How To Best Select An Affiliate Program Online

Ever wondered how the big boys make so much money with affiliate programs? Here's some ideas to get you started on your own affiliate marketing business. You will need to spend some time researching the best paying affiliate programs. Affiliate programs that I have used are Commission Junction and Clickbank. Commission Junction sell hard goods whilst Clickbank sell information products and software. Both programs have some high paying affiliate products. Before you create any web pages or choose a domain name, you need to do some research. Take time to decide what sort of product you might wish to sell and then locate an affiliate program related to your chosen product. For example, if you have an interest in dogs, then you might choose an affiliate e-book about “Dog Training”. Make a note of all the relevant products and what your commission will be. How to find your affiliate program Commission Junction You can search their programs by advertiser name or products. Hence, in our example of "dogs", you could search on the “products” box for this and find merchants who are selling this. They also have a very useful tool called the EPC, which reflects how much has been earned for every 100 clicks. For example, if the EPC is $5, this would mean that for every 100 clicks, Commission Junction has paid out $5. Now it's just simple maths, if you refer 100 customers to this program each day, you can expect to earn $5, 200 customers earns $10 and so on. This is just a rough estimate of traffic, but it certainly helps in choosing one merchant over another, when they're selling the same or similar products. Also, it will depend on how relevant the advert is to your site. In our example, a “vegetarian dog food” advert placed on a site about dogs is likely to be more successful than one placed on a site about home cooking! Clickbank Visit CBmall.com to search the products that Clickbank have available. Again, you might search for "dogs" and come up with "dog training" products to market online. Then create a mini-site focused on your product. Visit ez-search-engine-optimization.com and download Andrew's free book on “Creating Niche Sites” for step by step instructions to creating a site which is highly attractive to the search engines. Buying traffic A quick way to get traffic to your site is to pay for clicks from either Overture or Google. Buying traffic is a numbers game and is only likely to be profitable if you are selling something of a high value. If you are selling an e-book for which you get paid a $25 commission fee and you are converting 1% of your visitors into sales, you can afford to pay up to 25 cents per click. Ideally you'd pay less than this so that you can make a profit! You can find out more on setting up your home internet business at, visit Home Based Internet Marketing Business

Affiliate links are something we all have to live with in internet marketing, but unfortunately we sometimes find that unscrupulous people hijack them. Even if they don't hijack them, some people will just strip the affiliate part in order to deprive you of a commission. They don’t even save themselves any money or gain anything out of this other than some perverse pleasure in ripping someone off.

Whilst there are programs out there that will cloak your links and also track the click throughs, here's an easy way that you can employ on your own web site to both cloak your links and also improve the presentation of them.

Before I get onto that, can I just say that there are other methods such as using Tiny URL, but personally I dislike these type of links. They almost scream "Hey, look what I'm trying to hide". I feel that this method is not only effective, but also provides great presentation and a recommendation from you as the web site owner as well.

OK, here we go.

Let's assume that we are going to cloak the following link:-

http://www.the-greatest-product-ever.com/affiliate-area/start.php?offer=youraffiliate-id&pid=1

The first thing to note about this is that it is very long and ugly. Another danger with this link is that it could "wrap" in a text based email and lose its click through ability.

So what do we do?

OK. Open Notepad or a similar text editor or you can use Dreamweaver if it's configured to run php files because we are going to write a very simple and straightforward php file.

In your editor type the following on a blank page. That's very important. If you are using a HTML editor, make sure there is nothing on the page.

Insert Less Than Sign Here?php
header("Location:http://www.the-greatest-product-ever.com/affiliate-area/start.php?offer=youraffiliate-id&pid=1");
exit();
?Insert Greater Than Sign Here

That's it. Yes, it's as simple as that.

Now, save the file into a directory on your web site. I would suggest a sub-directory name "recommends" and upload the directory and file to your server.

The first thing to do now is to test the file to make sure it works as it should. Whatever you do, NEVER send out an email or put a link on a page that hasn’t been tested.

In your url address bar type:- http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/filename.php and it should take you direct to the page of the affiliate product that you are selling. It bypasses your site entirely so people don't see all the affiliate code in the php file.

