BEST Things to look for before Signing up with an Affiliate Program
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| BEST Things to look for before Signing up with an Affiliate Program |
Affiliate programs are a great opportunity of making money online. Affiliate marketing is so lucrative that you will find thousands of programs to choose from. With so many options available, choosing the best affiliate program for your business can sometimes take a bit of time and effort. In fact you may make a few mistakes before settling into the ultimate profit-generating affiliate partnership.
To find your suitable affiliate partner there are a few things you need to look for: -
The first thing to check out is the affiliate program's terms of service. For instance, if you intend to use Google Adwords but your potential affiliate partner does not allow Google Adwords for marketing, signing up will not prove fruitful. Thus, reading through the terms and conditions of prospective affiliates is a must. Steer clear of any affiliate programs which do not publicly post their terms of service.
Also ensure that the potential affiliate partner has clear payment specifications. These specifics will help you find out how much money you can earn and how often the payments will come in. You may receive a fixed amount for every sale generated or a certain percentage. For instance, if you are to receive 10% of the sale, and you generate a sale of $100, your earning will be of $10. If the product is good there will be several such sales and the earnings will accrue.
Before agreeing to promote your affiliate programs product, it is very important to check out how their website looks. The way a website looks plays a very important role in how well you can earn money promoting their products or services. For instance, you visit the website of a possible affiliate partner and find out that the website is crowded with several advertisements. Affiliate Programs will generate income for you only if a sale is made. If a potential customer follows the lead from your website to the affiliate programs only to click on one of the advertisements there, you make no money in the process.
The above are starter tips to help you set up a profitable affiliate partnership. Ensure that your affiliate program website caters to products and services that are similar to your line of business. Furthermore, do not have more than 2 affiliate programs at the same time. Place the banners at strategic locations and make sure they gel in with your website and do not stand out as advertisements. Also, concentrate on good content, good color schemes and keep the background uncluttered. All this well help your visitors locate the affiliate add easily, and if they find it interesting, they all click on it. If this visit gets converted into a sale, you earn cash. Its simple, yet complicated. Caution is the key word. If you observe the above mentioned guidelines, you are sure to find success and make fast money.
Having an Internet business that allows you to earn money on auto-pilot is a very exciting thing. Although it's thought to be easy to make a comfortable living with affiliate internet marketing, very few affiliates are truly successful in their businesses.
In this article you will discover how to avoid three fatal mistakes most affiliate marketers make. You will also find out how to target affiliate programs that earn you residual income, which is generally income that you receive month after month for work that you did only one time.
In affiliate marketing a Merchant agrees to pays the Affiliate a certain percentage of the sale price for products or services sold by the Affiliate. This is a win-win situation because the affiliate simply refers customers to a merchant-owned website and does not have to worry about fulfillment. The Merchant gets people to advertise for them and only has to pay them after they make a sale.
Here are three fatal mistakes most affiliate marketers make.:
1. They send their prospects directly to an affiliate website.
When you consider the time, energy and money invested in your business it doesn't make much sense to send people directly to a merchant website where you only have one chance to get the sale. If your prospect decides not to make a purchase yet, you'll likely lose that prospect forever. What you must do instead is send your prospects to a webpage where you can introduce them to the product or service your promoting as well as offer them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. This allows you to follow up them through an auto responder and have the opportunity to make multiple sales to the same customers.
2. Creating a website packed full of affiliate links, flashy banners and other distractions.
Overwhelming your website visitors with the above distractions will make them want to do one thing... leave. Instead, offer an honest review of a product or some other type of meaningful content. Pre-sell your readers on benefits and on how whatever your offering will help them.
3. Falling victim to commission theft.
Commission theft is a popular problem in affiliate internet marketing. While, you cannot eliminate it completely, there are some simple steps you can take to minimize it. Two methods you can use are cloaking and redirecting of affiliate links. Instead of having your affiliate link in the form: "www.merchantwebsite.com/?id=youraffiliateid"... You can easily set up redirects in your web hosting account that send your visitors to your affiliate link. Example: http://www.yourwebsite.com/affiliate_site
Fortunately, it takes the same amount of work to make a sale for a one-time purchase as it takes to make a sale for a residual payment type of product or service. This is why it makes good common sense to market affiliate programs with residual commission structures.
While shopping for residual payment affiliate programs you should consider the marketability of the services you are recommending.
