Using Affiliate Programs To Make Money On The Internet
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| Keep Using Affiliate Programs To Make Money On The Internet |
Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin
There are several advantages to using affiliate programs to make money on the internet.
First of all, however, just what IS an affiliate program?
One of the first and best known affiliate programs was offered by Amazon.com. They offered individuals the opportunity to link to their site, and paid commissions for sales generated through these links. The concept spread, and while some companies, such as Amazon.com, still run their own affiliate programs, many partner with organizations such as CommissionJunction, Linkshare, Clickbank, or ShareASale which handles the adminstrative side, hosts banners, etc.
One of the best ways for a beginner to use affiliate links is to first prepare a web page or web site based on a theme, providing lots of pertinent information on a given subject. It could be anything from the ever popular subject of weight loss or something as esoteric as hair removal!
In addition to, or in place of information in the form of articles or essays, the site may provide updated statistics on a subject, links to other pertinent sites...use your imagination.
Once the site and subject are in place, the next job is to find companies which provide products or services that someone visiting the site would find to be of interest. Since someone theoretically arrived at the site because of an interest in the subject, they might be interested in additional information or related products. For example, at http://cat-and-kitten.com/ there are links to PetSmart (Linkshare), a natural pet health store (Commission Junction), pet health insurance (Commission Junction), and several downloadable ebooks on the subject of cats (Clickbank).
There are several benefits and advantages of affiliate marketing:
1. No selling: Isn't that great? You can really provide pertinent content that helps people and benefit from sales that they choose to make.
NOTE: Don't know a lot about anything, or can't write? There are plenty of sites such as JustArticles.com where you can hire people to write articles for you. Other organizations such as Niche-Content-Packages.com provide articles, images, and keyword analysis,
2. No large investment required: You can register a domain name and host a site for less than $50 a year! I know because I did it for my brother-in-law yesterday. Site design may be a little tricky, but if you have your information, you can get a site designed for less than $100. In fact, with a little study of html, you can design the site yourself! There are also programs such as FrontPage which allow you to create a web page or website with little or no knowledge of html or web page design.
NOTE: Have information on a subject but don't have the money to hire a designer and can't afford to register a domain name and host a site? Create a blog! That's usually free, and, if your information is even of a little value, you can soon have lots of traffic - people interested in your subject.
3. No inventory. Your job is simply to send potential customers to the company that actually handles everything else, including warehousing and distribution.
4. You don't deal directly with customers. Once your site is up with links in place, any sales generated, along with any processing, returns, or follow-up will be handled by the company with which you affiliated.
5. Earn while you sleep. Your website, with links, is up 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and someone in Bombay may order at 2 AM your time, and you won't know a thing about it until you check your stats or get your check. By the way, many services such as Commission Junction will make deposits directly into your account if you select that option. Believe me, it's great to open your bank statement and find that money has been deposited to your account from one or more of these services. If you're out of town a lot like I am, it's a great option
There are many ways you can send traffic to your website, and that's another article entirely, but submit your site to search engines and directories, advertise in newsletters relevant to your subject, visit forums on your topic and make sure you leave a link to your site in your signature. These are just a few ways of advertising your site.
Using An Ad tracker Is Key To The Affiliate Marketer
There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true, however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and proceed to the business site to buy the products. No click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.
You can actually generate a full-time income by means of affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check your site and update it and to watch over the development of your marketing program. Does this sound so easy?
It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program.
What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software or program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors of your site and by other customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline. This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.
Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those who opened your email clicked through the business site and purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and many other pertinent facts and figures you need.
Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth continuing. This would also help you determine which of your marketing strategies is most effective and which is most beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.
Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts. That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn big in an instant.
If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again, keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure. If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track towards success!
Why would you want to create a mini affiliate site in the first place? Well, it sets you apart from the crowd. If you are promoting a product via an affiliate program, and you are using the same promotion material that the program offers, yoour ads will look EXACTLY like everyone elses, whose promoting the same product.
So, if your potential buyers have seen the ad already via other affiliates, and they didn't buy then, why would they buy from you instead?
Having your own mini affiliate site offers you huge benefits over those other affiliates who do not have their own site.
The first, and probably most important benefit is that you control the content that appears on your own web site. Rather than relying on the product sellers marketing material, you can create a content driven, interactive site that gets people talking about the product and keeping their interest. You could add things like discussion boards or forums, surveys and polls, and write your own content surrounding the product topic.
Secondly, you control how you promote your site. You could use pay-per-click campaigns such as Google Adwords and Overture campaigns. Some affiliate program owners will restrict you on trademarked terms, but outside of that, you have control.
You could write articles based on the topic of you affiliate product. Post these up on your site to keep your visitors there, and also distribute them around the internet to build exposure and publicity. (see www.trafficforwords.com for explanation of how to distribute your articles for maximum web site promotion).
