They started to offer other, non-book items. Amazon was trustworthy, careful, and professional; business continued to be great. So they kept branching out farther and farther, until they became the powerhouse we know them as today. You can order nearly any product online through Amazon.com.

"Well, that's great," you might think. "I can do the same with eBay." True. And eBay is often the place to find that super rare item that Amazon just doesn't carry. But the difference between Amazon and eBay is trust.

When you buy through Amazon, you buy through a company that has proven it will uphold its end of the bargain. When you buy through eBay, you're often buying from a new seller each time. Many transactions on eBay are person-to-person. So there's no corporate history of good business there. All you know is how the seller treated their previous customers, and maybe how they handled a previous transaction with you. There's a big difference between eBay and Amazon.

Many people feel much safer dealing with Amazon. Personally, if something I want to order is on Amazon, I don't have to worry about eBay. The great thing about Amazon is that the prices are usually better than you'd find in stores. There's a decent discount that you'll find on most products that is highly appealing. And most orders over $25 can be shipped free.

So Amazon is great. How can you make money with them? By becoming an affiliate.

Lots of sites out there like to have ordinary people like us push their products to others. "Hey, Joe, why not buy through these guys?" Joe takes your advice, and you get a referral commission. You get a percentage of a sale that you made happen. Being an affiliate marketer (selling other people's products) can be a great way to make money online. You don't handle the goods, you simply deal in ideas. It's your job to make your product sound so great that your visitors just can't stand not buying it.

What really helps smooth things over with a potential buyer is when they can trust the company you're recommending. You can sell them on the best product in the world, but if they don't have faith in the seller, you won't get a commission. That's what is so good about Amazon. They've already proven to most people that they can be trusted.

The basic Amazon Affiliate process is this: You sign up, get approved, and then gain access to a part of Amazon where you can create links and widgets advertising Amazon products. You put those links and widgets on your web site. If someone clicks one of your links or widgets, they'll be taken to the Amazon site through your referral link. That creates a 24 hour window. If within that window the customer buys an item, you will receive a 4% referral fee. That means that if they purchase a $100 item, you'll be credited with $4. Once a purchase is made, the 24 hour window closes. If the customer adds an item to their shopping cart, but doesn't buy it, you'll still receive the referral fee once they buy it, as long as it happens within 90 days. If the customer goes through your link to Amazon, leaves, and then clicks on someone else's referral link, your 24 hour window will close.

You can earn a higher % referral fee (up to 8.5%) if you refer lots of customers to buy. There are other products you can earn even higher percentages on. Right now referring Kindle products (the Kindle is Amazon's new $399 ebook reader) will earn you 10%. Amazonmp3's will get you 20%.

So, let's go through the signup process.

Go to Amazon.com, and scroll down to the bottom of the screen. You should see this:

Click the Join Associates link.

Click the Click Here link.

You can use the same email and password for your customer account with Amazon, or you can create a separate account specifically for your use as an Associate. Assuming you already have a customer account, and will be using it for Associate purposes to, you'll be brought to the following page.

Fill in all the information, agree to the terms, click continue, and you should see this:

"You can start making money today by adding links to your Web site or creating an aStore now! You choose the links you want, we create the HTML for you, and you paste the HTML into your site."

Once you've got access, you can begin to familiarize yourself with all the different options for creating referral links. There are simple, classic links, and some newer flashier ones. My advice would be to try each one. You may find that some fit the theme of your site better than others. Most of the widgets are highly customizable. Blending (making new links, widgets, etc. look like they belong) is usually a good idea.

Be sure not to post anything like, "Sponsored by Amazon" on your web site. I once read about a site that did that. A visitor emailed Amazon complaining about that site. They were shocked that Amazon would sponser them, because they didn't feel the content featured there was morally upright. Technically, no site is sponsored by Amazon just because it uses their affiliate links. Amazon decided to sever their agreement with that site. No more referral commissions for them. Don't make the same mistake.

