Working With Affiliate Programs

by: Jude Wright

Working With Affiliate Programs by Jude Wright (c) 2004 Everywhere you look you see affiliate program offers for every product or service that you can think of. Some have fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard products all over the world. In case you don't know, "hard" products are those that you can touch...unlike an ebook or downloadable web template. Many affiliate programs have several thousand affiliates and one or two of the bigger companies have over one million affiliates. What are the advantages of joining an affiliate program? They provide a ready-made business. This is a very big plus for those people who want to earn some kind of living off the Internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to set up a business by themselves. Commissions and rewards are generally good, and the more established programs offer a real chance of advancement to higher and better-paid levels. Other affiliates are usually on hand to offer practical support. What are the limitations? You are restricted in your promotional activities due to the fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site they give you. You won't be able to put such things as banners, images, links, meta tags, etc. onto your page. The URL of your affiliate page is often either too long or contains such awkward things as question marks, which many Search Engines will not index. Any promotional ads or articles have probably already been used by thousands of other people and consequently may have lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve sales or referrals. If the program you have joined has not yet established itself (or in some cases even if it has), then you may encounter problems with payments owed to you not being honored. You also run the risk of low quality products or sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record how many referrals or sales you have made. You may be required to purchase a minimum quantity of the product on a regular basis before you start to qualify for commissions or even before you can become an affiliate. You may not get the technical or affiliate support you might expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate staffing, or the company's negligence. Other people in your downline do nothing to promote the program. At least four of the above limitations can be overcome with a little time and effort. You could, for example, come up with fresher ads to promote the program (provided this is allowed). If the company supplies the email addresses of people in your downline, then you could offer to help the less active members. Very often these people are passive not because they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they don't know HOW to promote effectively! your guidance could mean the difference between no sales or referrals and healthy downlines and residual incomes. As regards promoting your actual page, here are a couple of little tricks that should overcome a number of restrictions: Cloak your Affiliate URL to stop hijackers Affiliate Masker While this will not help you to get listed on the major Search Engines, it will make your web page easier for prospects to remember and type into their browser's address bar. Go to your affiliate page. Place your mouse pointer anywhere on the page and right click once. In the drop-down box choose "View Source". This will display the HTML for the page. Save this to your hard drive as a HTML document using the "Save As" function. Upload the page to your web site. If you don't have a web site then get some free web space from one of these: http://www.tripod.com/ http://www.fortunecity.com/ http://www.hypermart.net/index.gsp http://www.coolchat.com/ http://www.crosswinds.net/ http://www.htmlpublishing.com/ http://www.freehomepages.com/ http://www.pageproducer.com/ Submit your 'new' page to the Search Engines. You are also now able to place banner codes, links, images, testimonials, in fact anything you want onto these pages, because you are in control of the HTML. A word of caution, though. Don't change the actual HTML of your original affiliate page. Just put the other stuff, like banners etc, around it. Making this "mirror page" of your affiliate page will dramatically improve your advertising options.