Another great bonus is that, while your visitors are at your site, you have the option of collecting their contact details so that you can follow them up. Having your own opt-in list is absolutely essential if you are to maintain a healthy online income through affiliate programs.
Creating your mini affiliate site is not neccessarily a difficult task, but there are no guarantees that you will succeed either. You will need to work at making your offers so appealing that your visitors just have to make that purchase.
The reason you would create a mini affiliate site is to make your offer look more appealing than all the other affiliates promoting the same thing. In effect, you are disguising the offer by presenting it in a way that is more appealing to your potential buyers. By doing so, you are more likely to get the order than the next hopeful affiliate.
A great way to help you succeed along the way, is to make the offer your own. By that, I mean offer something that makes your presentation unique. Ok, so your prospects have probably seen the standard affiliate material for your product dozens of times already. They weren't impressed as they haven't bought the product yet. All the other affiliates are in the same boat because they're all using the same marketing copy.
Your mini affiliate site, however, looks different, because you have written your own content surrounding the product, and have given those prospects something new and fresh to look at. The next step is to add more to the offer. Give them a special bonus that they can't get elsewhere to entice them into buying. So now, not only does your offer look different, it actually IS different. So, even if they were on the brink of buying from one of your competing affiliates, they probably won't now because they want that extra bonus.
Building your web site and getting it all ready is now so easy. Much easier than it havs ever been before. Domain names are ridiculously low, and hosting can be obtained free, and without banners (see www.popurl.com/doteasy for details). This means that although you are spending money on creating your site, the outlay is so low, that the increase in commission from your affiliate product will far outweigh the costs.
Great places to buy domains are www.namecheap.com and www.godaddy.com. These two are highly recommended around the internet and offer very, very competitive pricing.
The absolute best way to start getting targeted traffic to your site is to use pay-per-click campaigns. You can practically pick which people you want to visit your site by selecting your keywords carefully and managing your campaigns rigidly. It also means that you can start getting traffic almost immediately. To get you started, I would recommend that you look at Google Adwords and an Overture campaign. These two search systems together should give you at least 75% of the traffic you can obtain.
If you would like to find a listing of all known pay-per-click search engines, visit www.payperclicksearchengines.com. A very valuable resource and you can pick up more advertising tips from there.
There's one tip with pay-per-click search engines that could save you a lot of money in wasted advertising and will probably even make you more money. It's simple really. When you're writing your headline for your ad, make it as specific as possible. For instance, if you're selling an ebook for $19.95 on gaining top search engine rankings, you could use a heading like this.
"$19.95 Ebook Shows You How To Get Top Search Engine Ranking"
or
"Top Search Engine Rankings For Only $19.95"
By being upfront about the price in your heading, you will avoid having to pay for clicks where people are searching for free resources. If they know the price is $19.95 before they even click, they will more than likely move on to the next ad. Not always, of course, but should hopefully reduce the occurrences.
There are more resources available for managing your pay-per-click campaigns, so I would suggest doing some research. If your campaigns are not setup properly or are not targeted enough, or even if they are targeting keywords that are too popular, your advertising budget could disappear very quickly. Be warned, and be careful.
You need to be aware of your conversion ratios, so you need to track your visitors and hits and monitor your sales via the affiliate program as often as possible. Once you know what your conversion ratios are, you will be in a better position to work out how much you can spend per click to make a healthy profit. Once you have the balance right, you can practically 'set it and forget it', and let the money roll in!
38 million people have put up their very first websites online this year 2005 alone. It is estimated that by 2008, the internet sales industry will top then dollar bank. And to think, majority of those sites will be offering different affiliate programs for people to choose and participate into.
This only means one thing. It is easier now to find the right web host for your application. The possibility of quality web hosting companies separating themselves from the rest of the industry is anticipated. If this is done, the unprofessional and incompetent ones will suffer.
Support will be the number one consideration for people when choosing a web host. It will be obvious that traditional advertising will become less and less effective. Most people would rather opt for the web host based on things that they see and hear. Also based on the recommendations by those who have tried them and have proved to be a successful.
Over the past years, web hosting has grown bigger than it used to be. With more companies getting into this business and finding the many benefits it can give them, the demand for web hosting has never been higher. These seem to be the trend of today.
This is a great opportunity for web hosting affiliates and resellers alike. There would hundreds of web hosting and programs to choose from that the difficulty in finding the right one for them is not a problem anymore.
How does one become a successful affiliate in the niche markets using web hosting?
If you think about it, everyone who needs a website needs a web hosting company to host it for them. As of now, there is really no leading hosting industry so most people choose hosts based from recommendations. Usually, they get it from the ones that have already availed of a web hosting services.
When you have been with one host for quite some time and seem not to be making much despite all your effort, leave that one and look for another. There is no use in trying to stick to one when you would be before off in another one. Things will only have to get better from there because you already have been in worst situations.