For example, if you refer a sale for a membership website that only offers resale rights to products, and nothing else to keep the customer from canceling, people can join, download all of the products and then cancel their membership.
On the other hand, consider promoting and selling web hosting or auto responder services. These services are essential tools for your prospective customers business, and he or she is much less likely to cancel for quite some time.
In conclusion, you should always try to avoid common mistakes that affiliate marketers make by collecting your prospects email address, pre-selling them to the product's benefits, and by taking simple steps to avoiding affiliate commission theft.
In addition, you should be promoting and marketing affiliate programs with residual commission structures. Be sure to evaluate the stickiness of the product you are recommending. The best way to do that is to first become a customer yourself, use the product or service and pass on advice that will help your potential buyers.
The best course of action to take sometimes isn't clear until you've listed and considered your alternatives. The following paragraphs should help clue you in to what the experts think is significant.
What are these three tactics?
1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.
Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.
You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.
See how much you can learn about Affiliate Marketing when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don't miss out on the rest of this great information.
2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.
Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.
Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word “free” because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.
3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.
Hopefully the sections above have contributed to your understanding of Affiliate Marketing. Share your new understanding about Affiliate Marketing with others. They'll thank you for it.
Affiliate programs have become more popular nowadays, especially for sales people who want to make money easily and quickly. However, before you choose any affiliate program, make sure that you have answered all questions relating to a good affiliate program. Here are some questions you may ask:
1. Does the affiliate program offer high commission rates for products?
I know it is a tough question to answer. How much is high? Normally, commissions of 25%-30% of the product price are expected of a good affiliate program. You can have a look at this site for reference:
http://www.audio4fun.com/affiliate.htm
2. How much traffic does the vendor get to his site?
Before signing up to any affiliate program, remember to do some research on the vendor’s site, especially the site’s traffic. Alexa.com may be helpful in doing this research. If the site is ranked in the top 100,000 the merchant gets good daily traffic to his site. If the site is ranked below 500,000 it is not worth bothering. You should find another one. So remember to do the research before you want to invest anything.
3. Does the merchant use any tracking system?
All good affiliate programs provide excellent tracking systems. This system allows you to track visitors by using cookies, so that you can get accredited with sales that originate from your site. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer they last, the better chances are of getting paid.
4. Is the payment safe?
Be sure that you can get commission payment easily and safely, otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time and effort. A perfect affiliate program has a secure payment system so that you can check your balance any time or be informed shortly when you receive any credit. Moreover, you should ask about the payment time because different affiliate programs have various payment times. Some pay monthly, some quarterly. It is also vital to know the minimum balance you need to earn in order to get paid.
5. Does the affiliate program have any tool to help affiliates sell more?
A standard database with all kind of reports from sales to payment and other tools like ads, banners.. are very vital for affiliate management. Make sure that you can control all the sales, keep track of them and make good decisions. Moreover, the support system must be really good to help you solve some urgent situations you may encounter.
6. Does the affiliate program offer affiliate referral program or two tier affiliate program?
It means that you can get additional commission if you can recruit more affiliates into the affiliate program. The more they sell, the more referral commission you may get. Therefore, recruit as many affiliates for you as possible.
Conclusion:
Finding a good affiliate program is a tough work. The best advice for you is to do your own research, using these abovementioned questions as a guide that will lead you to the right merchant, to reach your financial goal. If you find one, tell me.
In this article I give advice about ways in which you can increase the amount you earn from Google adsense. I run adsense on a number of my sites and it is proving to be a very good form of second income. Many other people are now putting the code onto their own sites which can help them to pay for hosting and domain renewal costs.
Should you run adsense on your website?
In my opinion there are many positive reasons to have these google ads on your website but there are also reasons why you may not want them on there. On the positive side you are of course likely to earn money when people click on one of the ads, this can be a useful income, however unless you have either a high traffic site or a large number of sites, you are unlikely to get rich from it.
On the negative side when people click on one of the ads it is actually taking away that visitor from your site. If you are offering a service it therefore probably is not worth signing up for adsense for that site. If the site is purely for information purposes I would say that it is worth adding the code.
How to increase your adsense earnings
There are many ways in which you can blend the adverts into your website by choosing a particular colour for the ads as an example. Placement of the ads is also quite important and there is information on the Google site which advises where to put the adverts for maximum impact.