Why Two-Tier Affiliate Programs are Best

by: John Lynch

When you join an affiliate program or start an affiliate program of your own, you have to decide whether it will be a single tier or two-tier affiliate program. With a single tier program you earn a commission on any sales you make and that is it. If you are running your own affiliate program, you pay your affiliates a commission for any sales they refer and that is all. However, with a two-tier program, affiliates are allowed to recruit sub-affiliates and are paid a small percentage of the sales these sub-affiliates generate. For example, the affiliates may earn a 30% commission for selling product X himself; and when one of the sub-affiliates makes a sale, the affiliate may get a 10% commission as well. This is very profitable for the affiliate as he can recruit an army of sub-affiliates, all earning commissions for him without any effort on his part except for the initial recruiting process. If you are starting an affiliate program of your own should it be two-tier or single tier? Some might shy away from the seeming expense of a two-tier program. But is it really that expensive? Many affiliate program managers make the wrong decision on this. Let's look at an example. You have an affiliate program up and running and an average affiliate joins your program. Mr.Average has a web site that receives average traffic. He also has an ezine with thousands of subscribers published monthly. Mr. Average posts your affiliate links to his web site and promotes your product to his ezine list. Initially, he generates good sales. However, a point comes when he saturates his market with your product and his sales begin to drop. He begins to lose interest in your program and your sales remain small. What happens if you set up a two-tier program? Rather than trying to keep your commission pay outs small, you motivate your existing affiliates to recruit other people to your program. This will exponentially increase your affiliate sales. Would it not be worth paying the referring affiliate a percentage of their sub-affiliates' sales? Now when Mr.Average joins your affiliate program this is what would happen. When he has saturated his market with your product, he would now promote your affiliate program to his customers and ezine subscribers. Many of Mr.Average's customers and subscribers decide to join the affiliate program. This in turn will motivate Mr.Average to continue promoting your products and recruiting affiliates. Now what is the situation? 1) Your income increases because of increased sales. 2) You have a much larger customer base to which you can sell 'backend' products. 3) An increase in your income because of the life time loyalty of the customers referred by your affiliate. 4) An army of sub-affiliates who will sell your products, and in turn promote your affiliate program to their customers and subscribers. The little extra in affiliate sales commission pay outs will be more than compensated for by the exponential sales increase. This is why the two-tier affiliate program is a guaranteed winner and should be the automatic choice for potential affiliates and affiliate program managers. © John Lynch ( For details of two-tier Affiliate Programs go to: http://www.merchant-account-service.com/affiliate_programs.html )

Why Join 2 Tier Affiliate Programs?

by: Terence Tan

Like the more common single tier affiliate programs, 2 tier affiliate programs are a great basis for web-based partnerships between merchants and affiliates. Merchants can focus their efforts on what they should do best-creating high quality products and getting them to customers. Meanwhile, affiliates concentrate on producing interesting content to attract web traffic. And when they successfully refer visitors to buy affiliate products, an affiliatecommission is earned. However, 2 tier affiliate programs have an additional attraction for affiliates. When they sign up sub-affiliates under them, and these sub-affiliates successfully make affiliate sales, the original affiliate also earns a referral commission. The result is that affiliates not only make a profit from their direct sales efforts, but also benefit from the leveraged effects of sub-affiliates under them. While 2 tier affiliate programs are definitely a new and rapidly growing trend in affiliatemarketing, the traditional rules still apply. Choose only good products, with high sales conversions (check out the persuasiveness of the merchants website), and only work with merchants who pay regularly! After all, there's no reason to waste precious traffic on affiliateproducts are hard to sell, or on merchants who don't make it a point to send those commissions on time. All else being equal, 2 Tier Affiliate Programs are a good alternative for webmasters hoping to add an additional stream of revenue to their sites. (Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made) About The Author Terence Tan is the project manager of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multiple Tier Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visithttp://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how 2 Tier Affiliate Programs can multiply your affiliatereferral commissions.