Try this out. If you are quite happy and satisfied with your web host, try to see if they are offering an affiliate program you can participate on. Instead of you paying them, why not make it the other way around; them paying you. The process can be as easy as putting a small “powered by” or “hosted by” link at the bottom of your page and you are already in an affiliate business.
With the many hosts offering affiliate programs, there is the tendency to find the one which you think will work best for you. Think of the product you will be promoting. Pattern them to the site and see if they are catering to the same things as you are.
Why choose paying for your for your web hosting when you do not have to? Try to get paid by letting people know you like your web host.
Always remember that when choosing a web host, choose the one that is known for its fantastic customer support. There are also many hosting affiliate programs. Residual affiliate program is also being hosted. This is the program wherein you get paid a percentage every month for a client that you refer. This can allow you to have a steady source of income. With perseverance, you can even be quite successful in this field.
Web hosting is just one affiliate market you could try out and make some good and continuous income. Just remember that to be successful on your endeavor also means that time, effort and patience is needed.
Nobody has invented the perfect affiliate market yet. But some people do know how to make it big in this kind of market. It is just knowing your kind of market and making the earnings there.
There are a lot of niche markets out there just waiting for the right affiliate to penetrate to them and make that dollars dream come true. Knowing which one to get into is being confident enough of your potentials and the good results you will be getting.
Copyright 2006 Willie Crawford
A few weeks ago I started getting popup warnings saying that given sites were blacklist when I'd click on a link in my email. I'd then be asked if I was sure that I wanted to go to that site.
Since these were sites that I knew to be reputable, I'd click "OK." In many cases, these were sites running special offers for Internet marketing products.
After doing some research, and asking questions on discussion forums, I discovered something shocking. The most recent version of Pegasus (the email client) was apparently triggering these warnings when you clicked a link to a site listed in one of the blacklist databases.
Further research indicated that Pegasus even went so far as to regularly check for updates to this database. Yes, the software running on your desktop, regularly updated itself by accessing a database of blacklisted sites.
A surprising number of MAJOR Internet marketers' sites were in this database. These were sites that had a lot of affiliates who do “silly” things. Some of these were sites that had done major big ticket product launches recently.
What caused the problem in the latter category above? Too many affiliates used the url of the affiliate program's site, and there were simply enough complaints to get given sites blacklisted.
One of the problems with major product launches is that when enough people email for the same promotion, on the same day, then many people can get dozens of emails promoting the same product. This is especially true in the Internet marketing arena where some people subscribe to dozens... even hundreds of ezines. Some of these people out of frustration will file spam complaints!
Some of the recent big ticket launches have offered 50% commission on $997 - $1497 products. Those commissions are nothing to sneeze at! On top of that they often run affiliate contests that offer fabulous prizes. The temptation to get as many promotions out as possible, often using poor techniques,is simply too much for some affiliates!
The solution to the problem caused by too many people emailing using the same affiliate program's domain is simple. First, make sure that you use accepted email practices (Don't Spam). Secondly, use a redirect url or a promotional domain. This offers some protection, in that if complaints are filed due to the massive promotions, the number of complaints against the affiliate program's url will be reduced. This also reduces the chances of YOUR email generating one of those dreaded "Blacklist Alert" popups when your link is clicked upon.
There are side benefits to using redirect url's including the ability to change the destination of the url. If you become displeased with one affiliate program, and find a more suitable competitor, you can change where one of your redirect url's point to. Without this capability, once your links are in cyberspace, you lose control over them!
There are many ways of setting up redirects, to include redirects coded into the header of a web page, java script redirects, and php redirects. I won't explain how to set all these up in this article. You can go to any search engine and find hundreds of sites explaining how to do this.
There are also services, and pieces of software, that will redirect url's for you.
My favorite technique is to use a promotional domain. You can purchase a domain, and then, without even building a website, simply redirect that domain’s url to your affiliate url. This takes less than 10 minutes to set up. You can purchase domains for less than $9 a year at: http://WillieCrawford.com/domains
If you read through many of the more than 400 articles that I've written, you'll see that many of the links promoting affiliate products use promotional domains. This is because it work!
Many people also think that affiliate url's look less professional. There are also some people who simply don't like the idea of YOU earning a commission off of their purchase. So when they see an affiliate url they simply snip off the end. This sends them to the base url, and you lose the commission. The customer still pays the same price, but they've just cut you out of a hard-earned commission.
I could give you a dozen other reasons to use redirect url's or promotional domains. However, I feel that just the problems mentioned above should suffice. One other consideration is, how do you think a potential customer feels when he sees one of those popup warnings?
The title of this article begins with "WARNING." That's fully justified, because if you're not heeding the warning, you're losing a major percentage of your affiliate sales!
What Is Wealthy Affiliate All About?
So, what is Wealthy Affiliate all about? The sales page makes a lot of promises, but doesn't give you much detail at all. So let me fill you in!