I believe the best way to increase your earnings however is to get more traffic to the website. There are many ways of doing this:
Google adwords
You can create an advertising campaign using google adwords. You could opt to pay near enough the minimum fee per click and this will keep the costs down. People will then visit your site and hopefully click on one of the other ads, therefore making you money.
This can work very well for certain subjects, but not so well for others. It is a matter of trial and error, I always run the adwords for around a month and then evaluate if it is worth carrying on after that point.
It is obviously important that we do not spend more on our own advertising, than we are likely to earn.
Purchase a text link ad
This is becoming more and more popular as one way backward links are becoming ever more powerful in the eyes of the search engines. These type of links are however quite hard to come by.
By purchasing a text link advert you are likely to have an increase in web traffic from two avenues. Firstly from the advert itself and also from the page rank value of the backward link.
At articles-submission.com you are able to purchase nine of these permanent backward links for only £50, which includes a link on a page rank five page.
Writing articles
Writing articles can also help you to obtain more visitors to your site. The people who read the article are potential visitors, you also obtain a one way backward link from the article directory which you submit the article to, and other webmasters may also include the article on their own site, thus creating another one way backward link. These backward links help to increase your overall page rank. The higher the page rank, the more traffic you should receive.
Link exchange
Exchanging links with other websites which are hopefully in the same business sector as your own, also has value. These links are not as powerful as the one way links mentioned above but are still worth seeking.
You can e-mail or phone other webmasters to ask if they would be happy to swap links with your site.
Build a site network
If you have the time and available funds you could also consider building a network of sites, all on the same theme. Each of the sites in the network would have a link pointing to the main site. They could also have adsense on the sites thus increasing your earnings in a two-fold manner.
I hope this article helps you in your quest to increase your adsense earnings.
There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true, however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and proceed to the business site to buy the products. No click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.
You can actually generate a full-time income by means of affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check your site and update it and to watch over the development of your marketing program. Does this sound so easy?
It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program.
What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software or program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors of your site and by other customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline. This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.
Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those who opened your email clicked through the business site and purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and many other pertinent facts and figures you need.
Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth continuing. This would also help you determine which of your marketing strategies is most effective and which is most beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.
Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts. That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn big in an instant.
If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again, keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure. If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track towards success!
Current info about Affiliate Marketer is not always the easiest thing to locate. Fortunately, this report includes the latest Affiliate Marketer info available.
What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.
Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.
Important Tool #1: Your Own Website
The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.
Important Tool #2: Incentives
Most of this information comes straight from the Affiliate Marketer pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you'll know what they know.
Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.
Important Tool #3: Link Popularity
The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.
One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website's link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.
These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.
Those who only know one or two facts about Affiliate Marketer can be confused by misleading information. The best way to help those who are misled is to gently correct them with the truths you're learning here.
http://www.internet-marketing-ez.com/
To know why Adsense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works.
The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.
The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.
The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.
The second reason is the ability of the Adsense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.
The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.
With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.
The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.
There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator. In those days, the content were the most important factors that is taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.
Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.
When beginning a relationship with a client I am always asked: “What affiliate tracking programs do you recommend?”
It’s a little like asking what car do you like to drive: “Ah the good old days before kids… when I could put the top down on my Porsche and I would go blasting around town…”
But I’m not dreaming and clients need succinct and thoughtful answers that show that I understand the market and I understand their needs and that I can recommend a solution that fits their retail product line and expectations for a return on investment (ROI).
As an affiliate program manger for 7 years, I have a substantial amount of experience with virtually every major affiliate program marketing, management and tracking technology. Basically I have found that I am recommending the same solutions over and over again.
So to streamline the decision making process I created a pricing specification sheet for my client’s use, as follows:
Affiliate Technology Options*
Commission Junction*
• $2,250 setup fee
• $3,000 prepaid commission
• Monthly: 30% of affiliate payout or $500 whichever is greater
• Market to 1.5M affiliates
ShareASale*
• $350 setup fee
• $100 prepaid commission
• Monthly: 20% of the affiliate payout or $25 whichever is greater
• Market to 200,000 affiliates
DirectTrack*
• $995 setup fee
• $100 a month for bandwidth
• No commission payout to DirectTrack
• No affiliate marketing provided
AvantLink (New)*
• Datafeed conversion to search engine friendly RSS feed which affiliates can customize- very smart technology and great customer and affiliate support
• $500 setup fee
• $500 escrow commission
• Monthly: 3% commission
• Market to 500 high value affiliates
From this point in the discussion I tell the client: “Affiliate programs are marathons not sprints. Plan for the long-term, learn in the short term.” If they are receptive to this approach then I know I can bring them a solution that matches their goals.