What You Should Know About Affiliate Programs

by: Gabriel Ama

When you start out in the world of the Internet, you will come across different kinds of money-making opportunities and programs. While many promise to make you rich overnight, only very few are genuine opportunities that would lead you to your hearts' desire but certainly not overnight or as fast as you would want. It takes hard and smart work, patience, perseverance and an investment at times, no matter how little, to earn a living on the internet. There are different income opportunities on the internet: Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing or MLM for short as well as Affiliate Programs. This article throws more light on the latter income opportunity. As the name implies, an affiliate program is one in which one gets to earn commissions for marketing and successfully selling a company's or individual's products over the internet. You are in a kind of partnership with the person and you get to earn commissions on every successful sale. The way it works is that you join an affiliate program by signing up on a form through a sponsor's website and the beauty of the program is that you are given an exact same site like the one through which you signed up when you joined the program. The difference between your site and your sponsor's is that you are given an identification or ID that is unique to you just as your sponsor is also given, as well as others in the program. This ID is incorporated in the web address or URL to which visitors who click on are taken and who are interested in either buying a product or joining under you as a sub-affiliate. It is this ID tied to your website in the program that is used to track sales and commissions due to you. Some affiliate programs pay you commissions ranging from about 10% to as high as 75% of product price for your direct sales and commissions also on the sales made by your sub-affiliates. Some of the programs are free to join and only require your marketing the products to earn a commission on every sale while some require you to pay a monthly recurring fee while you market to earn good commissions. Very few programs pay you a monthly commission when you pay a monthly recurring fee, as well as other commissions when you recruit sub-affiliates that also pay the monthly recurring fee. This can be a good source of income that adds up as your downline of sub-affiliates grow from month to month. Unfortunately, affiliate programs have two flaws that one must watch our for. The first and more important is that some fraudsters could join through your affiliate website and when they want to make a purchase, replace your ID with theirs and thereby deprive you of your due commission. Fortunately, there are some affiliate programs that have found a way around this flaw by providing you with a hidden URL with affiliate ID that is difficult to crack by the fraudsters. A second flaw is that some affiliate programs are operated by fraudsters who will just milk you of your hard earned cash by charging you a sign up fee or even a monthly recurring fee and you will continue to wait and wait and nothing ever happens except that you lose your hard earned cash. Even with these flaws, affiliate programs are a nice way to earn good income on the internet. As a starter, what you can do is to join the free ones first and then take time to study how the whole thing works. I assure you that with a little patience, perseverance and willingness to learn, you will begin to identify legitimate affiliate programs that require a fee and you will learn the ropes about marketing them to earn good cash over time to allow you begin to live a life of your dreams. **************************************** Copyright (c) Gabriel Ama. Gabriel Ama uses the Plug-In Profit Site to earn multiple streams of income from the Internet. What about you?... http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-5262 ****************************************

What To Look For When Choosing Affiliate Programs

by: Jonathan Kraft

So you've decided you want to become an Internet Marketer, huh? Will you sell someone else's products or sell your own? If you choose to sell someone else's products, how will you know what to look for? After all, this is a new venture for you. Or maybe it's not. Maybe you have been trying out some affiliate programs which have not brought you any money, or, worse, have not paid you for the affiliate traffic you have sent them. If you are the new person, or the person who is floundering in Internet Marketing, this article will offer you some simple tips for choosing an affiliate program. This article doesn't cover getting traffic to your site, which is another huge piece of the puzzle, and will be covered in a later article, but let's just start with choosing affiliate programs. #1. You should find affiliate programs that: a) are relatively easy to set up (code is either created for you or easy to create) b) will pay you well. This depends on your definition of what being paid well means, but generally, for most beginners, and some novices, if you can see yourself being able to make more than $250/month, the program is at least worth looking at c) give you products which people actually use. There are lots of products in the market which will sell, but do you really want to be selling pet rocks? If you do, please don't take offense. Most legitimate affiliate advice sites won't feature affiliate programs that are exclusively selling something like 8-Track players and tapes. While there are probably collectors out there who would love an 8-track player and cassettes, the fact is that the market is done with 8-tracks. The point is, there should be a genuine need for, or interest in, what you are selling/reselling. So you find a program which meets the above criteria. Now what? Do a Google search on the company. Find out what people are saying about them. You may have to dig a bit, but the combined experience of the professionals (and not-so-professionals) who develop and contribute to the Internet on a regular basis is, collectively, the best source of advice you will find on making money, or affiliate programs, anywhere. If you want advice on some great affiliate programs, you can visit sites which have already reviewed the information about companies and present it to you in a straightforward way. If you are ready to find some great affiliate programs, then you will be able to find categories of affiliate programs on these sites, which will generally represent the type of products you would like to sell. Search engines love content, and so do your site visitors. Content is one of the most important aspects of getting people to your web site, and helping them to see the value in what you're selling. You should strive to choose programs with products which are related to your web site. In other words, if you have a site which features information about the Toyota Camry, you're going to be pretty hard pressed to be able to get your page content matched up so that you could sell, say... baby rattles. Find affiliate programs which relate to what you already do, and then promote those products. Finally, see if you can find someone to actually talk to (ok, email would be okay) who has received regular checks or payments from marketing products. We think that this is, perhaps, the most important part of any affiliate program, because the main reason you promote their products is to receive a check for your efforts. So there you have it, some simple tips for choosing great affiliate programs! Hope this helps you to reach your income goals, and also helps you to develop a long-term plan for on and off-line financial and personal success. Jonathan Kraft has been an online marketer for many years. He is a massage therapist, web designer, legal services broker, has been a high school teacher, and is an all around nice guy. He works with a team of people on www.affiliateadvice.us, where you can check out some great affiliate programs that meet all the above criteria.