Wealthy Affiliate is a membership site that has been put together by a couple of young guys called Kyle and Carson. Once joined, these guys promise to guide you through the jungle at is Internet Marketing. Well, I joined in the January of this year. Heres what i found.
Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
Upon signing up, the resources that i was given access to was really quite overwhelming. The site is literally a gold mine for any Internet marketer. You gain immediate access to keyword list, video tutorials, case studies and an excellent private forum that's full of successful marketers who openly help you with any problems that you may have. The Wealthy affiliate members are the best collection of Internet marketers that i have ever come across. My favorite part of wealthy affiliate is without doubt the one on one coaching that Kyle and Carson make available to their members. This alone is worthy of the $29 p/m fee. There are so called gurus out there that charge an absolute fortune for this kind of personal tuition.
So Bottom Line, Do You Recommend Wealthy Affiliate?
I challenge you to find a better site of its type, than Wealthy Affiliate! No, actually i don't, because if you do go out there and attempt to find something better, you will waste an awful lot of time and money and I don't want to be held responsible for it!
Seriously though, if you are in need of genuine expert help with your Internet marketing, or maybe you're new on the scene, then there is not a better place on planet earth to be than Wealthy Affiliate. You owe it to your self to check it out!
Thanks For Reading,
Caiden Felix
It ' s nearly as if the owners of Wealthy Affiliate have no clue how much their membership site is worth.
They continue adding more and more tools, training, and resources, yet they haven ' t increased their price in years.
Wealthy Affiliate University not only provides top - notch affiliate training, it also provides literally thousands of dollars worth of marketing tools - serious tools, too. Not the cheap junk you see everywhere else.
Wealthy Affiliate is an Internet Marketing University where you will learn by interacting with online tools, guides, courses and with genuine people. There are few programs available that have what WealthyAffiliate. com has.
The site is run by two extremely successful internet Marketers, Kyle & Carson. They are constantly coaching and mentoring the members of Wealthy Affiliate towards success - earning money online.
Who Can Benefit From Wealthy Affiliate
Whether you are a Novice with little to no experience with Internet Marketing, or are an advanced marketer with years of experience, Wealthy Affiliate has resources for all levels.
They also have a very active forum worth thousands of dollars to anyone keen to read through the tips and techniques that have been posted.
Who Does NOT belong at Wealthy Affiliate
If you ' re the kind of fellow who thinks that there ' s some mystery system out there where you can just push a button and loads of cash will start falling out of the sky, don ' t even consider joining Wealthy Affiliate.
In fact, if you believe that, you shouldn ' t be at this site at all. Go join some " Easy Guaranteed Money - maker " that will eventually get shut down by the Federal Trade Commission ( did you know that the FTC sometimes goes after people who promote such programs, even if they don ' t own them? )
How long does it take to learn the methods that Wealthy Affiliate teaches?
Obviously each individual is different. But my best belief is that it takes about 40 days for most people to get comfortable with their methods. However, you will have access to a lot of help along the way from the owners and other members of the site. Do not be afraid to ask questions.
How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost?
First of all, I know some of you have paid as much as $3, 000 or more for Internet Marketing coaching programs only to realize that you were totally ripped off. I talked to a few of you about what your coaches were telling you and I was shocked at how little they really knew... and I ' m talking about very basic stuff.
Kyle and Carson on the other hand know their stuff. In fact they ' re so good they each have dedicated Google Account managers. In case you don ' t know what that means, it means that they are incredibly successful online. Google only provides dedicated account managers to the real experts that understand how to make money online using Google.
At the time of this writing, Wealthy Affiliate is priced at $29. 99 / month. You should also have a minimum of $100. 00 for your first round of advertising. Eventually, you will spend more on advertising, but the funds for that will come from a percentage of any profits you make.
To get the 1st month of Wealthy Affiliate for free, you must sign up through my link at the resource box section and stay a member for at least 3 months. Then email me at webmaster@5amuelchan. com after the 3 months you will get your rebate of 100 %. Yes; I will pay you back $29. 99 by Paypal. No one is offering this special discount, you can Google it yourself, I am the only one. The Wealthy Affiliate University is one of the most undervalued programs already. Even at the normal price you won ' t find such a good deal. Don ' t Miss out on this 100 % rebate while it Lasts!
Do you prefer to make money through the Internet simply you do not have sufficient experience or working capital to begin your own online business? You don't need cause to concern, as a lot of internet marketing alternatives exist for you to start out with. Among one these choices, and shall I say the most beneficial, is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing allows for the first time internet marketers like you the opportunity to market something online even without owning your own merchandise to sell. All you've to do is to sign on with an affiliate marketing program, which is generally owned by an online merchant or retailer, and begin picking the merchandises you prefer to promote. As an affiliate, you're paid from the merchant for your services on an commission base, that's if you have targeted a visitor to the merchant's web site and the visitor really purchases something.
