Basic Affiliate Marketing Tips

Affiliate marketing? People look at you quizzically when you tell them that is what you do to make money. Most people have no idea of what affiliate marketing is. They just can’t wrap their minds around the idea even when you explain it to them.

Most will ask how they would start affiliate marketing and how they would choose a product to promote?  This is a common question that has an easy answer. Research your desired niche products and see what kind of demand is there. Use the Google keyword tool to choose a niche that has a lot of monthly searches – over 40,000 searches a month is good enough to get started. Make sure you have enough interest in providing your customers with as much helpful information as you can. If you have no interest, you can still promote the products, it just won’t be as fun.

Next, you will need to apply to become an affiliate through an affiliate marketing company. There are several major affiliate companies that are very highly recommended. One is Clickbank, which offers thousands of information products that people can download after purchase. Some of these products are software products that have a recurring charge and hence brings you a monthly payment without getting a new customer. Other products are solutions to various health problems. Some will teach you to learn a new skill. Some will actually tell you what the best selling products are.

A second company to check out is Google Affiliate Network. Google has combined their affiliate network payment schedule with their Adsense payments. So if you are already getting money from Adsense this is a good fit for you.

Google has thousands of merchants. When you log in to their site, they’ll give you statistics that are important to understand. There is a figure called EPC – and this means earnings per click. There is a 3 month EPC and a 7 day EPC. You’ll see that the higher the numbers, the better chances you have of selling their products. They list these statistics for each merchant. They also show you the merchant’s payout rank. So you’ll be able to see which merchants are paying the most to affiliates. Choose your merchants wisely with help from these statistics.

A third company to check out is Shareasale. They have hundreds of merchants with thousands of products. They will deposit your earnings directly to your checking account on the same day every month. Shareasale is run by Brian Littleton, who is experienced in every aspect of ecommerce. Shareasale has many merchants to choose from and they provide easy ways to make an web page that will display products on your site. They also have some video selling options available.

Affiliate marketing is challenging, but worth all the effort you put into it. You can be your own boss and set your own working hours. Be warned though, you’ll probably work twice as hard as you ever have worked. That’s what happens when you get to follow your passions. It hardly seems like work.

Affiliate Summit West 2010 Review

Affiliate Summit West 2010 was packed with people. Over 4,000 affiliate marketers, merchants, vendors and Internet entrepreneurs networked, absorbed information, played hard and partied till the wee hours of the morning. Jeremy Shoemaker, an Internet entrepreneur wizard, said that this event was the best one he has ever attended. Of course if you see his videos of black jack fun, target shooting practice, and Las Vegas magic, you will see why.

There were many super affiliates in attendance and monthly income stats could not have been better. There were people there reporting incomes varying between $200 a month up to $100,000 a month and probably more. Just an incredible range of statistics. It was hard to believe that the economy could produce this kind of success. Being a New Media Entrepreneur is paying off in a big way.

Affiliate Marketing Tips for 2010

• Make people feel that your web site is “their” web site.
• Make sure your traffic is not reliant on one source.
• Create your own product for the biggest bang for your efforts.
• Answer questions for people.
• Teach people things that they might not know.
• Use videos to get traffic – Youtube.com is the second largest search engine on the web.
• Get your best commission rates by working directly with companies.
• Get people to pay attention to you over time.
• Ask people to share your content.
• Determine the angle that causes people to talk about you.
• Success is sticking with a problem longer than anyone else.
• Rich overnight days ended in 1994.
• You are not going to know what works, your audience will tell you that.
• Build a media asset that will last over time.
• 86% of ezinearticles.com members write less than 10 articles.
• Write more articles and you will get more traffic.
• Treat people the way you want to be treated.

Discover the Power of Influence

Dr. Cialdini, regarded as the most cited social psychologist in the world, powerfully delivered an insightful talk about marketing. His book, Influence, about persuasion and marketing has sold more than 2 million copies. It has been consistently listed in Amazon.com as a best seller and is recommended by Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors in history.