* These pricing models are representative of the current prices at the time this article was written and are subject to change at any time by the affiliate tracking companies with no notice.
Looking to start a home based business online for some extra $Cash$ and are looking for ideas on How-To get started as quickly as possible with as little or NO start up costs?
Well... let me share with you my idea on how 'Anyone' can get started online within the next 24 hours without a website or product of their own.
Are you ready?
The quickest way 'Anyone' can get started online is by becoming an - Affiliate Marketer.
What is a Affiliate Marketer you ask? The answers simple. You simply market others peoples products for a cut(usually between 30-70% commission on every sale made by you).
That's as easy as a definition gets, so I hope you get the picture.
Now that you understand what the quickest way to get started online is its now time for me to explain to you the "TOP 5 Reasons WHY" this is the answer.
Reason #1. NO Domain Costs.
The beautiful thing about being an affiliate is they supply you with a unique Domain with your affiliate ID for you to promote. Though some affiliate domains are quite ugly, the fact remains that you don't have to worry about paying to register any domains to get started with your promotions.
There are advanced affiliate marketing techniques using domains but I won't get into that here.
Reason #2. NO Hosting Costs.
By being an affiliate you don't have to worry about web hosting because once you sign up as an affiliate you get your own unique URL which simply redirects your potential customer to the main affiliate website.
Again there are advanced affiliate marketing techniques that require hosting but that's a whole other article in itself.
Reason #3. NO Product to worry about creating.
Once again the advantage to being an affiliate is that you don't have to worry about creating your own product. That's why you became an affiliate in the first place.
Reason #4. NO Website or Salesletter to create.
Creating a profitable Website and Salesletter can be quite the costly task especially when it comes to your salesletter.
By being a affiliate you can choose a good converting affiliate product and not have to worry about all the Trial and Error and testing involved when setting up a direct response website.
Reason #5. NO Refunds to deal with.
This again is another benefit to being an affiliate and that is you don't have to worry about dealing with any refunds from customers who are unhappy with their purchase.
The less headaches you have to worry about the better.
Well, that's it. Those are my "TOP 5 Reasons WHY".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't start your own website, I'm simply sharing with you the quickest way to get started online.
You definitely will want to set up your own website once you feel comfortable with what you want to do online as your own business.
Affiliate marketing is just a EASY way to get in the game and see how things are done online.
If you really want to see how the affiliate marketing Pro's do it online then I have a special Free report I'd like you to have that will show you a simple '7 Step Formula' for getting started.
http://www.internetwondersezine.com/7-step-formula.html
(Right click this link and select 'Save Target As' to download)
Well, I truly hope you see the benefits to being an affiliate marketer and see my point as to WHY getting started online as an affiliate marketer is the most cost effective and cautious way to start your online home based business.
1. Join Google Adsense. I recommend that you start with Google Adsense. This the simplest and most popular affiliate program on the web. This is a pay-per-click affiliate program and the Google ads are related to the content of your site. You may also place Google web and site search button and earn money when your visitor uses it. I advise you to put Google Adsense link prominently in all of your web pages.
2. Join 2-Tier Affiliate Programs. These are programs that allow you to recruit an army of sub-affiliates and receive a commission from their revenues. Check our site.
3. Join affiliate programs offering lifetime commissions. These programs give commissions for life for revenues or reorders from the same customer or sub-affiliate. This kind of commission is also known as residual income.
4. Join affiliate networks. These are the networks that have a wide variety of choices of products or services from various companies, to sell or promote. Each affiliate network offers several affiliate programs from several companies including those world's famous brands and products. It monitors all your earned commissions from various programs and pays you in only one check on a scheduled payment date. That's very convenient! Check our site.
5. Join affiliate programs that offer high-commissions. These are the programs that are giving commissions from 30% to more than 80% of the sales. Why waste your time selling others' products that will only give a penny?