Getting an affiliate in an affiliate marketing program is oftentimes fast and easy, and since most affiliate programs, signing up costs also free. But in spite of these and all the profits being assured by affiliate programs, numerous people are all the same uncertain to enter affiliate marketing. Among the reasons why numerous people continue hesitating is the lack of a website to start out marketing his affiliate products with. This at present leads us to the question of whether a website is expected or essential in affiliate marketing or not.
Many people say that one could do affiliate marketing even without a website to start with. Actually, one can really start promoting and marketing his affiliate products even without a website; and there exist numerous ways on how this can be done. In truth, many affiliate marketing strategies that leads to success can exist without actually needing a website. Among these strategies are email marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, writing ezines and engaging in online discussions like forums, chats, message boards and others.
*Email Marketing
Email marketing, or keeping up email lists, is in reality the most popular affiliate marketing scheme that does not involve the affiliate to keep up a website. In this affiliate marketing strategy, what you essentially do is uphold a list of the email ads of your potential purchasers and offer them with content that are relevant with the affiliate merchandises and programs you're promoting. Content that you offer your contacts with not all of the time be promotional, since several individuals feel such types of email annoying. Instead, it would be better if you supply them with something educational and just supply little text advertisements that link to your merchandiser site.
*Offline Promotion
There are several methods on how you'll be able to promote your affiliate products offline. One of the most common medium practised for such promotions is classified ads, leaflets and flyers. Classified ads would broadly speaking work finer likened to the other two since classified ads successful periodicals oftentimes get a broader audience.
*Writing Free e-books
Whenever you experience a knack in writing, authorship an e-book could be the better method for you to advance your affiliate products in the absence of an actual website. Precisely like in emails and ezines, your readers would better value your e-book whenever it's not overly promotional merely rather informative. Make certain, however, to create the contents of your e-books comparative to the actual affiliate products you are promoting. And just like in email marketing, you will be able to just place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of your e-book that links to the merchant's site.
*Writing Free Ezines
Ezines are publications or articles that aim to inform individuals about a particular topic. If you don't have a website and yet want to be an affiliate, you can well use ezines to promote your affiliate products or to insert links to your merchant's site. If you have a website, your ezine article may actually work well as content for your site. But since you have no website, you can just submit your free ezine articles to various websites that hosts ezines, like goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and others.
*Online discussions (Forums, Chats, Message Boards, etc.)
With or without a website, you just can't ignore online discussions because they are great venues for marketing your affiliate products. In chats, forums, message boards and discussion boards with topics related to your products, you can easily find people who may be interested with the products you are promoting.
With all these strategies, it may appear that one really doesn't need to have a website to start marketing his affiliate products and promoting his affiliate programs. Well, starting in an affiliate program without a website may be easy, but getting successful in affiliate marketing without a website is another thing. While one can actually gain enormous success in affiliate marketing even without a website, it is a rare instance that "newbies" like you can reach the same levels of success.
Possessing a website isn't actually a requirement in getting in into an affiliate program, unless otherwise the program owner would expect you to have one. Just while this is so, I'd still urge that you've for yourself have a website, if not at present, then perhaps at a future time. Owning a website produces numerous rewards in affiliate marketing. Because one, it allows for you a place where you are able to creatively promote not solely one of your affiliate merchandises but entirely your affiliate products. With a website, you are able to as well promote your affiliate products to a broader market.
Once more, owning a website is not a essential in affiliate marketing. Merely with the advantages that a website could provide, I'd sooner have one for myself and establish affiliate marketing a lot easier for me.
Affiliate marketing is among the most favorite tools used by many online entrepreneurs this day. It is a great selection for those who want to put up an online marketing speedily and cheaply. However, there is still a large number of the online money maker who
knows a little or even nothing about it. And most of the people who have just discovered this business usually presume that they can easily make big bucks out of it. Well, they’re definitely wrong.
To be wealthy in affiliate marketing business is not an easy task and it will never happen quickly. It’s just like an ongoing job where you need to find out and try diverse advertising strategies and tactics. This may even wish you to sign-up with numerous affiliate
programs just to define which merchants performs well.
Another delusion that affiliates have ‘bout this kind of business is that they expect to earn more if they place just about 10 affiliated banners on just one niche. Well it will not actually work the way you think it would because once your site is flooded with too
many banners that look like a link farm therefore visitors won’t be interested and won’t even bother clicking on any of those. So if you certainly want to promote several affiliate programs in your website, make sure that they tease with the theme and topic of
the rest of the content on your niche. Bear in mind that 3 or 4 affiliated links in your site are enough, depending on the size of the your web page.
There are also someone who suppose that if they add affiliate materials to their website, they can receive sales right away. Possibly they just don’t know that affiliate marketing is all about advertising. If there’s no traffic coming to your website, how can you
expect to benefit any sales? Keep in mind that the more you advertise your affiliate link or the website where the affiliate links are placed, the more clickthru’s these links are likely to receive.
