Finding Affiliate Programs -- Where To Start
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| Finding Affiliate Programs -- Where To Start |
When most people have a task to do, they usually do well once they get started, and finding affiliate programs for your site or blog is no exception — you just need a little kickstart to get your brain into the right mode.
There’s a really easy way to get things started…go look at one of your competitors. There are tons of ways to do this — the easiest way would be to put your keyword(s) into Google and see what pops up.
The order of the results is based in good part on Google’s PageRank, which has a lot to do with the number of other sites that link to a particular site.
Pick one of the results near the top and click on the link. Hover on a banner or text advertising box and see where the URL leads. Take note of the particular network such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, Linkshare, etc. and the particular programs on the site. I keep a list using Microsoft Notepad when I surf competitive sites for clients.
Most of the time I ignore CPM-based networks like DoubleClick or AdBrite, and contextual ad networks like Google and Yahoo. I do pay particular attention to the category affiliate network banners and text ads. For example, if you surf a few competitors and find a lot of banner advertising for web site hosting, that means your competitors are having at least some luck with website hosting affiliate programs.
When you come up with a good list of networks, programs and categories, go visit the networks that appear the most on the sites (try to go to 5 or 6 different sites so you can see any patterns that emerge).
You should now have a terrific list to start from, including a list of networks, programs and keywords. Now all you have to do is poke around and see which pay the best and try to figure out which your visitors might like.
While you’re on the other sites, try to get a feel for where on the page the ads are placed, which can make a huge difference in clickthrough and conversion.
Some online businessmen have claimed that they were able to have hundreds of dollars worth of sales overnight. And their stories have inspired other businessman to persevere in e-commerce. Their stories have also made many other online businessmen curious about what could have brought such a success in Internet business. The reason for such an astounding amount of sales is called affiliate marketing.
What actually happened to such successful online businesses is that the affiliates increase the traffic of visitors to their websites, and consequently significantly were able to boost the sales. Thus, many online companies today are looking into establishing their own affiliate marketing programs. But where do online companies find affiliates that are professional, reliable, and honest? Here are some recommendations.
1. Be listed in affiliate program directories
Affiliate marketing program is a niche in Internet marketing. This is why there are many sites that have a dedicated list or directory of affiliate programs. Professional affiliates go to such sites when they are searching for new products to promote. An online business must have its affiliate program listed in such a directory so that affiliates can find it. To do this, the online businessman must open an Affiliate Program Directory, such as in Google, and then submit his affiliate marketing program.
2. Link up with complementary websites
The online businessman should analyze the type of his target market. Then, he must find websites that are already attracting such target market. These websites are complementary websites. For example, if the online business is selling computer software, then the businessman should find websites that sell complementary products such as computer and computer parts. He should stay away from competing websites, i.e., those that sell the same products. And he should also avoid websites that sell products that are not related to his own products. For example, it will be disastrous to link up with alternative medicine when the product being sold is computer software.
Once the online businessman has found complementary websites, he should contact them and offer his affiliate marketing program. The owners of such complementary websites will the “perfect affiliates” since they are already catering to the target market of the online businessman.
3. Link up with content websites.
Content websites feature articles that focus on ideas and concepts and not on selling any product. Such articles are informative and visitors are more likely to go back to these content websites again and again for the information that these websites provide. The online businessman should link up with such content sites because the information from these sites is an important ingredient in successful affiliate marketing.
4. Offer affiliate programs to the visitors and consumers
The online businessman can tap into the visitors and consumers of his own website. He will place a link in his website that leads to the presentation of the affiliate marketing program.
We all know that there is so much misinformation about the best strategies for affiliate marketing success. To level the playing field a bit, the following are five ways most experts would agree are the most cost effective ways to expeditiously boost your affiliate business pursuits. So, with no further ado, here they are!
1. HAVE VISITORS LINK TO YOUR WEBSITE
If you give visitors a good reason, they will actually work for you! Think of a product or service that you can offer for free or with a large discount, in exchange for them linking to your site. It is a very simple, yet effective way to recruit help in marketing your site!
2. PROMOTE USING SOME COUPONS
These coupons can be placed in ezines, emails, ad campaigns, forums and even newsletters. You can offer discounted merchandise and other various offers. It is a great way to add fresh content to the search engine and drive more traffic to your site. Be sure to update the codes, though!