6. Optimize your website. You have to optimize your site to make it search engine friendly and attractive to your targeted audience. Put quality and creative contents to your pages. Choose keywords related to what your site is all about. Minimize graphics to make your pages load faster. Make your page design consistent in all pages. Don't forget to place your navigational menu in the most convenient section of your page.
7. Promote your site. To promote your affiliate products, you have to make your site popular. To make your site popular, you have to promote it by submitting your sites to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, DMOZ and other search engines and directories. Exchange links with popular related sites. Write articles and submit to article directories. Join popular forums that will allow you to place your website link in signature area.
With over 12,000 affiliates to manage in 5 separate merchants programs, I review countless affiliate applications and their corresponding websites.
It isn’t a pretty picture. And that’s part of the problem.
So I thought it appropriate to share the 10 most common mistakes I see affiliates make over and over each and every day.
1. The affiliate’s website is poorly designed. A lot of times it’s just plain ugly. Ugly I can stand if it has a purpose. I started my Internet career doing web design and programming. I understand good website design, both for function and look. The affiliate site has to have at least one or the other to be effective, having both is the best. Without one or both of these factors, what are the chances for a visitor to be referred to my merchant’s site?
2. The affiliate site has no affinity to the merchant site. If you have a website without anything in common with the merchant, how do you expect to sell the merchant’s products to your visitor? If your site is all about computer equipment, why are you signing up for my wigs site? Why are you wasting both of our times?
3. The affiliate site has no voice or character. How will a visitor find value on the affiliate’s site long enough to have reason or need to clickthrough on my merchant’s text or banner link? None I would say.
4. The affiliate site has too many banners or text ads. How will the visitor differentiate my offer from the competition? If the site is messy and busy, I may get lots of impressions, but clickthroughs will be low and probably conversions too. Don’t junk up your site with too many ads that don’t have purpose.
5. Affiliate sites with expired coupons. Seeing a site like this implies it’s a “weekender’s” site a part-time affair. Many affiliates started out this way, but today it is highly unlikely that such a site will generate any traffic or sales for my merchants.
6. Affiliate sites with broken banners. It still happens, merchants change their creatives, affiliates don’t keep up and there is an ugly red “x” where a banner should be. Don’t let this happen to you.
7. The affiliate site has no privacy policy. This is a red light for visitors. This means the site is just trying to make a buck and has no interest in visitors for any other reason than getting them to make them money. A sophisticated consumer, as most are getting as Internet experience increases, wants a sophisticated site to convert through. Not having even a simple privacy policy is a giveaway as to the lack of sophistication of the site owner.
8. NO ABILITY TO CONTACT THE WEBSITE OWNER. If you will not disclose who you are, provide an email link or a site form, it is unlikely a visitor to your site will get warm and fuzzy about his site visiting experience and will not covert as a result.
9. NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR THE AFFILIATE MANAGER. In olden days affiliates didn’t want to be bothered by affiliate managers. Now with the tools and special offers merchants can offer through producing affiliates, it is essential for good communications between the affiliate manager and the affiliate. It means more money for both.
10. Affiliate website owner not participating in the industry forums. More and more as I talk with affiliates, we discuss forum postings, industry news and blogs. The top producers know what is going on in the industry. They are creating the news and are creating financial opportunities at the same time.
Out of the hundreds of affiliate programs out there it is imperative to your success to choose the one that will best suit your needs, discipline and goals. There are many to choose from so the real key is which one works, has a proven track record, pays on time and will give you the best chance of achieving your goals. Many of the more popular phrases requested from popular search engines are affiliate program top affiliate program, best affiliate program, free affiliate program, affiliate program etc. These are just a few of the hundreds of similar phrases searched daily. Many people have seen either the ads or know someone who has created a nice residual income, which in turn has improved there life style. Everyone wants to live the American Dream, but seldom few ever take the necessary steps to do so. As a Work at Home web site owner it is nice to generate income while you sleep. I never thought I would find something that would really generate income while I slept. Unbelievable and it can happen for you too. Never give up on your dream. I cannot tell you the number of programs I tried before finding a program that worked for us. There are several things that you need to remember when building this type of business that I would like to share with you and they are: * It takes time and effort but it can and will work if you stick with it!
* It takes time because you have to find a system that will aid you in developing a down line
* You have to stick with it, because if you don't then you are not giving yourself a chance!
* You will need to support your affiliates, but you should find companies with a built in support system. The bottom line is you want your affiliates to be successful. If they are you will be too!