If you want to be involved or you have already joined an affiliate program, but you have the above delusions regarding affiliate marketing, therefore, you might need a trainer to aid you figure out where to begin and what to do in order to achieve.
In the dictionary, the word trainer is defined as a wise and trusted instructor or counsellor. Customarily, these persons are experts in the field they are into. They can deliver expert advice and instruction as well as supervision to another person. So when we
say affiliate marketing trainers, they are experienced counsellors that have made affiliate marketing their specialty. Affiliate marketing trainers can be those persons that have already been triumphant in affiliate marketing and are always willing to share their
experienced-based knowledge from the viewpoint of both the affiliates and the web merchants. And that’s the cause why we come up with this page. It is aimed to give you the stuffs that affiliate trainers should possess and conform and why do they require
these things.
Of course, it is satisfying for an affiliate marketing trainer to know and apply some theories and generalities regarding your online marketing but there’s nothing more helpful and efficient than telling the trainee what works this day and what are the things that
could probably work in the future and if the trend changes. As a trainer, you should be one of the sources of knowledge for your custome and the first one to instruct them on how to create more affiliate earnings. You too, need to be clever and equipped with
the keys to success for affiliate marketers as well as for merchants. And you should guide your trainees as they try to do the things that can help boost their profit because once they do well in that business, it can be counted as one of your great
accomplishments. This also makes you a successful trainer.
There are some articles on affiliate marketing that says, in order to be victorious in affiliate marketing business, you need to encompass and improve these traits: persistence, patience and thirst for knowledge. And as a trainer, it is your job to help your
costomers take in these traits within themselves. Once they’ve already developed the abovementioned character, it willl be very easy for you to explain to them that attaining achievement in affiliate marketing requires sweat, blood and of course, hefty time
commitment. These traits will also instruct them not to give up.
In addition, before you train your trainee to be proficient in email marketing, newsletter marketing, search engine optimization, link exchanges, reciprocal exchanges and advertising in forums, you should first become skillful on these fields. They will surely find
it hard to learn these things alone and without guidance from the one who knows best. So make sure that you are knowledgeable on these things before you accept any invitation to be a trainer. Yes, being a trainer is way harder than succeeding in affiliate
marketing but this task is very rewarding particularly if your trainee become triumphant. The failure of your trainee is your failure too so you must do your very best to be able to bring your trainee on the road to success. Once more, it is never an easy task
and there is nothing you can do about it. After all, that is what affiliate marketing trainers are for.
Have you ever wanted to make money online without having to stock products and do all the necessary accounting, credit card transactions, and shipping? Then affiliate marketing just might be what you're looking for.
Affiliate marketing is a profit-sharing business venture linking a webmaster and an online business. The website owner will position advertisements on his websites to sell the merchant's goods and/or to send possible clients to the merchant's website, and then profits are shared accordingly.
There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:
Getting paid for clicks - Whenever a potential purchaser leaves the affiliate website by "clicking" on the link leading to the merchant's website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate's account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.
Getting paid for completed sales - Whenever a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate's account.
Getting paid for sign-ups - Whenever a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate's account.
For many website owners, this is a good way to make some additional cash by doing something once and then continuing to reap the rewards over time. All it involves is placing an ad on your website. There's no special selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate leverages additional income off of the website promotion he is already doing.
It's also beneficial to the merchant. He doesn’t have to spend any money out of pocket for promotion until a product has sold.
Affiliate marketing has its benefits, but there are also a few drawbacks. For the merchant, there is a danger that an affiliate’s dishonest or unscrupulous practices will tarnish his company’s image and reputation.
The affiliate has to do thorough research on the merchant before agreeing to affiliation. To ensure a satisfying and lucrative business arrangement, find out the answers to these questions before entering into any affiliate agreement:
1. How much commission does the merchant pay? 50% is a good starting point; any less than that and you’ll be spending most of your income on advertising.
2. How often are commissions paid? Make sure you have the financial resources to keep on selling a product if you have to wait a long time before you get paid. Also, find out the minimum commission that you have to earn before you get paid. Of course the best situation is getting paid as soon as you sell.
3. Does the merchant use tracking cookies? You want to make sure that you get recognition as the referring vendor if the customer returns and buys at a later date
4. Does the company pay on successive sales? It is vital that you get paid no matter what approach the customer returns by if you are to build a sustainable income.
5. What promotional means does the merchant offer? Does he offer ads, websites, or articles? It usually works best to write your own promotions, but whatever is provided gets you off to a good start.
Affiliate marketing can be a first-rate starting point for anyone new to internet promotion. Linking up with just the right merchant for you might be tricky; the tips in this article can help, and you need to trust your own judgment. Only you can make the right decisions that will help you achieve your personal financial goals.