What is an Affiliate Program and How Can It Make Me Money?

by: Lori Redfield

You may have heard the buzz terms, 'affiliate programs' or 'associate programs'. Chances are your think of them in one of two ways, either - it's got to be another one of those Internet 'work at home' scams. Or, "That's just out of my league." Promoting affiliate programs is in fact an attractive and viable way to initiate multiple residual income streams. It's not a get rich quick scheme. In fact, to be successful it takes a great deal of work and persistence. It also requires flexibility and an inquisitive nature that embraces trying new ways of marketing until you find something that works for your target audience. What is an affiliate program? Thousands of established businesses set up affiliate programs in order to have people like you promote their products or services. When you sign up for an affiliate program you are given a link with your own unique id embedded into it. With your own unique link it then becomes your job to promote the affiliate program and drive traffic to the businesses website. You never handle sales or products, but each time an interested prospect visits the website through your link and actually purchases something you earn a commission. One of the most effective ways to promote affiliate programs is to find a subject that you are passionate about. Something that (humility aside), you may even consider yourself an expert of. Take that subject and develop a website that is devoted to it. Building a website does not have to be intimidating. There are a tremendous amount of resources available to you to help you build one. You could also have the template of a website designed for you, or you could purchase a website at a price that may surprise you. Once you have your website built, you will submit it to the major search engines and every day set some time aside to promote your website. At the same time, find affiliate programs that complement your content and ad their banner ads or text links to your website. Working with a subject you love insures that you won't become bored with the website. The more content that you add to your site and the more you promote it, the more traffic you will get. It could take a good year to get the site to the point where you are actually surprised at how well it is doing. At that point, it seems to almost effortlessly improve itself. The key is to draw your visitors to the website because you have terrific content. It is even more effective to offer a newsletter that your visitors can opt-in to. This way you can send them monthly newsletters with articles that will interest them, convincing them to frequent your site over and over again. You can also include the affiliate program links in your newsletters as well. In the end, you have indulged in promoting a topic that you are knowledgeable and passionate about; while at the same time have initiated a residual income from. Now you will have even more expertise and confidence, and the next site will be a piece of cake! Lori Redfield is a freelance Internet entrepreneur. She and her husband work solely from home and support their family of five comfortably - with plenty of time for play! You can obtain more information by visiting her websites, www.freelancemom.com andwww.associatehub.com.

Vital Things To Check At Any Affiliate Program

by: Ispas Marin

Affiliate programs are now one of the most popular ways for webmasters with lot of traffic to their sites to earn good money. There are many factors which influence the amount of money earned by an affiliate. The most important is the quality of the affiliate program. So if you want to make lots of money, you must know how to choose an affiliate program. First of all you should look for a web site that has been on the net for some time. That's how you know that you can trust them and you will receive the money you make. There are many untrustworthy programs that fooled a lot of webmasters with promises but they never sent the money. Next step is to check the quality of the products the site is promoting. Don't advertise a product if you wouldn't use it for your self. You shouldn't be blinded by the high commissions an affiliate program is offering. If you join a program with bad products you will damage your image and you won't be able to advertise other products ever because people won't value your opinion. Try to find an affiliate program with a good commission rate because you don't want to waste your time if you can make much more money elsewhere. A good commission would be a 20% to 25% of the product price. We have discussed about the web site, the products and the commissions but none of this matter if the program doesn't have a great tracking system. You should look for programs that track visitors to their site using both CGI and cookies so you'll get your money for the sales you make. It's also good if you can check your stats in real time. Before you sign up in a affiliate program you should first check how long do they track visitors for. There are affiliate programs that track a visitor only once and if they come back another day and buy the product you won't earn ay money. So best for you is to find programs that track visitors for 30 days or more. Then you should be interested on how often the site sends your payment and if you have to earn a fix amount of money before they send them to you. So these are some tips in choosing an affiliate program that will bring you a high income. If a program has most of the things mentioned above then it's worth trying. About the Author: Check http://www.30daysinjuly.com if you are interested in having a 'coach' that will guide you to Internet Success and will show you how to create a profitable online business.