* It will take time before the money comes rolling in so you have to have a vision and lots of patience My suggestion to people who email me is that you enroll in one of the many other Work at Home programs to create some income to fund your business and keep your spirits up. If you have a nice income coming in it will give you the incentive to create more. No once you have found a website that has researched the programs for you, select the programs you wish to join then you need to sign up affiliates under you. Here are some good ways to do that: * Visit forums whereby, you can add your affiliate id in your signature.
* Posters, Fliers.
* You may need to create a website to advertise your programs. In fact one of the programs I highlight generates the initial income generating website for you plus it is an affiliate program.
* (PPC) Paid Per Click Advertising whereby you choose selective Key Words and bid on them. When someone type in your keyword and clicks on your ad you will be charged a minimal amount, but it brings people to your site.
* Business Cards.
* Add signature to your out going emails. In addition, In my opinion, you will need the following: * Computer
* Printer
* Access to the Internet
* Phone
* Spell Check Please feel free to read more of this article and my Top Affiliate Program by visiting my link in the resource box below. I always enjoy getting emails pertaining to my articles or my site. Your feedback is important to me.
Is it possible to raise a lot of money, and not work hard?
Is it possible to raise money not only once, but keep receiving all the time?
The answer to both questions is a definite ‘YES’.
Don’t you think that people are tired of dishing out money for things they don’t really need? Their child comes home from school, yet again, with boxes of ‘old fashioned cookies’, or a box of assorted chocolates to sell to friends and family. It’s understandable, the school needs money. (don’t we all!) Of course, it’s not safe to send their offspring out knocking on neighbor’s doors without a chaperone, so the easiest way would be to cough up the money themselves! Right?
No wonder people complain that they need a pant size bigger every year. Not to mention their budget dropping like socks without elastic!
What about those sweet-smelling candles that arrive by the boxes? Fantastic aroma, but bulky to store and a definite pain in the back to lift!
If you are a principle, maybe you have heard complaints from your teachers. Babysitting tens of thousands of candles was never part of their contract! Or was it?
Personally, I love candles, but let’s face facts here, we are talking about hard work for those people who really want to help your school, or your organization to raise money – They know you are in need, and they know you need the money 'yesterday'.
Accidents happen and unfortunately things have a habit of breaking. What then?
Do we need to dig a grave for broken candles, broken cookies and candy and lay them down to rest?
To my knowledge, first teachers have to find out from their students the choice of candle fragrance their potential customer requests, then they have to scramble through boxes of candles (breaking at least two finger nails in the process) until they come across the correct item. Of course, we won’t mention the time consuming process of packing. All this has to happen hundreds/thousands of times depending on the number of candles you have received from the candle company.
Time consuming? YES, very!
Now the teacher passes the 'baton' to the student who continues the race until the money is transferred into their tiny and maybe sticky hands and later deposited back into the capable hands of the teacher. Hence, the teacher crosses the finish line of this very long fundraising marathon by counting every last penny. Out of breath and running low on a sense of humor, the teacher deposits all the hard earned cash into the treasurers safe and collapses in a chair from exhaustion.
Let’s take a quick look at the function for the children. Very often unhappy kids have to persuade (or at times beg) their family, neighbors, friends to purchase the ‘irresistible items.’ Pressure is on, because there is always a dead line!
Is the amount raised really worth the time and hard work invested?
Now what about the third side of the triangle, potential customers!
How many of them are motivated to buy because they just feel sorry for the kids; knowing full well that they could buy cheaper in Wal-Mart or in other stores. That 'puppy-dog look' works every time! Moths take flight as the dollars see daylight! (Well, it’s good to air the wallet every now and then!)
Are you tired just reading this article?
Well, if you have managed to keep reading up till now, then I want to congratulate you by offering a Kleenex to wipe off the sweat from your brow.
Now I invite you to sit back and relax. Please allow me the pleasure to tell you about the most ingenious fund-raising idea on the market today. This will blow your mind.
Attention!
Is it possible to raise a lot of money, and not work hard?
Is it possible to raise money not only once, but keep receiving all the time?
The answer to both questions is a definite ‘YES’.
Listen on….
Many PTO, PTA, PTF , etc. presidents, teachers and parents are so overwhelmed with work that they do not have time, energy or desire to investigate in anything new.