Once you have tested the page and you are sure it works, you are ready to incorporate the page in an email to your list or even onto your web pages directly if you have done a product review or similar, but the link of course will be:-

http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/filename.php

I think this looks so much nicer than a terribly long and convoluted filename and certainly much less secretive than a Tiny URL. It is also stating in the url that you "recommend" the site.

I employ this method on all my web sites and in my emails to people and with great success. I hope you enjoy the same.

An affiliate program establishes a partnership between a marketing entity (you) and an online business company that compensates you for any sales generated as a result of your marketing efforts.
Affiliate programs provide an easy and profitable way to generate income from your Website visitors without investments.

The first major company who's offer affiliate partnership is awa:
Affiliated Web Attractions is an association of top online gaming and entertainment sites that promotes a philosophy of operational excellence, a commitment to ethical standards set by the Online Gaming Alliance, plus support and distribution of cutting-edge Grand Virtual technology.

Affiliated Web Attractions is the largest and most recognized alliance in the international gaming market. Because of the success of our sites with players and our commitment to excellence with partners, we pay out many millions of dollars to our partners every year.

The second one is Casino Pays, one of the most prestigious affiliate programs in the online casino industry today. Casino Pays is to create a successful partnership between them and affiliates. Utilizing the latest technological developments in the e-gaming field, they bring you the finest affiliate service available.

In the affiliate industry, customer service is the key to a prosperous relationship; this is why they place a great emphasis on their customer support. Casino Pays support team is available 24/7 with the knowledge and the tools to provide you with the total solution to maximize your income and optimize your site's traffic.

Casino Pays consider product excellence and reliability, attentiveness to detail and an overall concern for quality of service to be central to gaining customer faith and satisfaction. With a constantly growing variety of online casinos, bingo, and poker, our brands are known for their high player values and outstanding conversion rates.

More great affiliates:
Rewards Affiliates, Casino Partners, Wager Share, Gambling Federation, BrightShare, Focal Click, 888.com, Refer Back, All Star Affiliates, 400 Affiliates, Affiliate Lounge, 32 Red Affiliates, Lucky Traffic, Best Casino Partner.

Just partnership with them and they will give you all the matketing material necessary to promote your site.

Perhaps, the best thing about using the internet to familiarize yourself with beauty tips is that it should be free to do.  Online, you will find that you have access to a number of different resources.  For instance, you can gain access to the online websites of printed magazines and these online websites often have sample articles from their magazines and much more.  You may also be able to find online beauty magazines, which are like printed magazines, but in online only formats.  There are also traditional websites out there that are made by beauty experts or even individuals like yourself that have a focus on beauty and fashion.

Now that you know where can find some free beauty tips online, you may be wondering exactly how you can go about doing so.  If you are interested examining the online website of a well known and popular beauty magazine, you will want to try typing the magazine name and then “.com” in.  This will usually bring you to the online website of a printed fashion or beauty magazine.  Should you not be able to find the website yourself, you should be able to find it by performing a standard internet search. When performing a standard internet search, you will want to search with the name of the magazine in question.

If you are interested in viewing an online beauty magazine, you will also want to perform a standard internet search.  Online magazines are increasing in popularity, but they are still not as popular as most printed magazines; therefore, you will likely need a standard internet search to help you out.  When performing your standard internet search, you may want to think about searching with phrases like “online fashion magazine,” or “online fashion magazines.”  Your search results should include the links to the websites of online fashion magazines. The thing that you need to be on the lookout for is that a large number of fashion magazines are free to view, but not all are.

As for traditional websites that have a focus on beauty, you can also find these websites by performing a standard internet search.  When performing a standard internet search, you will want to keep what you are looking for in mind. For instance, if you are looking for age defying skincare cream recommendations, you may want to think about performing a search with phrases like “skincare cream recommendations,” or “age defying skincare products.”  Customizing your search to include exactly what you are looking for is a great way to save yourself a lot of time.

As a reminder, using the internet to get free beauty tips, advice, and information on the latest beauty trends is a nice way to proceed, but it isn’t your only option.  In addition to using the internet and buying printed beauty magazines, you may also want to think about turning on your television.  There are now a number of shows on the air that have a focus on both fashion and beauty.

about author : angelrice
http://www.firstchoiceaffiliate.com/moisturizer

How do you find good products that will sell online? First thing we need to do is understand what type of products people already have an interest in buying. Finding a product with high demand is the most important part in finding a good product that will sell, also check out the competition for that product. If there are a million website already trying to sell that exact same product then your chances of being successful with that product are pretty slim.