Understanding Affiliate Programs

by: Sylvia White

Years ago before the internet was born, starting your own business was like taking a leap into the unknown. It involved MONEY, TIME, and lots of worry. If you were one of the lucky ones your business was a success, but many were doomed to failure. Now the Internet has evolved, and though many businesses fail possibly through lack of understanding! no one loses a fortune. When someone begins the search for a business on which to make money, it is almost always an affiliate program that catches their eye, probably because most of them say Free To Join. Yes they are free to join, but if you are looking to work and make money it is almost certain that you will have to upgrade and pay a monthly fee. Understanding the program. Any good affiliate programs will have a learning process and you will be told to read and read again until you understand what is required of you. You should also have a mentor, that is someone that is there to help you. He or she will reply to you by email or by messenger, they will help you through any problems to the best of their ability as your success means success for them. The main task of most affiliate programs is to refer others who will sign up and create your down line. Only those that upgrade will be of use to you. Once you begin to receive commission your monthly payment should be taken out automatically thus leaving you free to build up on your commissions. How to refer others to your program! This is where many affiliates fail, the ability to refer is not always easy. If you can build your own website and work to get it on the searches it is a great help as this is almost free advertising. Another way is to traverse other websites and place your ads for the program on them. There are many free ad sites which you will find by placing Free Ad Sites in the search box. Always use a different email box for this project as you are sure to get lots of spam emails back, you do not want to fill your usual inbox with spam. Another way to refer is by using PPC, (pay per click) this can work out expensive but it does work, you will need a certain amount of paid sign ups to cover costs. Google is the most expensive but you can find many cheaper search engines out there, Overture is good and less expensive. Once you start getting paid signups you yourself will have to learn to be a mentor as they are almost certain to require help of some kind. Do your home work and read up on your program in between your other jobs, it is surprising how quickly you learn and find yourself able to answer their questions confidently. You should now be on the road to earning an adequate income, you must give your self at least 12 months before expecting high earnings, it is a slow road but a steady one, usually with residual income that does come in very handy in your retirement. About the Author Sylvia White, Owner of http://www.sylviawh.co.uk http://www.u-want-money.com http://www.geocities.com/sylviaworkathome Make Money Online Opportunity Websites.