3. HELP YOUR AFFILIATES BECOME A SUCCESS
Basically, the more successful your affiliates, the more successful you will be! Each and every dollar that your affiliates make, you will also make a profit from. The old saying You can use 100% of one man’s efforts, or 1% of 100 men’s efforts really comes into play here. The more affiliates that are successful, the more money you will have in your pocket! It has been reported that the top 20% of its affiliates generates 80% of a website’s sales. You have a vested interest in each affiliate’s success.
4. AFFILIATE MARKETING IS A COMPETITIVE WORLD
It is very important that you thoroughly think your marketing plan through. If it is helpful to you, learn from other successful affiliates! You may have a friend or someone that would be willing to help you establish a set of marketing tools. If not, then there are plenty of tips and guidance Online, if you do the research. Don't go into it blindly; learn some basics first!
6. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERY MARKETING TOOL YOU CAN
In the highly competitive world of Affiliate marketing, you will want to arm yourself with as many tools as possible. Don't leave any stone unturned! The name of the game is this: get as much traffic as you can, using whatever means necessary.
There are many ways to get traffic, including: recruiting other affiliates, taking advantage of ad campaigns, advertising in ezines or newsletters, joining many forums, having others market your link, using multiple ads, using banner ads, etc. If you have a good product/ service that is seen by many visitors, your chances of making a profit are that much better!
Warm regards,
Kenny Anderson
Copyright 2006 Jeanette Cates
An effective affiliate program can be the lifeblood of your business. Not only do affiliates send you traffic and sales, but they provide incoming links and good public relations for you in the marketplace.
So how do you return the favor? By providing an excellent affiliate program for them. Here are five steps that will bring you closer to that goal.
1. Clear signup process. Write a description of your affiliate program that talks about what you sell, to whom and what you expect from an affiliate. Then tell them the types of tools you provide for them in order to make the most sales possible.
Make it easy for them to sign up. And make it easy for them to sign into the affiliate area by providing a link to the affiliate area directly on the sign up page.
2. Step-by-step training program. Most people who sign up for your program are new to affiliate marketing. They liked your product, so they signed up. Now it's up to you to teach them how to market your programs - as well as any other affiliate product.
Assume they know nothing and start with the basics in an autoresponder sequence. Tell them about each of your products - describing just one per week. Tell them about the tools you provide and how to use them with their marketing efforts. Show them how to read and interpret their statistics.
While industry statistics indicate less than 5% of affiliates actually do anything, you don't want that to be descriptive of your affiliates. Educate them!
3. Ongoing communication. In addition to the autoresponder sequence of educational emails, consider a monthly affiliate update. In this you might offer tips from other affiliates - or testimonials from customers that they can use in their marketing messages.
Consider a monthly teleseminar with you. You'll find it makes for a closer relationship and you'll have direct input as to what they need. It will give you better ideas on what to create or provide for them, as well as your marketplace.
4. Easy to use affiliate tools. Standard tools include banners, graphics, emails, and articles. Be sure you include their affiliate link on each of these so that it's a simple copy-and-paste operation. Better selling affiliates are busy, so respect their time and make your tools "no- brainers."
5. Timely payments. Nothing will turn off an affiliate faster than not getting paid on time. The sooner you pay them after the sale, the more likely they are to send out another promotion on your behalf. It's motivating to see a check arrive or money deposited in your PayPal account.
And don't restrict payment to just payments for sales. Contests, awards and prizes are meaningful, too. So ask them what would make their affiliate work more fun - then give it to them!
When you start with these five steps, you'll be 95% further along than most affiliate programs. And you'll be attracting all of the best affiliates in no time!
If you want to make money online without having you own products, selling other people's products could be the ticket. Selling others products has many advantages. You do not have to spend time on creating the products, you do not have to set up a system to sell and deliver the products, and you do not have to get a merchant account and pay recurring merchant account fees. The person who owns the product does all of these things for you. All you have to do is market the product and make money with it.
So how can you make money with other people's products? People who have created products usually run affiliate programs. An affiliate program is a way for you to earn commissions every time you sell someone else's product. When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will get your own unique id you use to link to products you are promoting. Once you make sales using your affiliate links, you will generate commissions.
Here are five steps to take to make money with affiliate products:
- Find A Product To Sell. Before going any further, you need to find a product that will sell. A product should have a professional appearance, be presented on a professional web site and be a quality product that you would want to recommend to others.
Once you find the product, join the affiliate program for it and get your affiliate links.