So how do I find products in high demand with little competition? This is the question I hear most often from people trying to profit from selling products online. Well the truth is your only choice is to do some research. There are all kinds of twists and turns along the way that may lead you to think you have a high-demand product or idea. We must be able to comprehend and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain product that they're trying to buy. Those three things are the necessities in a purchase. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles related with a product or service. Expectations are actually part of wants but they become extremely important when products or services are not differentiated.

The next step is finding the level of competition for your new found product or service. While companies would naturally define its target competitors, it is actually the consumers who ultimately decide the competitive frame, or the list related products or services that consumers consider when exercising their purchasing power. We must therefore choose the market segment where we can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role. Because the overriding objective of getting into this business is not just to satisfy the needs and wants of our customers but to do so profitably better than his competition. Otherwise, our competition will end up satisfying the customers better than our own interest.

Third factor to be considered in finding hot selling products is finding out the general interest level about the product. General interest in a product helps us to gauge where our demand and competition numbers fall into the big picture. Simply saying, if there isn't much demand for the product, and there isn't much competition, it would seem that it might not be good a good put up for sale. But the research doesn't stop here; there is one last thing to be considered to exactly find the hot selling products that you've been looking for. We must also learn how others are advertising those products. If there are a good number of them doing so, it may mean that it's a good product to get into. Coming to the last phase of the process is analyzing and evaluating all the information that has been collected. We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out.

And here are several factors or aspects that must be measured: (a) not enough demand means not enough people are going to buy (b) too much competition means not enough of a profit to go around (c) too much advertising drives up the price of pay per click ads, and competition as well (d) not enough general interest, combined with low demand, means there may not be a good market even if there is competition trying to make the sales.

In order to locate products that sell online, we need to understand what people already want to buy. Finding a good choice of idea or product is always accompanied by interfacing the demand for the product in the current market and the level of competition or market share that the product will be having in the long run.

What should I sell? What products are hot selling? These are the questions most people are trying to find an answer in order for them to make the definite decision. And if we really want to know the answer to this question, our only choice is to do some research. There are all kinds of twists along the road that may lead you to think you have a high-demand idea. We must be able to understand and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain product that they’re trying to buy. This three are called the basic needs or minimum requirements in a purchase. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. They are called the qualifying or gatekeeper dimensions in a purchase. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles associated with a product or service. Expectations are actually part of wants but they become extremely important when products or services are not differentiated.

For example, in reading a logic book, university students look for the following: Relevant logic concepts use of simple language, easy to understand and affordable prices. These similar ideas can be applied to Internet Sales as well. After all, the Internet is just another place to sell products. The basic concept of demand is the same there as it is anywhere else, and has been all the time.

Now, the second thing that must be considered in finding hot products to sell are the level of competition or the market shares do your product will have. Market share or level of competition means the ratio of your brand sales versus the total market sales. While companies would naturally define its target competitors, it is actually the consumers who ultimately decide the competitive frame, or the list related products or services that consumers consider when exercising their purchasing power. We must therefore choose the market segment where we can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role. Because the overriding objective of getting into this business is not just to satisfy the needs and wants of our customers but to do so profitably better than his competition. Otherwise, our competition will end up satisfying the customers better than our own interest.

Third factor to be considered in finding hot selling products is finding out the general interest level about the product. General interest in a product helps us to gauge where our demand and competition numbers fall into the big picture. Simply saying, if there isn’t much demand for the product, and there isn’t much competition, it would seem that it might not be good a good put up for sale. But the research doesn’t stop here; there is one last thing to be considered to exactly find the hot selling products that you’ve been looking for. We must also learn how others are advertising those products. If there are a good number of them doing so, it may mean that it’s a good product to get into. Coming to the last phase of the process is analyzing and evaluating all the information that has been collected. We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out.

