The jury is out. But one question I have for ya’ll is this: what group makes up the center of the market for the iPad?

4 Tips For Laser-Targeting Search Conversions
An argument that with Affiliate marketing not all search is created equal. Instead, you have to match your offerings to exactly fit what the searcher wants.

SEO Quality Indicators & The Heap Paradox
An argument that to create a quality site you need to add up lots and lots of quality indicators.

5 Reasons Why Design Matters To SEO
Explanation of why design is more important to search rankings than ever.

On thing to keep in mind is to be careful about how you phrase things. A word could spell the difference between a sale and a customer who got away. For example, drum up the utilitarian aspect of the products you sell rather than trying to sell them as luxury items, which may stir up guilty feelings. Since people are trying to be mindful about their finances, they might be more likely to purchase things that, in their perception, are practical.

Offering discounts is always a good way to attract buyers, if you can afford them. If you do, don’t forget to mention the original price and highlight the difference. The potential buyer will be happier to know how much he or she will save. Everybody loves a bargain.

If giving out discounts is out of the question, try rephrasing the payment terms. Break something like “$30/month” to “only $1 a day!” This way, the cost will seem a little more reasonable, and a tad less painful for their pockets. These are only a few simple ideas but I’m sure you’ve got your own. What strategies have helped you out so far? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Being able to market to yourself and like-minded people in niches is more valuable than most people think.  Most offline businesses spend a lot on market research to find their consumers’ specific tastes.  When considering niche blogging, there is a large enough audience online that there is a profitable market based on your ownself.  Getting them to listen or find you may be difficult, but when trying to understand your market’s desires and tastes, all you need to do is look within.  Ask yourself what you’d like to read about within a niche such as travel, music, or under water basket weaving, and then just take action.

This ability to ‘just market to yourself’  online is  why blogging as a business for driven individuals is easy, cheap, and profitable. If you understand your own tastes and desires, you understand thousands of others’ tastes. So choose a topic, self reflect, and ACT.

(If you want to find out the things you like according to ‘big business’ and academia, take the VALS interest survey as Marketing classes praise and pay $50 for a report on what you like).  I think my point has been made.

• The Psychology of a Linkbait
• The Stoic Approach to Successful Online Publishing
• 3 Easy Tips For Improving Your StumbleUpon Account

- The general rule is that shorter subject headers (less than 35 characters) produced better results (click rates), but that it can also vary with your target audience. Some degree of experimentation may be needed to determine what’s most effective for you.

- The best days to send emails are Sundays and Mondays. This is probably due to people wanting to check their email to get ready for the workweek ahead.

- Open rate is at 13.2%. About 75% of people open their emails within the first 24 hours upon receipt, while a third open theirs within just 2 hours.

- Meanwhile, click rate (percentage of those who click links embedded in the email) is at 2.73%, which is down a bit from the last six months.

- Higher click rates can be had with personalization of messages.

- Emails with few recipients tend to get higher open and click rates. This may be because of better targetting and content relevance.

For more on the detailed report, click here.

My friend David Peralty has done a great analysis of how to get outside of yourself and instead write for the common person.

David had written a linkbait article over at College Crunch called 15 Hottest Cars to Drive to School. The article got a lot of criticism for featuring cars that were to expensive. Since many people in the social media crowd tend to take populist attitudes, and since the cars in his article were mostly too expensive for the average college student, the article just didn’t take.

David learned that the key to writing a strong article is to think like a common person. Many of the criticisms of his article could have been predicted if he had considered the populist attitude of his target audience.

The fact is that no matter what kind of marketing you are doing, you need to know the psychology of your target audience inside and out. You need to know what pushes their buttons in both a positive and negative direction. Obviously, you want to avoid the negative and focus on the positive.

Marketing only works when you stir the emotions in a positive way. Here’s how I like to think about it: you should only market something if you think you can get people excited enough about the product or service so that they are likely to tell their friends and/or family members.

1. Pay attention to human psychology

The single most important thing you can do is reverse engineer the thoughts and interests of your target audience. Learn to do this until it becomes second-nature… a science. Give your audience what it wants and they will pay you back.

2. Target key distribution points

Stop for a moment. If you are like most people, you’ll probably notice that your feet are stuck in mud and you’ve been running in place. Like a tire spinning, but going nowhere. The biggest mistake that online marketers make is to exhaustively promote all of their content in social media. You need a paradigm shift, and here it is: Let information roll down-hill. Identify a set of key distribution points, network upward and let the natural dynamics of online social groups do the work for you.

3. Diversify your distribution points

I got fed up relying on digg and reddit for all my online marketing. So what did I do? I sure as hell didn’t give up. I started doing research. I came up with a list of about 30 sites online that can collectively send much more traffic than digg or reddit. So now, when I fail at a digg campaign, I’m not depressed. I have a backup plan. I still prefer digg because it gives me access to some of the major players and key distribution points. But I can succeed without Digg, and that feels good.

4. Become friends with people in high places

I’ve called it networking upward in the past. But really, I can’t overemphasize the importance of knowing people who yield power online. Marketing is smooth as butter when you have “ins” with the right people. And the further up you climb the ladder, the easier the job is.

5. Don’t give up, adapt

Online marketing changes daily. Focus on the fundamentals. The goal is to get the natural dynamics of the web to work for you. Human beings will always be human beings. We will always form social groups with leaders that we look up to. We will always have needs, wants and desires. The genius marketer keeps it simple by focusing on these fundamental facts and leveraging them into success.

The one thing that Dee offers that most others on the net don’t offer is reliable and quality work. I’ve used him almost exclusively for the past 6 months, and while I’m a bit jealous that others will now get the chance, I can’t help but recommend him.

All the Internet professionals know that the big money online is in premium affiliate marketing. Basically, the idea is that you create an authority site in a profitable niche that differentiates itself with a “hook” – and then you sell other people’s products.

If you’re interested in going down the affiliate rabbit hole, and making tons of cash, then I suggest you start with the interview from affiliate expert, SEO guru (and my friend) Sugarrae.