February's been quite a productive month. I've launched DIY Covers with 2 other business partners and we've had our first sale just last week. I finally broke the $100 barrier on Text Link Ads thanks to a couple of link sales, and work on improving existing sites has been going well.nnTotal earnings this month was $230. Not quite as good as last month but we are 2 days short this month nnReal cash in the bank equals £317, over £200 came in this past month thanks to some payouts, so we've easily succeeded the £127 target and are now £63 up compared to last year (on average).

Last week I wrote about Promotion of a New Site and also mentioned how one of the best options is to offer an affiliate scheme to allow others to sell your products for you for a commission. Well, now this is even easier to do with the introduction of support for Affiliates over at Secure Delivery, the top digital product delivery service going.nnYou can now allow people to sign up as an affiliate to sell one or more of your products, allowing them to use a 'hop link' like clickbank where they can link to the product's sales page, or you can allow them to just grab the buy buttons and add them to their own site or sales page. This service will only be available to the paid accounts on Secure Delivery but for a limited period they're also available under the free accounts (1 product only) so anyone can give them a try and see how they go.nnFor more information or to sign up, visit Secure Delivery today

I've mentioned before about before the launch of a new site, what about once you've set the site live and are then looking for your first flurry of visitors? These days, first port of call is getting the site index in the search engines. Usually a link to the site from an already indexed site does the trick. If your site is quite complex then it may be a good idea to create an XML Sitemap and submit that to the search engines too. Don't forget your own visitors though. A standard sitemap is a must for any site that goes more than one link deep from the front page, or has more than about 10 pages.nnThe next step is social media. StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us are my two favourites. StumbleUpon will get you a fair bit of instant traffic (depending on the subject this can be maybe 100 visitors up to 1000), but it will also continue to send a few visitors every once in a while. Delicious can also work well if the right tags are used and all it takes is one bookmark to potentially get a few more visitors through as I've mentioned in the past. This is where you get cheeky and ask online contacts to help you out too. Providing you're happy to give the same help back when it's needed, then it doesn't cost anyone nnBlogging is a great method of marketing, especially if you have a reasonable amount of visitors and feed subscribers. Although make sure you're not pushing a new product or site to them too often, else you'll find your regular visitors will stop visiting so often. I recently used this method to announce the launch of DIY covers, my latest product selling site. In turn a couple of fellow bloggers have mentioned my post on their site which I'm indeed greatful for. Asking fellow bloggers for reviews or mentions of your new product is also a good way to get some traffic. If you offer a cut down version of the product in return, or a free version depending on its worth, and just ask for an honest review, then you can potentially get a lot of traffic and potential buyers from sources you would never get to otherwise. Some bloggers may require a fee for their time, or an incentive to do the review, such as an affiliate option (see further down).nnForums are also a great place to target, especially if you're already known within the 'community' and again, you don't mention a new product every other day. Some forums may get more reaction that others, again it depends on the type of product, the audience there, and if they are not the type to buy then perhaps what else they can do. On the forums that I regularly use, I posted about DIY Covers but also asked for stumbles off anyone who fancied it. A little additional exposure for free is great, again, be prepared to return the same favour one day.nnWe then have advertising. Paying for advertising can be risky business as you need to be sure you'll get your return on investment (ROI). A lot of the pay per click advertising options are usually quite good as you can control who the advert is shown to, targeting the right people, and you only pay per visitor. For my latest site I've used WordLinx, run by an acquaintance, where I've built up around 1000 visitors worth of credit. I cannot control who I target on this, if you upgrade you can control which continents you target, however for this product I didn't need that option. WordLinx is another way of getting a sudden rush of traffic, hopefully converting to a couple of sales or even a bookmark of the site for potential future sales. For a niche site, such as another product site I run which sells Tattoo flashes, this requires a lot more targeting than I can get on WordLinx, and this is where a PPC campaign with one of the search engines would be more suitable. Often, if you search around, you can find an offer of a free voucher which could equate to a few thousand visitors if you can work it out right.nnFinally, one of the best advertising methods a site can use is an affiliate system (in my opinion!). First off you're getting other people to advertise for you, for free. You only pay out if that affiliate makes a sale, a sale that you may not have got otherwise, so whilst you've had to pay out, you're still making some money, and some is better than nothing. There are plenty of affiliate services out there, or you can quite easily code this up yourself if you have the know-how. This is something I've not tried yet from a seller's point of view, but as an affiliate I know that this can be a great way of earning some easy cash.nnI've used a few of these methods on my latest business – DIY Covers so far, with a few more jobs to do for it. Response has been good and, well I've just had to up the bandwidth limit on the site, so visitors are quite high too!nnWhat other methods of promotion are there to try?