And here are several factors or aspects that must be measured: (a) not enough demand means not enough people are going to buy (b) too much competition means not enough of a profit to go around (c) too much advertising drives up the price of pay per click ads, and competition as well (d) not enough general interest, combined with low demand, means there may not be a good market even if there is competition trying to make the sales.

Copyright 2006 Jason Chew

To generate massive income from your affiliate, you need to know the how to find the suitable affiliates for your niche site and how to market them. These are the secrets of affilaites marketing that most affiliate program do not tell you.

1. How to Find Affiliate

Finding a variety of good affiliates for your niche is important as it will help to generate the revenue for your site. You need to know where to find affiliates and choose those best affiliates for your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

There are 2 main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company (like clickbank.com) that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.

Where you place your affiliate links on your website can really make a difference on how many clicks you end up getting and, since every click means a potential sale, this is an important aspect of internet marketing.

2. How to market your affiliate?

Research has shown that the most effective affiliate links are text links. Yes, plain text links. Not big flashy banner ads like most affiliate website are filled to the brim with. What happens is, you write a great article (or have one created) about the product or something related to the product and stick the link into your text. This allows interested readers to see the link as they are reading and click on it.

Of course, your article and your link have to work effectively together to make this happen. A bad article and an unrelated link to an unknown product are not likely to make the profits roll in.

So the next time you are out to choose an affiliate link, try placing a relevant link in a great article that is well optimized for search engines and see how it works out for you.

A lot of people are lured by affiliate marketing because it can be financially rewarding, even if you just stay at home. Affiliate marketing programs are best alternatives to those who are sick and tired of their arduous daily work just to climb up the venerated corporate ladder. You don’t need products to sell, you just have to market them in your own web site and you don’t have to worry about processing the customers’ payments and the shipment of the products. If you are already into affiliate marketing, probably you were thinking about these benefits, too, before deciding to join an affiliate program.

Of course you want earn huge amount of commission. Who would not want it anyway? Keep in mind, however, that affiliate marketing cannot guarantee you instant success if you don’t work on it. There are a lot of ways of maximizing your income. The Internet is a huge library of information, use it to learn of other opportunities and ways to increase your income. You can partner with several merchandisers and promote different products in your website; thereby, increasing your chance to earn a commission.

The easiest way for you to rev up your revenue potential is by incorporating Google AdSense into your marketing campaigns. What is Google AdSense? What are its advantages? How can it boost my revenues? These are some of the questions you might want to ask. Let’s try to probe into Google AdSense, so you would know how it could help you in your affiliate marketing program.

Merchants place their ads in Google, which is one of the most popular search engines or tools for locating various resources in the World Wide Web. Now the Google AdSense program allows you to display these ads in you website and when your visitors click through them, you earn. The advertiser, which is the merchant pays Google for every click-through made by the customer and you as a partner of Google, gets a share from that payment.

What’s great about the Google AdSense is that the ads are relevant to the content of your web page. Most likely, visitors of your web site are interested on the theme of your site and specifically, on the content of your web page. So, seeing ads related to their interest would definitely drive them to click through the link or the ad. Using state-of-the-art technology, Google scans your web site and matches the content of your pages to their large database of advertisers; this way, Google is able to find ads that are targeted by the users of your site. In addition, Google changes the ads in your site as you change the content of your pages, so you can always expect the ads to be relevant to your site.

Having Google ads in your website is also a way of convincing your users to return to your site. Repeat customers multiply your income without having to exert extra effort to convince them again to click through your links. And your potential to earn doesn’t depend on them alone. Since you already have their confidence, they can be your endorsers as well. They could refer your site to family and friends who probably share the same interests with them.

Advertisers in the Google AdSense program range from large international brands to small-time domestic and local businesses, so the targeted market for the ads can range as well. This adds variety to your site; thereby, attracting different kinds of users. As you attract more users, you increase your earning potential as well. If you are targeting a specific nationality for your site users, don’t worry because AdSense can be used in different languages.

In order to boost your revenues through Google AdSense, you must pay attention to making web pages of high value topics. Make contents related to high-paying ads, so you can earn more. Some ads pay only a few cents while some ads pay you dollars just for a single click. You would need to do a little research on this so you can come up with a more relevant content. Join affiliate marketing forums and get tips from experienced affiliate marketers.