Dr. Cialdini is an expert in understanding the reasons that people comply with requests in business. His Six Principles of Persuasion Reciprocation, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Liking, and Consensus describe how you can produce lasting change in others.

He suggested that as new media entrepreneurs when we encounter people, we need to ask ourselves how we can be of service to them. People are most likely to give back when they are given something of value. What have you given to your audience lately?

Brian Clarke, owner of copyblogger.com teaches people “The Art and Science of Compelling Copy.” The blog, which he started in February of 2006, has 97,398 subscribers and hundreds of thousands of regular readers.

CopyBlogger has earned a Google page rank of 5, which means that the Blog is seen by others as having good authority. Brian has managed to inspire many people to share their expertise with the world by writing good copy for their readers and teaching them exactly how to do it.

Brian taught us that leading your business presentation with admission of fault first, followed by the benefits of your product or service is very powerful in moving people towards acceptance of your product or ideas. Apparently Aristotle developed this art of persuasion more than 2,000 years ago. Aren’t we glad we are catching on now?

Networking With Marketing Gurus

Ask any one of these people what kind of future they look forward to and I think you’ll receive a unanimous vote for prosperous! Affiliate Summit West 2010 was definitely a huge success and one that will not soon be forgotten.

People in this photo from left to right:

Heather Smith, Brian Littleton, Murray Newlands, Bill Swartwout, Jason Rubacky, Heather Blackburn, Adam Riemer, Andrew Crim, Chuck Hamrick, Julie Vazquez, and Jill Pepitone.

Blog World Expo 2009 – John Chow Challenge

John Chow has challenged me to give him reasons why I should be chosen to receive a pass to attend Blog World Expo 2009. He probably doesn’t remember meeting me at the last Blog World Expo in 2008, so I have included my extremely unflattering photograph with him. Learn about this challenge at JohnChow.com

Last year at the Blog World Expo 2008, I was totally inspired by all the talks given by the Fab Five – four of whom are shown in the photograph below (Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, Darren Rouse and John Chow). Notice that ShoeMoney is not in the photograph shown. He must have been off networking.

Anyway, I learned so many things at the conference that helped me with my business plans and I will always be grateful for that.  I don’t really like to reveal numbers about my income levels, but since last year in September, my affiliate income has increased by 660%. My blog traffic is now getting 14,444 unique hits a month and I can live on my affiliate earnings. I owe a lot of this success to the great information that I received from the Fab Five at the Blog World Expo 08.

I was also recently invited to attend the Shareasale ThinkTank that is going to be held in Newport Beach, California.  Without the training that I received at the conference, I never would have been successful enough to be invited to attend. So I thank you Fab Five again. Should you consider me to receive a pass to the conference I would be so grateful. I look forward to learning much more about being successful on the Internet.

Launching a new website – days 14-21

This article is a continuation of a 30 day plan to launch a new website offering personal checks. The goal of the plan was to do something every day to promote the site and see what kind of traffic we’d get. Unfortunately on August 8, the site went into the Google sandbox and none of the pages that were being listed with top positions in Google were being listed anymore. The site is still in the sandbox unfortunately. It’s not hard to tell when your site is in the sandbox because your pages won’t pull up for the search terms they were originally pulling up for.

As you can see from the graph  the site is going through ups and downs in traffic. Most visible is the drastic decrease in traffic on August 8. There is a steady increase, but this is not due to getting out of the sandbox, it is due to some promotion efforts through a company I hired to help.

Originally, I planned not to spend any money during this first thirty day period, but I caved in after the drop in traffic. I hired a company that helped me with this website and asked them to do the same thing for my new site. If you are interested in knowing who they are and what they do, be sure to email me.

The goal is to get between 500 and 700 visitors per day. At that point, the site will be pulling in some decent income.