Simply put, Affiliate Marketing is the Internet version of commission sales. You make a deal with a company where they agree to pay you some amount of money to display some type of ad to visitors at your site to get them to go to the company’s site and do something.
That something may be as simple as clicking on the ad itself (Pay Per Click), identifying themselves to the advertiser for further action (Pay Per Lead), or getting the visitor to buy something, either on the spot or within an agreed upon timeframe (Pay Per Sale).
There is tremendous debate about who started the first affiliate program, but Amazon’s is probably the most successful (it was started in 1996). Around that time Linkshare, arguably the first affiliate network, was launched. I met with the Linkshare folks when they were first getting started, and they struck me as clever people with a great idea. BeFree, another early ad network that is now part of Commission Junction, was another company that got in early.
Unfortunately the dot com bust also caused a bust for affiliate marketers. Google’s Adsense, combined with a growing economy and Internet ubiquity, brought the business and ecommerce in general back to robust growth.
Can you get rich from affiliate programs? More generally: Can you get rich from Internet Marketing?
Sure. This is America. Just don’t expect to get rich overnight. There’s no such thing as getting rich quick. It takes time, energy, and a lot of hard work. The poster boy for getting rich off the Internet has to be Darren Rouse of problogger.net. Darren admits to making several hundred thousand dollars a year with his blog, which shows other people how to make money on the Internet.
My first observation in getting back into the online world after six years offline is that the people who seem to be making the most money are the people who have products and services that they sell to people who want to make money on the Internet. I think that’s pretty funny, but it’s not going to last forever.
What’s the formula? It’s all about numbers. Get people to visit your site, engage them with your content and your ideas, and get them to do something that will make you money. The more people you can get to the site, the more chances you have to get people to take the action that enriches you.
Since you’re reading this article I am assuming that you think you have a program for getting people to your site that is working well. If not, you shouldn’t be reading about Affiliate Programs…you should be reading about programs for getting good traffic to your site, which I plan to cover at a later time.
Here are some examples of sites that make money, and how much they make (they are from sites for sale listings around the Internet):
A myspace.com support website has 60,000 unique visitors a day and makes about $1.8M per year.
A free tattoo website has 1,500 visitors a day and makes about $6000 a year.
A weight loss blog has 1,600 visitors a day and makes $36,000 a year.
A dictionary, encyclopedia and reference site has 1,800 visitors a day and makes $2,400 a year.
How much will you make? It all depends on the nature of your site, how good the content of your site is, how well the ads are integrated into the site, and if you have chosen the right offers for your audience.
Affiliate marketing can be defined as a widespread method of promotion in which an affiliate is rewarded for every view, sale, and/or registration produced through the affiliate's efforts (depending on the type of affiliate program).
It's similar to collecting commissions as a typical salesperson would. The more the affiliate sells... the more the affiliate gets paid. It's as simple as that!
Compensation calculations vary but are typically based on one of the following:
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - a specific amount is paid for each visitor the affiliate sends
Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) - where the affiliate is paid for registrations or sign-ups
Pay-Per-Sale (PPS) - a specific commission per sale is paid to the affiliate
If your goal is to generate your entire income online you can drive traffic from your subscriber lists, your websites, and from other marketing methods to affiliate links.
What About Product Sales and Marketing?
You'll want to watch for great products and services with the potential to benefit your niche market and your mailing lists. To build trust and income, it's best to recommend only those products that will be of specific interest to them. It's a win-win situation for everyone that way.
When an affiliate is marketing any product, the cost of marketing the product is absorbed by the affiliate, so it's important to keep that cost in mind when promoting products. Typically the higher the percentage of affiliate commissions possible from any quality product, the more that product is worth promoting.
When a product is sold through the affiliate's personal link, depending on the service used, the total sale is divided up among the vendor, the affiliate, the taxing authority, the shipper (if any), and the payment processor.
It is common and expected that all affiliate details be spelled out in the affiliate sign-up process. However, you shouldn't be afraid to contact any vendor to clarify their affiliate program if you have questions. Often you can telephone or email for a fast reply. If they are not willing to answer your questions then you should stay away from them. There are plenty of other quality affiliates programs that would love to have you!
Is a Digital Lifestyle for Me?
Many standard retailers offer very small commissions for affiliate sales while most internet marketers offer around 50%-75% of the sale for being an affiliate of their digitial product. This is why being an affiliate of digital products can be very lucrative in a relatively short period of time.
Although the number of affiliate programs for tangible goods and off-line services is rising, a completely digital lifestyle can be developed solely from digital or downloadable affiliate products that may never take physical form.
Of course it's important to note that as an affiliate of any tangible product, you generally never do more than promote a link to the product online. So in that sense it's basically the same as a digital product.
One of the best places to find digital products to affiliate with is ClickBank.com. They have an automatic affiliate program built into their payment processing service so that affiliate payments are not left up to the product owner to process.