Becoming an AdSense affiliate marketer is easy and fast. You just have to apply online and once your application is approved, you can instantly set up Google ads in your site. All you need to do is copy and paste some codes in your web pages and in no time the ads will appear in your site.

Strike while the iron is hot! Take advantage of the favorable circumstances the Internet is offering you. Make the most of your affiliate marketing opportunities, use Google AdSense!

There are two separate ingredients to living your dream by creating income with affiliate programs online. They are vital to your success both as a sponsor and as a downline member. Your role as a sponsor and your role as an active affiliate in your chosen program are equally important if you wish to truly increase your earning power.

Let's first look at the fact that most people tend to come to the internet with a lotto mentality hoping to make big money fast. They believe the hype. They tend to pogo stick from one money making opportunity to another in hopes of finding the gold and yet fail to do the easy stuff that really does create that lifestyle they desire to achieve.

In grade school your teacher probably said something like "ok let's settle down" well the same can apply to both sponsors and members. SETTLE DOWN! To make real income anywhere online or off doesn't matter, it's a real business and it will take three to five years to develop a successful business. Not five to ten minutes like the lotto mentality would dictate.

Don't believe the hype. Become a good member and be a great sponsor who over delivers on support, training and personal help. You know old school, one on one with your new members. These are the tools successful sponsors in any program have mastered and it took a lot longer than five minutes. In order for you to be a great sponsor you first have to be a great affiliate so let's look at the to do list.

Affiliates, downline or team members can also be considered customers and clients, leads and contacts. The people are the constant needed for any business to thrive. Being an active and involved affiliate member yourself is easy to accomplish and anyone who is serious about being in business and creating the income from affiliate programs "that you can brag about" will have to get seriously involved in certain actions and steps to pull it all together over time, and they are:

1. Login to your account! Most people because they are pogo sticking around looking for gold (and only finding dirt) have only went so far as to fill out the form on the page to join xyz affiliate program. They failed to complete the next step which is to login and take a look around. So if this is you, here is your to do list.

a. Login using your username and password and fill in your correct contact information. Why use a bogus email or phone number? It accomplishes the opposite of what you are looking for. Without connecting to other people in the program you will not grow and you will not make money. How is your sponsor supposed to contact you?

b. Once logged in click every button and link. Everywhere you can fill out your own information for any of the downline programs in your members area, you should have your affiliate id in it so you get the growth from your marketing efforts and not someone else. Do the paper work.

c. If the program requires you to surf do it! After all, didn't you need more traffic or leads when you signed up? Use the program you just joined to it's fullest so you can easily help and train Your new member how to use the system successfully as well. This is the first step to being a great sponsor and the beginning of your affiliate income.

d. Promote it! Why join if you have no intention of actively promoting it to create the growth you need to make money from that particular program. Otherwise it's just another program that "failed to produce?" on your list. most likely it was not the program that failed but you, because you took no action.

e. When you need help ASK YOUR SPONSOR! They should be your first line of information when you need answers quick. Remember that when you are the sponsor, using a fake email or having no phone number is not a good way to do business and if your downline cannot get a hold of you they will pogo stick right out of your income stream into someone else's.

f. Attend any and all online free workshops, training classes or special meetings related to that program so you ask the questions you need answers to. This is the best place to bring your own new referrals into your new program too so they can not only meet with you live but meet the other members in the program. The community will help warm your new lead and help get through any trouble spots they may run into.

By accomplishing these tasks as a free affiliate of any program you will be training yourself to be a great sponsor who gets incredible results from these simple steps. As a sponsor how do you "over deliver" to your customers, downline members and team mates you ask? Well it has to do with first really understanding the program you are in, knowing it well enough to answer any questions your people may have and mentoring them so they to can achieve the success they are looking for. There is a great PDF file on how to wow your customers and keep them coming back forever and you can get it here for free.

Read it, follow the steps above and focus focus focus until you see the results you want. Your success is not guaranteed and neither is failure. You reap what you sow so be the best affiliate you can be in the program you choose to represent, strive to be the best sponsor to your own referral, your clients, and always be willing to learn how to help before you learn how to profit. This will increase you earning power and increase your online business success for years to come.