- Create A Web Site To Sell The Affiliate Product. Having your own web site to promote the affiliate products is best. I always recommend that you get your own domain name and web hosting to host your web site.
The cost of domain names and web site hosting has come down considerably since just a few years ago. You can now get a domain name for about $8 per year and web site hosting for under $10 per month. At these prices you don’t have to be a millionaire or commit to a large capital outlay to start your own web site.
- Create Content For The Web Site. To get more visitors and more sales, you need content for your web site. It is not enough to just link to the product with your affiliate link. In order to make money with your affiliate link you need to bring potential buyers to your web site. A great way to bring them in is with content that is of interest to them, and is related to the product you are promoting.
One good way to generate the content for your web site is by creating your own content and articles that are related to the topic of the product you are promoting. Another good way is by using the articles that were written by the author of the product. Many authors allow their affiliates use the authors' articles on their web sites, and use the affiliate link in the resource box.
- Optimize Your Web Site for Search Engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site. The more visitors to the web site you have, the more affiliate products you will be able to sell, and the more money you will make.
Make sure you optimize every page of your web site for search engines; that way you will get more web site visitors.
- Use Your Articles To Promote The Affiliate Product. Article publishing is a great way to drive traffic to your web site. Start by writing a few articles that are of interest to the people who would want to purchase the product you are promoting. Use the About The Author Resource Box to promote the product. Then take your articles and submit them to article directories. Doing this will bring more traffic to your web site and help you make more money.
Remember, you do not need to create your own products to make money online. Follow the five steps we outlined above to make lots of money selling other people's products.
Five Things You Need To Have To Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
The idea of being mere passengers on a ship meant to sail to the farthest points does not appeal to people who like to put their destiny into their own hands. They have the desire of maneuvering the ships themselves, of being able to be the ones to take it anywhere they want to. Being aboard a ship on its way to a particularly great destination is something each and every one of them dreams of, and the knowledge that they have the capacity to steer it themselves is what makes them actually want to.
Perhaps this is the reason why more and more people are succumbing to one of the most popular businesses around affiliate marketing. It is because in this business, there are no bosses to order the employees around. There are no deadlines to meet and no clutter of work do to. One only needs to be equipped with the tools needed to succeed in a business such as this, and he is bound to get what his heart ultimately desires.
Just what are the things needed to be able to succeed in affiliate marketing? What must one have within himself to be able to do well in this industry? There is a lot of competition involved in affiliate marketing, and to be able to rise above the norm, one must be equipped with just the right stuff necessary to propel him forward. There are five things one must ultimately possess if he wants to achieve the glory he is yearning for in this business, and these five things are a must for him to possess to be able to stand out among the rest.
The very first quality one must possess if he wants to try his hand in affiliate marketing is the willingness to learn and be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory is scary stuff if one is not properly equipped, and he might get lost amidst a jungle of the unknown. Learning the tricks of the trade is also an important aspect of the game, and one’s willingness to know it all will give him far better advantages in the business than he could ever imagine.
The second quality one must possess is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem at all apparent. Although several months may pass without good news, it is important for one who has his foot in the industry to hold on and wait. It is this quality which would save him from giving up after investing a lot of himself in the business.
The third quality one must possess is self-determination. If one wants to conquer the affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. Never having to say die is a quality each and every affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an affiliate marketer there.
The fourth quality one must possess is discipline. If one knows how to teach himself to work everyday with all the energy he can muster, then he is close to achieving what he has set his heart to having in the first place.
The fifth and last quality one must possess is optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsays should not discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing what he has to in order to make life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Neither should anyone influence his attitude toward the business, because once in it, it is a must for him to be the captain of his ship and the master of his soul.
The ingredients to success in a business such as affiliate marketing are diverse and manifold, but the most important thing one needs to be able to make it big lies in himself alone. It is he who has the capacity to do everything to be able to realize his prospects, and the desire which fuels his heart in doing so is the gasoline which should keep the engine going.
Affiliate marketing is all about putting one’s fate into his own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able to steer one’s ship into that part of the ocean where a certain kind of serenity can be found, one that permeates the atmosphere as the ship sails calmly on.
The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has enticed a lot of people towards affiliate marketing. But does affiliate marketing really work this way?