The trick to make the most money is once you've got your affiliate links all set up, drive as much traffic to your site as possible. The more people who encounter your links, the more who will click, and the more who will buy.

Good luck, and happy Amazonian trails.

Alexa is a company that tries to accurately measure web traffic to as many sites as possible. Their method is to watch user activity on browsers with the Alexa toolbar installed. So if someone visits your site without using the toolbar, Alexa doesn't know about it. But if someone else shows up, and they are using Alexa, your site will benefit. Here's how:

All websites start out with a crazy rank in the millions. A while ago it was around 5, now its closer to 10, and probably even higher. So if your site is brand new, it might rank at 11,000,000. That's the bottom tier, but it's better than "No Rank," which will happen if Alexa isn't aware of your site yet. What we want to do is improve our Alexa rank, because sites that rank higher are considered better, and more valuable in the eyes of potential advertisers.

There has been a great deal of debate about Alexa. Most people used to not care about the ranking system. It didn't really matter. Once advertisers started using it to judge sites, things changed, and many people began to complain because they believe your Alexa rank can be gamed. It is thought by some that there are definite ways to improve your rank. And that is true. One way is to download the toolbar. Another is to run a site geared toward webmasters.

On an episode of, "Family Guy," TV executives at a board meeting were discussing a recent problem on their network. Many people had phoned in to voice their protest. One executive summed things up: "We have received 20 phone calls from offended viewers. As you all know, each phone call represents a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended!"

The issue with Alexa is it works in a similar way. Since Alexa only knows how many toolbar users visit your site, they use that number to guess how many total visitors your site has. That's right, guess. Can you see where this could be a problem?

If you ran a site that specifically catered to webmasters, many of your visitors, maybe even the widespread majority, would probably already be running the toolbar. So Alexa says, "Your site got 20 toolbar visits, so let's do a little math, and… OK, you must have received 20 billion total visits! Congratulations, and welcome to the top tier! Enjoy your flashy high rank."

What if you don't run a site for webmasters? Doesn't this tip the playing field against you? Absolutely. The system is flawed. But Alexa has acknowledged that the ranks aren't that accurate until you reach the top: "Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes."

So how can you improve your Alexa rank in an honest way? By installing the Alexa toolbar on the browser you most use to visit your own web site(s). The toolbar could be considered a scorekeeper for the net. On your browser, it pays careful attention to the sites you visit, and essentially gives each site a vote on your behalf. So if you spend a lot of time tweaking your own sites, it will make sure to give them votes, too. But Alexa makes it clear that to keep things fair, a site will only get one vote per IP address per day.

People have learned that this tends to add up over time. If you consistently visit your site(s) with the Alexa toolbar, you'll likely see results.

However, some have also noted that the higher your Alexa rank is already, the less noticeable a change like this will be. If your rank is still in the millions, then you should probably see some improvement. However, if you're already in the hundreds of thousands, you might not get as big a benefit (if any). But my guess is that if you're doing that well, you've probably already got the toolbar installed!

People have tried to come up with other tricks to improve their Alexa ranks, but some are considered underhanded and risky. There have been stories about companies being banned from Alexa for trying to game the system. I view installing the toolbar so it can see your web site to be upright and honorable because it's a simple, non-deceptive one-step procedure, and because Alexa encourages people to download the toolbar.

I'd say the best time would be as early as possible, once you've already begun the day. What I've found that seems to be true for me is I write my best stuff earlier in the day. When it gets late, I'm less focused, and a little tired. This is when I like to shift my focus to tweaking things or reading other people's posts.

However, you might find that you are just the opposite. There are people who are more creative at night, and write new material then. The next morning or afternoon, they proofread what they wrote and clean it up.

I enjoy not having to stay on one thing for too long late at night, which is why at that point I prefer surfing and learning new things, rather than outputting more material. I feel better and more productive when I work that way.