95% of all affiliates make $0 - $100 a year. I don't know about you, but in my books, this is not a living. In this quick “How To” guide, we'll take a look at how you can become part of the 5% who ARE making their living online. This guide does not guarantee that you'll make a fortune, but it will point you in the right direction if you're interested in making a living as an affiliate.

1. Mindset: Get in touch with your grey matter. Program your mind with positive, committed thoughts. If you can believe it,you can achieve it. It sounds a bit like a sales seminar, but bottom line is, if you don't believe you can make a living online, you won't. You have to be committed. Commit to yourself that you will develop an income online – no matter what it takes. Think of your business as a bacon and eggs breakfast. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed!

2. Viewpoint: This is your business. Once you've accomplished your first hurdle and committed yourself to making this work, you have to look at your business from the proper viewpoint. No rose coloured glasses here. This is your business. You are the CEO of your own marketing company. You can choose to offer your services to one or several companies. Bottom line, you are responsible for every action in your company. Every decision you make affects your bottom line.

3. Learning Curve: Expect it. Becoming an affiliate is like going to college or university. You start at the beginning, learn the basics and build on what you learn. Take it step-by-step and you'll build a much stronger business. Think of it like becoming a doctor. One doesn't decide to become a doctor with the expectation of opening a successful practice one week from now. It takes time to learn the products or services you're marketing and it takes time to learn to run your business.

4. Budget: Time and money. Set a general budget for both. As a business owner, you'll use plenty of time developing and promoting your affiliate business. Budget as much time as you can each day and make sure you use your time wisely. Set up a budget for your monetary expenses too. You can run a business online with a shoestring budget, just don't expect a mammoth income in the beginning. The more you can invest in your business, the better. This doesn't mean that simply throwing money at your business will make it grow. Every dollar that goes out your door, needs to come back in and bring another dollar with it.

5. Goals: s/he shoots - s/he scores! Your goals will get you through the tough times. There'll be lots of days when you feel like quitting. If you make your goals tangible, you'll make it through the tough days. Money isn't a motivator, but what money can buy, is. Set your goals for a family vacation, a new car, boat, or home. It's much easier to get excited about a shiny red corvette in your driveway than $100,000 sitting in your bank account. Money is only numbers on a pieceof paper or a computer screen, but it can bring you a luxurious lifestyle, and that's where the fun is.

6. Nuts and Bolts: Once you've got your house in order, with the proper mindset, you're looking at your business from a realistic viewpoint, you've got an open mind and you're ready to learn, you've set aside some time and money and you've got pictures of your dream house, car and vacation plastered on your wall, you're ready to go hunting. The next step is to find a business that interests you and offers an affiliate program with a reasonable commission. For information products, one of the most popular and profitable online, you can and should expect a commission of 25% or more.

Pick a product that interests you. Buy it and use it. Your business is based on your recommendations of a product or service. If you haven't used it, how can you recommend it? Avoid running around in circles after the newest, hottest selling product of the day, it only leaves you dizzy and broke.

Choose a product you're interested in. If you like astronomy, becoming an affiliate of a star chart company may be a good fit. Selling women's pantyhose may not.

7. Look before you leap: Finding a company to represent as an affiliate is one thing, finding a company that respects its affiliates is another. Do a bit of research before you jump on the bandwagon. Send an email to the company as if you're a potential customer. 24 – 48 hours is a good response time. This shows that someone is actually running the company. It also gives you an idea of their commitment. Generally, the faster the response, the more committed the company is to doing business. The quality of the response is also important.Did the response answer your question? Was it written in a friendly, professional manor? Did they answer your question directly or simply send you to a FAQ sheet?

8. Flip the switch: If everything checks out up to this point,then your next step is to take action. Fill out the affiliate application form and get your affiliate URL. Now the ball is in your court. It's time to get down to brass tacks. If you freeze now, you make no money and flush your goals down the toilet. If you take action, you make it one step closer to your goals.

9. If you build it – they will come: OK not really, but you do have to build it. If you want to maximize your income and be taken seriously, you need to own a website. Just like a brick and mortar business, you need a professional location to offer your products. Yes, you get an affiliate URL when you sign up as an affiliate, but promoting an affiliate link looks amateur and will help you LOSE 98% of your sales. We'll cover this in point 10.