As an affiliate, all that is required of you is to simply place the merchant's ad on your website. Then after that, you virtually do nothing but wait for anyone to click on the merchant's ad and later collect your profits. Easy, right? Well, not quite often. Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing. Remember that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing, and you'll definitely need to market your merchant's product for you to earn something.
Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don't sit there and wait for money to come. Why? Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting. If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you've got to do something. Think of ways on how to promote your merchant's business and products better. Think of ways on how to induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant. Think of ways on how to make your affiliate sales increase!
So if you're new in affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky pit that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you're definitely on the wrong track. But we're not advising you to stop right there. No. Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you. How? Here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:
1) Become an expert on your affiliate product.
You can promote your merchant's product better if you know a lot of things about it. To become an expert, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchant's product yourself. This way, you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the product. You can even write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about it. But if any condition does not permit you to purchase the product, you can at least make a thorough research about it.
2) Host your own website.
Or at least have a domain name that is short and easy to remember. You certainly wouldn't expect a visitor to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL. And if that's so, you also wouldn't expect him to visit your website any time soon. That means less traffic for your page and the less chance for your affiliate ads and links to be clicked.
It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads. Visitors usually get interested with these private websites. Private websites also gives you a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.
3) Write your own affiliate ads.
Many merchants usually wouldn't mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, for as long as you ask permission from them and present them your ad before posting it on your site. This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who must be advertising the same affiliate products.
4) Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.
If you use to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them. You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product. You don't have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along. The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.
5) Create a free ezine or newsletter.
Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject. In your ezines and newsletters, you don't always have to promote your merchant's product for this may greatly annoy your subscribers. Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter. Also, don't forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.
These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks. Sure there can be a lot of other tips that out there, and if you think they would work, we won't discourage you from following them. What's important is that you be able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant's products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can do these, there's no reason for you to fail in affiliate marketing.
Most home business owners are involved with affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer, a combination of techniques can be used to promote your affiliate website and/or link. Here are five things you can do to help with your promotional efforts resulting in increased affiliate sales.
1. Become an “expert” on the product
The most successful affiliate marketers are “experts” on the products they promote. To become an expert, it’s highly recommended that you purchase the product yourself to gain first-hand experience using it. If you cannot purchase the product, you must thoroughly research it until you become familiar and knowledgeable enough to promote it.
2. Participate in chat rooms related to the product
You can start your own chat or join an existing one. Do not try to selling initially, but during your chat, mention the product you’re promoting and describe its benefits. If there is interest in your product, you can then refer them to the product through your affiliate link. The same concept holds true for forums and discussion boards.
3. Write your own affiliate program ads
Most merchants will provide pre-written ads for their affiliates to use. If you write your own ad, or make significant changes to the one that’s pre-written, your ad will stand out from the others. Done properly, this will give you a great advantage over those affiliates that are using the same ad as everyone else.
4. Create a free newsletter or ezine
Submit your newsletter to the ezine directories and promote it on your website. Keep in mind that most subscribers are interested in receiving “information” that can help them. If you use your mailing list solely for selling, you will never gain credibility and will end up with a high unsubscribe rate. After you’ve developed a relationship and the trust of your subscribers, you can then recommend the products you are promoting
5. Create a free ebook
As part of your ebook, include an advertisement and a link to your affiliate website. The ebook can be given away free or used as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. Submit your ebook to the ebook directories and offer it to other webmasters for inclusion on their website. The more exposure your ebook receives, the more sales you can make.
By using the techniques outlined above and always striving to become an “expert” on the products you promote, you are sure to see an increase in your affiliate sales resulting in higher commission payments.
To be triumphant in affiliate marketing business is not an easy task. It's just like an ongoing project where you need to find out and try different advertising strategies and tactics.
If you want to promote several affiliate programs in your website, make sure that they are full with the theme and topic of the rest of the content on your niche.
If you want to be involved or you've already joined an affiliate program, but you have misconceptions regarding affiliate marketing, then, you might need a mentor to help you figure out where to start and what to do in order to do well.
These persons are experts in the field they are into. They can give expert advice and guidance. Affiliate marketing mentors can be those persons that have already been successful in affiliate marketing and are always keen to share their experienced-based knowledge.
There are some articles on affiliate marketing that says in order to be successful in affiliate marketing business, you need to take in and develop these traits: persistence, patience and thirst for knowledge.
To be proficient in search engine optimization, link exchanges, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal exchanges and advertising in forums. You will surely find it hard to learn these things alone and without the supervision of a mentor.