Sites can be in the sandbox for three to six months so the plan now is to build high authority back links which means getting the site listed in different directories.

The plan now is to:
1. Add quality content to the site through a blog.

2. Work on increasing the number of inbound links (quality links not just any old link).

3. Tweak and improve the SEO quality of your site.

4. Write articles.
So you should be seeing some changes coming soon to the site which will include a WordPress Blog.

Again, the biggest mistake made with this site was to wait until the entire site was done before submitting the site to Google. So if you are working on a new site, be sure and get at least a few pages presentable with a sitemap and submit it. Hopefully that will shorten your stay in the sandbox.

Rewards from Top Affiliate Companies

Custom Direct Wins the Gold Award at the 24th Annual Maryland Performance Excellence Awards

If you are like me, an affiliate marketer, you may not know much about the companies that you are doing affiliate marekting for. I have been an affiliate mareketer for 4checks.com for the past several years and never realized that they actually market for a company called Custom Direct.

Half of the checks that are on www.coolchecks.net are printed by Custom Direct. This company has an outstanding reputation and owns at least 10 different check printing companies.

The CEO of the company, Dale A. Dabbs, has been in the check printing business a long time and he say:

Since 1993, we’ve committed ourselves to making positive strides to continually enhance our people, products and processes to provide satisfaction and value. We put our customers first, and we seek to exceed their expectations. Thatrsquo;s the Custom Direct Difference.

Custom Direct is committed to providing our customers with high-quality, dynamic products, outstanding service, and great support from our talented team. Irsquo;m extremely proud of the people who work for CD and their dedication to helping our Company remain a leader in the industry.quot; – Dale A. Dabbs, CEO

I was happy to hear that they have a good track record and have satisfied customers all over the country.

I think that success as an affiliate marketer comes as a result of associating yourselves with a high quality, reputable company. Custom Direct fits the bill for 4checks.com and therefore…for me at www.coolchecks.net.

What is Market Leverage all about?

Market Leverage

Why join Market Leverage?

Perhaps you have never heard of the affiliate marketing company called Market Leverage? No one has mentioned it to you before. Now, you are wondering what is is and how it can benefit you. Why is Market Leverage always recommended by the top bloggers?

John Chow  and Zac Johnson, two highly respected affiliate marketers are always recommending Market Leverage to their audiences. Why? Because it can make you some incredible money.

Zac Johnson says, “Market Leverage has been one of the fastest growing networks lately as a result of their aggressive ad campaigns and success with making affiliates money. Not only does Market Leverage have a nice amount of offers to choose from, but they are also one of the nicest groups of people around.”

John Chow has a good April Fool’s spoof on getting a job offer from Market Leverage. I know I fell for it hook line and sinker!

Market Leverage is the place where leading online and offline companies place incredible offers for getting customers to listen to their pitches. Hundreds of companies hire Market Leverage to have them send traffic to their advertising offers. 

If you run a website or own one and are you are wondering how to take it to the next level, think about monetizing it with offers from Market Leverage.

Signing up for Market Leverage is free.  Not only is it free, but the people that you refer to Market Leverage can benefit you.

Market Leverage is giving away a lifetime referral bonus for each Publisher you refer to their network!

Earn (5%) five percent of the commission for each and every Publisher you refer that signs up as a MarketLeverage Publisher.

Sign up now by clicking on the banner above.

How do you use Market Leverage to make money?

Market Leverage has hundreds of offers that you can choose from to publish. All of the advertising material is ready to go. You just send people to the offer and if the customer fills out a form or makes a purchase, you make commissions.

For example, if you have a site about finding money for start up businesses, then you might want to direct people to your government grant offer.  This particular government grant offer has over 5 beautiful advertising photographs and pre-written email letters just waiting for you to send to your audience.  You don’t have to come up with any clever gimmicks or advertising letters to get people interested in these offers. That has all been done for you.  One of the advertising photos for a government grant is listed below. 

Market Leverage pays you when people sign up for the offers that you send them to.