And I've learned that if I start to write as soon as I sit down at the computer, the ideas just pour out, vibrant and clear. It's a good feeling.

I came across a post by Seth Godin, marking expert, called The 7% solution.

He presents the following problem: You're in business. Everyone else is lowering their prices. You must raise yours. What do you do to keep attracting customers, even with the highest prices around?

What could you do to make your blog or website worth visiting, even if you charge all your visitors a fee?

If you can answer that, you know how to achieve the edge online.

The problem Godin presents is a type of scenario that gets you thinking in a different way. When you solve it, you reveal answers to your own questions of, "How do I do better?" and "What should I do differently?" We often already know the answers to these questions, but it is difficult to find them within ourselves without phrasing things just right. Godin's way helps us do that.

Here's another question: If you knew you were going to die if your website didn't reach its goals this month, what would you do? How would you accomplish those goals if your life depended on it?

Sometimes we need to shift our perspective a little before solutions can jump out at us.

There are lots of other questions like these out there. I bet you can think of a few.

Saw this on Yahoo:

I see smiling people on top (Democrats), and non-smiling people beneath (Republicans). Sure, Obama isn't fully smiling, but he still looks happier than Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney.

I think Yahoo wants us to think more favorably of Democratic candidates than Republicans.

The search terms aren't amazing, but one of them brings up 8,520,000 results, and I'm on the front page, so I'm happy!

I found out when I checked Google Analytics today to see how Misinterpreted dot Org was doing. I thought, "I wonder what kinds of searches are bringing most people here?"

Among the top terms were:

aquafrequencies
watch me move with my juke
watch me juke
watch me move
watch me move like my juke
watch my juke
peter petrelli scrubs
has vista failed

All the juke stuff relates to a post I made a while back called, A Commercial I Hate: "Watch Me Move, Got My Juke!" Now that I think about it, my quote of the lyrics was wrong! More on that later…

So I thought I'd see what a search term like "watch me move" would bring up in the results. I thought maybe I'm somewhere on some random page.

Lo and behold, I'm on page one:

Watch Me Move

– #5 out of 8,520,000

Lets check all the variants.

Watch Me Juke

– #2 out of 656,000

Watch My Juke

– #3 out of 700,000

Watch Me Move With My Juke

– #1 out of 34,100

Watch Me Move Like My Juke

– #9 out of 20,000

Watch Me Like With My Juke

– #2 out of 57,300 (I had typed in the wrong query, but being #2 is awesome [unless you're Bono])

Watch Me Move Got My Juke

– #1 out of 193,000

I read this comment on YouTube under the Verizon Juke video commercial: "That is called "Juking" my friend…very hard, but fun to do…it's been big for over 30 years and in the Midwest, but its finaly made its way around…."

I guess to Juke is to dance? And listening to the song again, it sounds like, "Watch me move, like my Juke?" Like, "Watch me dance, like my moves?" So in that case, the title to my post is completely wrong! But I'm not changing it. Being on the front page of Google for those search terms is too much motivation to leave it as is.

Among the other search terms that were bringing me traffic were aquafrequencies, peter petrelli scrubs, and has vista failed. The Vista one didn't bring me up anywhere near #1, so I'll just cover the other two.

Aquafrequencies relates to another post I wrote called "The Power Of Water And Positive Thought" about the Aquafrequencies cure-all software system. How do I rank for that search term?

Aquafrequencies

– #6 and #7 out of 188

It's interesting that I'm listed on the front page, just a few results below the actual site for the program. But I guess since there are only 188 results for the term, that doesn't really mean as much as it might otherwise.

What about Peter Petrelli? I had written a post about his name being mentioned on Scrubs, When Worlds Collide: Peter Petrelli and Scrubs. And now:

Peter Petrelli Scrubs

– #1 out of 51,500

I had heard someone say on Scrubs that her fear of death forced her to ask Peter Petrelli to the sock hop in the 8th grade. Astounded, I searched and searched before finding that others on the net had noticed the same thing. At one point I mistakenly thought that there was only 1 other person who knew. Later I found out that others were also aware of the triviality (well, I thought it was cool). But now being #1 for the search term I had originally used — all I can say is wow.