Three other good affiliate programs to check into are:
CJ.com (Commission Junction)
Amazon.com
LinkShare.com
Staying with reputable, well-known internet vendors makes a great deal of sense because you know you will get paid, you know when to expect a check or bank deposit, and you can see your account details online at any time. Plus, if you do have a problem they are more than willing to take care of it.
How Do I Get Started?
There are many ways to start with affiliate marketing, but a basic starting point is to have a web site with text or image affiliate links to products you want to promote. Generally you want to stay focused within a niche or interest group to increase your sales potential. In other words, you don't want to have many different affiliate links to variety of completely different markets on your website. Stick to a similar theme.
If you have used the products, your promotional efforts could include a product review based on your own experience along with images and other supporting information.
Developing an email opt-in list is helpful in affiliate marketing because it gives you the opportunity to find the products and information with the most potential benefit for a group of like-minded individuals (your subscribers) and tell them about it. A targeted list of subscribers, that you have built a good relationship with could be worth thousands of dollars over time.
By promoting affiliate products to several targeted niche markets, it is possible to create a substantial income over time. Especially when the affiliate marketer is only promoting quality products with a real potential to benefit customers within the niche.
In conclusion, affiliate marketing is a great way to build an income without having a product of your own, and without having to do much more than get interested people to view product information through your affiliate links. It's very easy to get started and can eventually put a lot of money in your pocket. But be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort. Making money online through affiliate programs is not easy. If it was everyone would be rich.
When it comes to the best affiliate programs for me, I have considered a couple of things. First, who is my target audience? (And I had to make sure it was not me, a trap that most people fall into). Since most people using the internet are females between 20 and 50 (I read this some place not too long ago). I decided to pick them as my target market and design my site around them. My second consideration was what this group is buying on the internet. What I discovered was that they were shopping for all kinds of things on eBay, Amazon, and Overstock.com.
Upon further research I noticed that this group had a lot of stay at home moms who were interested in earning extra money for various reasons and were heavy into surveys, data entry, and typing jobs.
I spread my research further using information that I gathered from search engines and other websites concentrating in this arena. Here I saw a lot of duplication and not necessary things that I would be comfortable with associating myself. I started to do some thinking on my own and reasoned that if most people use the internet for information, then maybe I should provide some information. So, I have an eBook on how to make money on the internet as a free offer on my website.
I also set up a FREE Newsletter where I offer marketing tips on a continuous basis so that I can stay in touch with my customers. Looking at the web site with what I had up to this point, left some room for creative thinking. My thought was that if these ladies were going to work and shop on my site I should give them some things to shop that are not readily available in every neighborhood shopping strip or mall.
The Dollar store, Golfsmith, and Entrepreneur Magazine were thrown in because of their brand value. And that is it. I know I have a site that I am very comfortable with and think it represents the best affiliate programs for my business. That may change tomorrow, but right now I am having a lot of fun with it. Your approach to finding the best affiliate programs may be different from mine, and that is fine. However, keep in mind that it is a business that you will be getting heavily involved in, so look for what will work best for your personality and your style.
Affiliate programs are a great way to make money, especially if you do not have a product of your own. The majority of affiliate programs are free to join and you can get started with most of them within 24 hours. So what are you waiting for --- get busy and have fun! Copyright © Donald N. Lombardi http://www.HomeBasedBusinessWizard.com
What is the Top Online Business Strategy? Apparently it is wasting a lot time and money getting burned by get rich scams. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I became SICK & TIRED of these so called internet marketing gurus using the same old story to promote their online money making products. They claim to have wasted a lot of time and tons of money trying every get rich quick scam on the internet. Since when does wasting time and money qualify someone as a business authority? If you ask me, anyone who would conduct business like that is just plain Stupid! I’m supposed to trust these guys with my money after they foolishly wasted all of theirs. I’m smart enough to know better and I bet you are too!
I’VE BEEN SUCCESSFUL at making a living on the internet for more that 5 years and have not used my time unwisely or spent my money foolishly. Believe me, there is no genuine get rich quick scheme. However, I do know that a LEGITIMATE online program can help you generate a substantial income. The key is knowing how and where to start.
Actually it is not all that difficult to find a legitimate online program. There is certainly no need to waste any time or money trying everything out there. Just use common sense. There are some basic things that will be included with any decent program.
It should not cost an arm or leg and the information provided must be up to date. Also, make sure it has demonstrated staying power along with responsive & helpful customer support. Finally, the good programs all offer a money back guarantee.
With that criterion you should be able to eliminate about 99.9% of the useless programs out there. Also remember that any legitimate opportunity is going to require time, effort and a little expense. I have been getting good results with the programs that I have chosen to work with. I‘m confident that you would too!
If you wish to learn more about the programs that have been helping me make money visit www.startbizreview.com where you will get honest opinions based on experience.
People just like you are making money online right now! Isn’t it time you did too?
Here’s to your Online Business Success!
Mike Jagoda
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