Myths concerning affiliate marketing are appealing and attractive. People who do not know the entire system the wrong way round are prone to believing that it is something capable of giving them great fortune overnight. Stories concerning affiliates who earn tremendous amounts of money swim in their heads, and while these stories are as true as they can be, there are those who believe that they are going to have the same fortune once they indulge in this particular business.
It is true enough that affiliate marketing is financially rewarding. People who have gone through everything to be able to succeed in this business are reaping the seeds that they untiringly sowed. Many of them enjoy the kind of existence that was not possible for them to have had under ordinary circumstances. Having gone through the A-Z of affiliate marketing, however, these people are the ones who know that while such business is lucrative, there is absolutely no easy money in it.
Ignorance of this fact is one of the main reasons why there are people who fail miserably in the internet business. There are those who believe in myths concerning the easy money involved in systems such as affiliate marketing. They do not know that there are those who have wasted time, effort and too many resources in trying to pursue the life of ease that they believe this business will give them. And so they go into affiliate marketing armed with nothing but myths and fantastical notions of wealth swimming in their consciousness, never realizing that they bound to make mistakes that would prove to be their downfall.
What may be the reason why in businesses such as affiliate marketing, many are called but few are chosen? Perhaps the answer lies on the fact that many affiliates make mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs. Affiliate marketing is not as simple as an affiliate promoting a merchant’s wares through his website and getting paid for it. It is also about knowing the market and the customers at hand.
Discovering what the most common mistakes affiliates make can perhaps dispel the gloom about myths surrounding affiliate marketing by correcting some wrong notions about it. It might also be able to make those concerned understand that like any other business, there are dos and donts involved in this one if they want to make each of their steps count. The first common mistake affiliates make is their lack of knowledge concerning principles involved in their business. This refers to the affiliate’s knowledge of search engines in particular.
Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines. What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely. This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.
The second is that affiliates make the mistake of stuffing their sites with banners that do not provide enough information about the product at hand. The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content hand-in-hand with such banners. It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.
The third is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting only one product. Consequently, customers are not given enough options to choose from. There is also the risk of generating fewer sales as compared to having more options for customers ponder about. It is always better to give them a few better alternatives than to give them only one.
The fourth is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting too many products. As a result, customers are confused and end up beyond making a choice. It is perhaps good to give them only the best choices. This is because it is ultimately up to them to judge which one is the best for them to patronize.
All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in. Knowing their path step by careful step will prove to be beneficial to them, as there is no other way to succeed than to go through any path slowly but surely.
I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.
I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.
In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.
Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:
Incoming visitors - Internet Presence - Sales or Actions
You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence -- the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.
The other represents the process of Internet advertising:
Impression - Click - Action
Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…
1. Do you know enough about your visitors?
There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.
If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.
Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.
Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.
You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).
If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.
After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.
Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.
2. Is your site perfect?
You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.
Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.
Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.
The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.
Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.
3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?
People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).
Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.
A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.
If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.
4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?
I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.
If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.
Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.
Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.
I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.
I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.
In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.
Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:
Incoming visitors -> Internet Presence < - Sales or Actions
You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence -- the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.
The other represents the process of Internet advertising:
Impression -> Click -> Action
Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…
1. Do you know enough about your visitors?
There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.
If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.
Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.
Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.
You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).
If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.
After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.
Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.
2. Is your site perfect?
You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.
Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.
Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.
The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.
Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.
3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?
People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).
Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.
A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.
If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.
4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?
I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.
If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.
Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.
Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.
Are you a college or high school student who only has time for a part-time job but can't find one that pays enough? Hate your boss and/or can't stand your co-workers? Have you been searching long and hard for a route to financial freedom that doesn't involve any bosses except for yourself? Do you have a web site? If you have a web site with some traffic (or even if you don't, on my blog you can learn how to make an online living without one), you can make money by having links to online merchant shops appear on your web site. When a visitor to your site clicks on the link pointing to the web site of the merchant you are affiliated with, and then proceeds to buy something, you get a commission of that sale. Depending on the merchant, this can range anywhere from 5% - 75% of the sale. There are also some merchants who will pay for each click or each lead generated from your site. A lead is a new visitor to the site or shop that inquires about information, prices, or prize/coupon offers.
By having these links on your web site, you are called an affiliate, and the links are called affiliate links. An affiliate program isn't literally a program it's a business arrangement or agreement. Affiliate programs are also commonly known as associate programs, associates programs, partner programs, referral programs and sometimes bounty programs.