Update: You can now get access to a review pack which has one eBook action in for you to try before deciding to purchase the product. Yet after deciding what I was going to do examples of (that took the longest time!) I created an eBook graphic and a CD in the space of just a few minutes (watch the video tutorial too).nn

The 2D Layout

nn First off was my eBook (just to point out, it's only an example, I've not written one just yet!).nnFrom the initial template I changed the background colour of the spine and front cover, dug out an old stock photo, cropped and resized it and added it to the template, added in my text, added a little rectangle at the bottom (rectangle selection tool and the paint bucket for colouring), and then added the text for the spine and rotated it 90 degrees. Took about 5 minutes to put together and another 5 to choose a font! The thumbnail to the left shows the 2D version of the image when I'd finished. Pretty simple looking at present.nn

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The Final eBook

nn Then, after saving the flat version PSD, I ran the compile action, reflection action and finished the file off (this just crops off any additional white space), and that was all.nnThere are 4 eBook looks and you can use the same template with all of them, so you don't have to recreate your 2D eBook image every time. I recommend clicking the thumbnail on the left and seeing the final version to see just how good the final result actually is.nn

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CD Graphic

nn I thought I'd go for something less obvious for my second example, plus I wanted to see how it'd come out! I grabbed one of my own photos and pasted it onto the CD template, added in a bit of text (and played with the arching) and again, a quick compile and I've got an almost life-like look of a potential software CD.nnSelling products is a great way to make income along with giving you full control of the sales and marketing. Giving your products a graphical look gives people a better and more realistic impression of your product. It looks more real than just a link. Going from experience, I've sold more eBooks using a simple eBook graphic with the name and author on the front than without. So if you do sell any type of digital products, or perhaps are a designer or developer with a client that maybe sells software or digital products, then honestly this suite will save you time and effort.nnHowever, why not just watch one of the tutorials that come with the product, and you can see how simple and straightforward this product is – Video Tutorial – Creating an eCover.nnFor more information, and the main sales page then you can visit the site at DIY Covers. The price? Just $97 (GBP49) $67 (GBP34) as a special offer price to readers of this site (The link for this special offer is at the end of this post. Don't purchase via the main site else you'll be charged $97!). The offer is for a limited time and is accessible via the sales link below. Whilst we're on the subject of costs, we also have 300+ templates available for purchase as well, at just £7/$15 for the lot. Only available on purchase of the suite of actions, this bundle will give you plenty of professional looking templates to modify and then compile to suit your products, making your cover creation even simpler.nnYou can now request a copy of the review pack which contains one eBook action along with the tutorial files to give this product a try before purchasing. To request this review pack contact me and I'll send you a free download link for the pack. To buy this suite use the DIY Covers – Special Offer link. For further information, examples and screen shots of the suite in action, visit the website DIY Covers.nnPayments are taken via PayPal and product download is instant with Secure Delivery. There's a helpdesk available for any support required too. So what are you waiting for? nn

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• Purchase DIY Covers at $67

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• DIY Covers Official Site

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• Video Tutorial – Creating an eCover.

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AdSense slowly reclining? Affiliate percentages just not as good as they used to be? Then you need to move into an area where you are 100% in control, and that's products. Selling your own products means you can control how much they cost, how you promote them (many companies disallow you the option to use their names in your paid for promotion eg. PPC for fear of you taking their direct customers) and when you can offer discounts or freebies even. With traditional physical products you've got the overhead of creating each product, not to mention the postage costs too. The great thing with digital products is that once the first product is created there are no further costs (be it time or money) involved to create the second and third product. Plus if you use a decent product delivery system then need to check on payments and send out the product is dealt with for you, leaving you free to literally make money whilst you sleep (or go for a walk, bike ride, watch TV, knit, whatever takes your fancy!).nnMy largest single income has come from selling products. I can earn more from a single product sale than about half a month worth of AdSense. Of course, if I worked on my promotion skills I'd be earning a bit more than I currently do, but that's more down to procrastination than anything! However, the cheapest way to offer your own product(s) for sale is to create it yourself if you can. You can pay others to do the work for you, but you need to be very sure that you'll make your return back else you'll just end up out of pocket, and we're not in this game to lose money nnSo what product should you create? Well what can you do? Knowledge on a particular subject or two means you can create a site based on that subject, write your own eBook with some indepth information and offer it for sale, plus give a few freebie articles to draw people in to the site. One option I once thought about was setting up a site to help young kids learn how easy Mathematics really was (enjoy maths helps here!). I do a great deal of calculations in my head, always have done, and they're pretty simple to me, but I've seen younger cousins and children struggling with very simple sums, and I remember kids at school of the same age as me struggling to grasp and understand things. I never set this up, but it just goes to show how someone, who is rubbish at writing eBooks say, could still find something to create with their knowledge. Of course, products for this could be creating and selling guides, or offer a subscription service, perhaps give one free example for each age level but then charge for full access. The options are there, you just need to take them and run with it.nnAnother option I've recently been seeing more and more are from people asking for specific scripts or plugins for use on their own or their client's site. People say 'don't reinvent the wheel' when it comes to creating say a photo gallery, but when you've got overbloated, often unsecure scripts available, which don't fully do they want, then why not create a simpler solution and sell it? Some clients appreciate that custom code comes at a price, others don't. Creating scripts and solutions is an ideal product idea for programmers who don't want to go the eBook route, and maybe can't create windows software (which is another good seller). Most people appreciate that free isn't always the best option, and a product sold for a small but decent amount, several times over, can be a nice little earner. You've got the ability to allow people to pay an upgrade subscription, or maybe just offer it for free. Perhaps a modular piece of software where you can let people start with the barebones and add the extras they want so that there's no bloat there, just what they need.nnThink about it though. Once your product is created you shouldn't need to spend much time on it, a little tidy up once in a while but nothing major, and that product can go on selling and selling, whilst you're sitting on the beach somewhere