So now I bet you're wondering, how did I pull off getting on the front page of Google for 9 different searches? Here's my 3 Point Solution to this conundrum:

Point 1: I wrote 3 separate posts, each of which used the key words in their titles.
Point 2: WordPress automatically added header tags and created SEO-friendly URLs.
Point 3: The ideas for each search are either rare or relatively new.

As I said, Peter Petrelli mentioned on Scrubs seemed at first to be rarely noticed, and therefore not too often mentioned online. Aquafrequencies only has 188 results because the program isn't that well-known. And the Verizon Juke commercial is fairly new.

I believe I was able to rank highly for all these terms because there isn't a major amount of competition (just yet). Plus, the terms don't send me a huge amount of traffic. If they did, you can bet there'd be other sites more proactive about ranking for them.

But still… I'm made the front page of Google, and not just for some Googlewhack!

For a long time, I've been seeing the same standard anonymous avatars for people listed in comments at sites like johnchow.com. These avatars come from places like MyBlogLog and Gravatar. You've probably noticed them too. These are the ones I've seen:

Today I saw this one:

That got me thinking that taking a standard anonymous avatar and tweaking it a bit could be funny. You get so used to seeing the same old ones that when one of them is different somehow, it jumps out at you. So I made a few:

Feel free to right-click and save for your own personal use!

I really like the backwards silhouette, because that's just subtle enough to evoke a "WTF?" I also like the inverted ones, especially the plain types, where the only change is the color inversion. It's like they represent someone from a negative universe. The upside down ones I think are funny too, because there seems to be some blasphemy there. And of course, the evil ones!

I've been noticing the idea of under promising and over delivering for a while, and it has definitely got my interest. My first concept of it was that when you're obligated to to something, promise to do a bare minimum job, well within expectations, but nothing exceptional. Or, if a favor is being asked, you don't need to make any promises. Then, in both cases, over deliver by going above and beyond the basic expectation you've created. Sounds fine. But there's another take on it.

I was searching for more information, and I came across an article at ezinearticles.com called, "We Got It Wrong: Never Under Promise and Over Deliver." This article goes into detail about how the trick can actually work against you. Essentially, when you continually sell yourself short to a repeat client, that client will begin to doubt you no matter what you say. He will learn that it pays to expect more than you say is possible, and will continually demand more of you to the point where you're no longer under promising. You tell him the truth, that you can honestly do only so much in a certain amount of time, but he'll still expect more — a better job, done faster. At a certain point he'll begin to expect the impossible, and you'll suffer the consequences.

But that article deals with a completely different take on under promising and over delivering. In my concept of it, you promise the basics. In the article, you take that basic expectation of yourself, and then give yourself an unnecessary buffer. So instead of saying, "The job can be done in 3-5 days," you'd basically lie and say, "5-7 days." This version of the trick is to always convince people that things will be more difficult than they actually are, and it's no wonder it can so easily backfire.

Here's an image I made comparing my concept of "under promise, over deliver" to the article's.

It's very interesting to see what happens with the exceptional job. If you under promise, you can work on over delivering an exceptional job all the while filled with glee at how surprised and impressed your boss, client, or friend will be. You can also feel good because you're doing a great job just for the sake of it. But when you are forced to do a great job each and every time, even when it seems unnecessary, it can become a difficult thing to enjoy. Once over delivering becomes a steady obligation, work can start to seem tough. You're never sure of where you stand, because no matter how impossibly good a job you do, you might be asked to do an even better one next time. That can be stressful.

However, I think that we shouldn't give up on under promising and over delivering just yet. The article ends up recommending over promising and then delivering on those promises, all the time. But I think the reason "under promise, over deliver" became so popular is that to over promise is to risk your credibility.