For anyone new to Internet marketing and work at home businesses they provide an excellent, high value opportunity in that it's a way to earn money without producing your own product!
To register into an affiliate program is almost always free, and through the affiliate program merchants control panel all you need to start making an income is the linking code, a way to monitor the traffic through your links, and to see what commission you have earned. Visitors who click your link to the merchants' site are called "click-throughs" and the percent of click-through visitors that purchase something on the affiliate merchants' site are called your CR, your Conversion Rate. Likewise, your CTR, or Click-Through Rate, is the percent of visitors to your site that end-up clicking on an affiliate link.
An affiliate program is not a MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) program, since the affiliates only earn from sales, leads or clicks. Some affiliate programs offer what is called a "Two-Tier" program and this is in most cases not considered a MLM program. MLM programs are sometimes called a "Matrix" or "Downline" program and often have an unlimited number of sub-affiliates you can sign up under you. Your downline is everyone who has signed up under you and likewise your "upline" is everyone who signed up above you.
There is also networks operated by third-party companies and individuals where multiple merchants and affiliates use a common software and administrative infrastructure (usually just a simple admin section of a web site) to recruit affiliates and monitor the traffic from their sites. These types of networks are often called affiliate networks. Both the merchants and the potential affiliates need to register with the network. Usually most affiliate networks are free to join because they get a part of the commission but some do charge a fee. Affiliates can find links to the online shops of hundreds of merchants to use on their affiliate driven web sites. Examples of affiliate networks are Commission Junction and ClickBank. You can find links to affiliate networks on my blog (link at end of article).
I am of the opinion that the best affiliate web sites are the ones made from a high demand, low supply niche dedicated to one of your hobbies or interests and something you know a lot about and can provide good value to your visitors. However, if you are not great at writing articles you can find article directories and content sites. Visit my blog to find links to article directories and content.
What will work best for you wont necessarily be the same thing that works for others, you have to experiment and diversify your methods. The most important factor will however depend upon the kind of traffic you have and can generate and the interests of the individuals visiting your site.
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Free to Join Affiliate Programs - Can I Really Make Money?
If you have been looking around the internet for a while in search of ways of making money you cannot fail to have seen the words "join our free affiliate program" or "best free internet affiliate program" - probably followed by something about making thousands of dollars a month!
If you are like me you were a mixture of skeptical, intrigued, excited and also thinking "could this work for me?" Well to cut a long story short I was looking to work from home at the tail end of 2004 due to ill health and was surfing the net to find a work from home business. I kept seeing these adverts for free to join affiliate programs but had never heard of them in my life. To say I was a newbie was a massive understatement!
I decided to find as much as I could about them and everything I needed was online. I soon discovered Google Adwords and pay per click as a way of promoting my programs and also found Clickbank.com, Commission Junction.com (cj.com) and Tradedoubler.co.uk as "libraries" of thousands of products to promote.
I then tried to learn all I could about how to promote an internet affiliate program on Google Adwords and also how to research the market place. I cannot stress how important this point is! It is vital to find a market BEFORE you find your product. I tried to promote many things I thought were great products before I realized it was not what I thought would sell that mattered! It is what people are looking for that is important.
You may have heard the term "Niche Market" and this is what you are searching for - a niche that may not have a huge number of potential buyers - but that has a large enough group of people who are very HUNGRY to buy your products. It is your job as an affiliate to target these people as accurately as possible.
There are many different e Books out there that will help you learn how to do this. Using the Overture search tool is an excellent way of finding popular searches and Niche Markets.
You can also promote free affiliate programs through your own sites and this is the way to really generate those huge incomes you read about - but it can be a huge learning curve! Don't worry however as there are lots of good programs out there that will teach you step by step how to do this. The best I have come across is the Profit Brat Affiliate Program Marketing System (see below)
As I said before I started as an affiliate just less than a year ago and now make my living full time - it can be done - but.....
You must put in the time, effort and, yes, money to prepare yourself. And you must research, research and research some more the market place! This is not money for nothing but it is definitely a business you can succeed in if you do your homework and are prepared to learn from those who have succeeded before you.
Best wishes for your financial future!
Gaz Hutchinson
Internet Marketer
My top resource to help anyone make more money from affiliate programs is The Affiliate Classroom. A $1 trial is available here: http://www.realmoneysite.com/page/page/3609624.htm
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