This is why I have done the investigation for you. See what you think about the discovery I have made; you won’t be disappointed.
What is it?
Do you think potential clients, family members, neighbors, and other children's friends would like the sound of saving a lot of money every month on the things they usually buy? Would that question catch their attention?
People are not usually so keen in giving up their money, but from past experience I know that almost everybody has listening ears when it comes to ideas on how to cut back on expenses.
So what is it? Come on!!!! You’re probably saying!
Well, I want to paint the full picture, so that you will be able to enjoy the full beauty of this masterpiece!
Presentation:
I would like you to consider reviewing this idea in order to:
Raise significant and on-going money with no collections, no products to stock or deliver, no returns or charge-backs, but get an on-going income – residual income, 'Month after month, after month'.
By the way, it is so easy that anybody can do it. Does it sound appealing?
The name of this idea is : “GatorPond” – this will save your supporters money (which I will explain in a minute) and they will also have a lot of fun cooperating with you.
GatorPond is a ‘Media Trading Program Online’, where people can trade DVDs for DVDs, music CDs for music CDs, video tapes for video tapes and video games for video games, with other people who are also members of GatorPond.
Unlimited trading for only $19.95 monthly membership fee.
Your supporters will SAVE money on their Media Budget, while at the same time your Organization will earn $5.00 per month from ‘every supporter’ who becomes a GatorPond Member!
GatorPond will send you a check to your school/organization every month, after the monthly membership fee has been automatically withdrawn from your supporters’ credit card.
Your supporters will also save on gas, because they will not need to drive to different stores to get DVDs, Music CDs, Video Games and VHS tapes.
Here is an example to explain how your school/organization will be able to raise funds.
-If you have 500 students (employees) and they will sell only 3 memberships each, that will give you the total of 1500 Memberships. Multiplying that by $5.00, will equal $7,500.00 per month and $90,000.00 per year for your school/organization.
This is with no up-front cost or risk of any kind - You can see on the chart – download it in pdf file to see what will happen to your school financially. All problems will be solved with the extra monthly cash coming into your bank account. It is nothing else but a true win-win situation.
You do not need to invest any money, and you will gain passive income with minimal staff participation.
I will summarize all your benefits:
You will create passive, recurring income, with little staff participation.
You will save the supporters money and you can create a network of Supporters Nationally! You are no longer limited to those in your neighborhood!
Before explaining how your supporters save money, I want to underline something very important.
It is a fact that people usually know how much they spend on their mortgage, or car payments, or even remember how much money they spend on gas and electricity, but if you ask them how much they usually spend per year on renting videos, buying games or CD’s, etc. they do NOT have any idea!
Here is a typical monthly example:
Rent 4 movies–spend anything from $16.00 to $20.00, buy 1 new release movie– $20.00, later buy 2 bargain priced movies– from $15.00 to $20.00; children beg for a new video game -1 video game costs from $13.00 to $70.00. Then only one music CD– costs between $8.00 to $25.00.
Much to everyone’s surprise, the total bill can amount from $72 to $155 per month, which equals $864 to $1860 per year!
WOW, yes it sounds crazy, but the truth is, this is the ‘thief’ stealing their money. They aren’t aware that they have 'an uninvited guest' in their homes!
When they join GatorPond, they will save money with UNLIMITED trading, for only $19.95 per month, $239.40 per year.
Your supporters – now GatorPond members, will place their ‘used’, (but not ‘abused’) Movies, Music, & Video Games, VHS tapes on their account online and they will trade ‘what they have for what they want!’
All they need, is access to the Internet and an email account. Nowadays, almost every house has a computer and access to the Internet.
After they sign up, and place their media on their account online, they will be able to choose the same amount of media which they have listed. After a few clicks they will receive an email with confirmation that the selected movie will be sent in a few days.
When somebody requests their media, they will receive an email stating that they have to place a specific DVD, CD, etc. (title given) into an envelope and send it to the given address.
That’s it. It’s as simple as ABC!
All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. But how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?
Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?
Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads. And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.
Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.
There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.
As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.
Now, you sure won't get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate's site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It's just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product
It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.
Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.
Many people make the mistake of making their website's homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a "contact us" page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we're sure that you don't want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.
When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.
Final Word
You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you'll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don't have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don't get us wrong; it isn't enough for you to have just a landing page it should be a great landing page!
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