So here's how I see it. When a task is assigned to you at your job with a deadline, accept it, complete it on time, but on the day of delivery, have something extra to show for. Don't over deliver time wise, over deliver task wise.

If someone asks you for a favor, then you can under promise to your heart's content. "I might be able to, but don't get your hopes up." That frees you in case of sudden obligations, and if nothing else comes up, you can do them the favor, and over deliver by simply fulfilling their basic request. If you want, you could go overboard on the task and surprise them even more. And since there was no real obligation, they won't be justified in expecting you to honor every future request they make.

That's my take on it. I could be wrong. Do you have any suggestions or insight on this matter?

Since there are thousands of systems out there telling people how to make money online, there must be many thousands of people interested in doing it. I know I am! And as appealing as it sounds to earn a living online, losing momentum will occur from time to time. You hit a snag, a setback, a problem that just won't go away, and suddenly things seem bleak. How can you get back your mojo?

One thing I've found that helps me build enthusiasm is to think of the idea of success. What does success mean to you? What I usually imagine is a scenario in which I've got money coming in on autopilot from the net. And not just a trickle of cents from somewhere. I mean substantial income, enough that I don't really have to worry about financial security.

Money on autopilot!! Don't we all wish. But that wish can keep dreams alive.

Can you see how great achieving that would be? Imagine you've finally done it, you've finally set a system in place or built a website that is extremely easy to maintain, and is a guaranteed generator of revenue. You're making money while you eat breakfast, while you visit with friends, while you watch TV. You make money while you're sleeping! Awesome!!

Ideas like that keep me motivated. I believe there's actually a motivational concept behind that relating to "experiencing results in advance." You get to live your dream in your mind, which keeps you motivated to make that dream come true.

Part of what also appeals to me and motivates me about making money on the internet is the comparison with winning the lottery. The differences and similarities are really interesting. Both ideas pretty much entail financial freedom. If you can successfully make money online, you're pretty much set. If you win the lottery, you're golden! But the lottery is a finite prize. And in the end, the most you can do to ensure success in that area is to buy tickets and hope for the best. But the internet is different. You've got the power. Success is up to you. And if and when you do make it, the possibilities are limitless. You're not tied to a predetermined amount of winnings. If lighting strikes you online, you could potentially make billions. That may be remote, but only slightly more remote than winning the lottery, and a jackpot online is a thousand times greater.

So how do you stay motivated, even when things aren't working out? Think of all the potential wonders and benefits that will come of your success. Just the idea of financial freedom can be a huge motivation to keep working toward your goals.

Today I read a post John Chow wrote last month called, "There Is No Secret Formula." In it he writes how sometimes he get complaints from readers wanting him to stick to the subject of how to make money online. They feel that any diversion is pointless, and just want to know the secret to online success.

His response, as you can probably tell from the his post's title, is that there is no secret. There are programs, products, web sites, and tips and tricks galore all designed to fool people into thinking that if they just read, if they just watch, if they just buy, they'll learn the secret. But just like with achieving a breathtaking physique, making money online has no secrets. There's just common knowledge that most people seem to dislike.

However, I think there is another factor at work here. I think there really are secrets to getting fit, just like there are for making money online. What makes them so secret is that they're hiding in plain site. The knowledge is so apparently commonplace and straightforward that it is easily dismissed. People think, "It can't be that simple, can it?" and refuse to consider the true secrets to success. But now that we're no longer blind to the power of plain truths, we can benefit from them! So what did John Chow reveal?

Hiding in Plain Site Secret To Getting Fit:

"Eat less, workout more."

Hiding in Plain Site Secret To Making Money Online:

"Get traffic, optimize ads."

AHA!!! The Quickening empowers me! I know everything!! I am everything!!!

But wait… What are the secrets to getting traffic? What are the secrets to optimizing ads?

Well at least we've narrowed our focus. Traffic and ads, traffic and ads.