10. Follow-up = Sales: Only 2% of your prospects will sign up or buy what you're offering, on their first visit. 98% of yoursales will be made from your follow up. There's a very simple method for following up and making sales automatically.

i. Check your favourite search engine to locate a free ebook, software program or report that relates to your offer. If you're promoting a website that sells peanut butter, a free peanut butter recipe book would be a good match. Your give-away must always relate to the product you're promoting to maximize the results of this system.

ii. Build a page on your website to give away your free peanutbutter recipe book. Design the page as if you were designing a sales page. Make people's mouths water until they want the recipes so bad they'd gladly pay for them, but then give it to them free. All they have to do is fill in their name and email address in the simple form and you'll send their recipe book to them instantly via email.

iii. As soon as your peanut butter prospect fills out the formon your site and clicks the send button, they are taken to your affiliate URL where they can buy peanut butter. At the same time, the peanut butter recipe book is sent to their email address.

iv. Now your peanut butter prospect receives an email from you each week with new tips and useful peanut butter information. This information positions you as a peanut butterexpert and gives you the opportunity to promote your peanut butter affiliate website once a week, to hot prospects. This is where you'll make 98% of your sales.

Although this may seem like an overwhelming amount of work for the beginner, it's all very simple. The whole process is run from an autoresponder, a simple piece of email software that automatically sends your prewritten email messages on a predetermined schedule.

Your success as an affiliate is determined by you. 95% of the people that read this simple How To guide will do nothing withit. 5% of the people that read this guide will put all the pieces in place and start making a living as an affiliate. You have to decide which side of the coin you want to be on.

The standard way to make money from Ebooks is to sell them to our website visitors and our mailing list.

But what if we don’t have many website visitors, and don’t have a huge mailing list?

How do we sell them? And is selling the Ebook the only way to make money out of them?

This series of articles will be in three parts:

Part one: How to make money from Affiliate Ebooks without selling them.

Part two: How to use Ebooks and Ebay to build your mailing list.

Part three: How to use Ebooks to drive more visitors to your site.


First, let’s look at some other ways to make money from Ebooks.

One way is to give them away! But how does that make money for me? You may ask!

Let’s say we have an Ebook that we acquired from someone else and we have full re-sale rights.

Inside this Ebook there are usually one or two, (maybe more) active links to the affiliate program that we got the Ebook from.

These links will be traceable links to either the affiliate that sold or gave us the Ebook or the owner of the Affiliate program.

Now if we click on one of those links and go to the affiliate program, find something we need and buy it! Who gets the commission for the sale?

The person that gave/sold us the Ebook!

Now we can just sell the Ebook and make a few dollars, but if we want more money we have to sell more Ebooks, right?  The answer is yes and no.

Let’s look at us selling more Ebooks first, we sell more and make a little bit more money, those Ebooks are going to go out to more people, which might click on the link in it, when they do, who gets the commission on any sales? The answer is the affiliate who gave/sold us the Ebook.

It’s plain to see who is leveraging and earning more money for less effort isn’t it?

So what we do is become an affiliate! Then go about the business of giving our Ebook away to as many people as possible, who will then try to sell it to others, who will in turn do the same, etc… so this way WE are the ones using leverage, and making more money!

But wait a minute! Why would anyone want to do that for us, wouldn’t they think like us and become an affiliate? The answer is YES! That’s the idea!

Now, they join as an affiliate through us, and put their affiliate URL in the Ebook and then they promoted as vigorously as we did! This is the ultimate goal for us! BECAUSE, they joined the affiliate program through us, they are now a “second tier” in our affiliate account.

So now, not only do we get a large percentage in commission from anyone that buys something through our affiliate link in the Ebooks we promote, but we also get a small percentage for any sales generated by our second tier!

This can go on and on depending on the particular affiliate program, but it’s plain to see the “viral effect” this would have on our affiliate link.

Many people will be willing to add our Ebook to their emailing list as a way of adding value to their customers, if it’s free then why not! This will send our links all over the planet, along with the steps outlined above.

This is one way that Ebooks can be used to make money, there are many, many other ways, so we should always think about other ways and means to leverage our efforts this is the secret to successful marketing.