Warning: Payouts can be generous and addicting.

Affiliate Programs For The Newbie Marketer

Every day of every year thousands of people flock to the internet to try to earn an income or even seek their fortune.

Not all are lucky enough to succeed – at least not without some guidance along the way.

For the newbie, affiliate marketing programs are a great way to create income for you even without a website. I can say this because of the great alternatives offered by free blogging platforms and free webpage creation sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, etc.

Affiliate marketing programs are where a company offers to pay you a set amount for either a click through from your website, visitors signing up or a commission for a purchase of a product made by someone as a result of being referred from you.

The more people you get to your affiliate page or you send to them through your own site or blog, the greater your chance will be at making a sale and creating an online income.

Even if visitors don’t make a purchase immediately, almost all programs offer cookie duration, normally consisting of 30 – 90 days. What this means, is that as long as the visitors have the cookie in their computers cache, you’ll still receive a profit from the sale.

Certainly the a big portion of your time in maintaining your site will be searching for and implementing various affiliate products. Even though there’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing, you have to take the time to search for the best programs.

If your going to be strictly an affiliate marketer you don’t have to be to concerned with developing a website where you will need to add content in order to get it ranked in the search engines or create a high PR rating for it.

Your main tasks are finding the products and sending visitors to review it.

Affiliate tracking can also be a problem. Once you have applied to become an affiliate for a company, they’ll usually supply you with a personalized link that will contain a code that identifies you as the seller.

Before you start to bring visitors to your affiliate page you may want to consider cloaking the link in order to make it look better and to keep others from stealing your commissions.

It’s very important that you implement this code into your correctly, or you may be sending visitors to the company without receiving a profit on a sale.

Even though most merchants will assume some level of risk with fraud, there is still a level of risk involved. Once you know what you’re doing with affiliate marketing, you’ll be on top well before you know it.

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Discover More – Can You Really Make Money In A Free Business Opportunity?

Are you frustrated by all these websites that use the word free. Do you, like me, feel the word free has to be one of the most overused words in the home business niche. It seems that everyone has a free this and a free that to offer you. So consider this, can you really make money in a free business opportunity.

The short answer to that is, yes you can. Here is how you can do that and we will use affiliate marketing as the business model.

Did you know you can join almost any affiliate marketing program for free? In a matter of a few minutes you can be set up with and affiliate i.d. number that is coded into an affiliate website.

You promote this affiliate website and whenever you make a sale you earn a commission. Your cost to do this is nothing but the time it takes you to promote your free affiliate website.

Before you think you have died and gone to heaven there is a couple of things you should know.

1. Getting traffic to your affiliate web page for free is harder than it sounds. You will have to work hard and master traffic generation methods such as classified ads, article marketing, forum marketing, blogging and so on.

2. Using the affiliate web page given to you by the merchant you are representing is a hard way to make money. If everyone is selling the same product with the same affiliate web site how do you make yourself stand out!

3. A person needs to be followed up with over and over before they buy. This is true both online and offline. Very few people buy much today without thinking it over.

If you promote your affiliate website you are sending traffic to a page that gives you no way to follow up in the future. Your visitor comes to your page, looks it over, and leaves. You have wasted your efforts for nothing.

So how do you get around that? You create your own web site and send visitors to it. You create a landing page and capture names and email addresses into and autoresponder. This is known as building a list and really does work.

Another thing you can do is create a pre sell page where you give a personal testimonial on the product you are selling. This will help you make more sales than the competition who is using the same old affiliate sales page.

So as you can see even affiliate marketing can go from being free to costing you a little bit of money for website hosting and an autoresponder such as aweber. This is still a very little cost compared to setting up a traditional business.

I guess that is why affiliate marketing has become so popular on the internet. I certainly make some very good monthly residual income from affiliate marketing and if you get a chance you should check out Info Product killer which my review can be found on MoneyMasterOnline.com

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