Top 5 Tips for Frustrated Affiliate Program Marketers

by: Isaiah Hull

Do you go through affiliate programs like most people go through pairs of socks? Many Internet marketers do. In fact, 97% of all Internet marketers never make a single cent advertising opportunities on the Internet. They jump from one opportunity to the next and never see results. If you want to break free from this cycle of failure-- if you want to earn a living off of your Internet ventures--continue reading. I will tell you exactly how you can earn money from any legitimate affiliate program. In order to get the most information from what I am about to explain to you, you must accept that these methods are not intended to be "secrets." These are scientifically-proven, best-practice methods that all top marketers use. If you want results, you will have to do and continue to do the following five things: 1. Know your product. Do not advertise for a product or affiliate program that you are not currently using. I cannot even count the amount of affiliate programs and product offers I have rejected immediately from people who know very little about what they are actually promoting. If you want to make money selling a product or service, you have to use it, understand it, and be able to convince your prospects that they should own it. If you yourself do not believe in it-- because you have not even tried it--then you will have a hard time convincing anyone else it is worthwhile. 2. Know your field. You must continually become more knowledgeable about the market in which you are selling your product or service. For instance, I try to read at least 50 pages on Internet marketing each day to complement the marketing I do. This keeps me learning about my field. The best part about this is that you can do it without spending any money at all. The Internet is loaded with free content sites where you can find free ebooks and special reports on any subject. The Internet is also loaded with affiliate program promoters who are out-selling you. Use google to find these sites and then reverse engineer them--pick apart the source code, page setup, and content layout to find out how you can become more like your competition who is outselling you. 3. Focus your efforts and limit your innovation. As much as "limiting your innovation" may go against your business instincts, it is an absolute must with a limited marketing budget. Figure out what works for you scientifically by measuring your advertising results. When you find something that works, stick with it. If you are getting traffic from reciprocal links, continue to build them. If you are getting constant sign-ups from your newsletter, improve your newsletter and order more leads. Do not stray far from your original plan. Preset the amount of innovative ideas you want to try out each night, but center your marketing efforts around getting better results from methods that have already worked for you. 4. Spend money wisely. The Internet is loaded with scams and bad information. It is really easy to be tricked into blowing money on "get rich quick" schemes and information that you can find in free resources. I personally have spent thousands of dollars needlessly. But do not get me wrong; I am not saying there are no legitimate affiliate promotion services or information products out there: I am saying that the vast majority of them do not work as well as they say they do. So hold onto your cash. When you find a product that multiple people have personally recommended to you, then consider buying it. Otherwise, conserve your cash for purchasing services or products that will produce hard, definite results, such as email leads for your newsletter or phone leads you can contact personally to promote your program. 5. Remember that your success is dependent on your choices and your work alone. If you get upset about not becoming successful with a specific affiliate program, do not blame the program--blame yourself. Do a thorough analysis of what you could be doing better and how you could be making quantitative progress every single day. There are people who do not pay any money at all for promotional services and yet are still able to make a living just from using free tools on the Internet. If they can do it, there is no reason at all why you cannot. Joining a marketing group or forum in your field will help you realize this reality. Seeing and talking to people who are succeeding in your field will remind you that it is entirely possible to make money online without having a million dollars to begin with. While there are some "secrets" to getting more sign-ups and site visitors, the bigger part of affiliate program marketing is following a sound business plan. If you keep the five concepts I have listed above central to your marketing campaign, you will not fail. But, if you continue to market sporadically--switching from product to product and method to method--you will never break out of that 97% who never make money. Copyright 2004 Isaiah Hull Isaiah Hull publishes Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter that focuses on building successful internet businesses and promoting affiliate programs. Stop byhttp://www.workathomerightnow.net or send a blank email tomailto:workathomerightnow.com to receive a year's subscription for free.

Think: Your affiliate program fortune is in your pockets

by: Jonathan Kraft

Think: Your affiliate program fortune is in your pockets by Jonathan Kraft Your affiliate program fortune is already sitting in your pockets! You just don't know it yet. Please allow me to explain. You have a 9-5, which, with the commute and headaches, has turned into more like an 7:30-6:30. You maybe have kids, a spouse, a dog, a car to repair, and a leaky faucet. You have yard-work, housework, homework, and work-work. However, you understand that people are making money online. You think that you could create a small fortune through affiliate programs, if only you could make it fit in your schedule. You understand some of the basic concepts of setting up a web site. You have an idea for a site focusing on something you know a lot about. You're pretty familiar with making sure your META tags match page content, and you've learned about getting traffic to your site. You know that you can get traffic, because you have a unique perspective or approach to the topic of your site. You might also at some point think about selling some of your own products alongside the affiliate links you have (or would like to) set up. So, where will you find the time to run a site, find affiliate programs, give your visitors great content to read, and begin to create your Internet fortune? The answer is in your thinking. Your thinking has to help you realize that the fortune is not yet in your wallet. The fortune is, however, already in your pockets. I'll say that again. The fortune is ALREADY sitting in your pockets. How can your fortune be in your pockets? Your fortune is in the pockets of TIME you have. You have ten minutes here, and twenty minutes there. You have time while the pot is on the stove boiling water, and you have time while you're waiting for your kids at their soccer practice. You have pockets of time, and if you ever want to have more than just pockets of time, you must learn to use the pockets you do have more effectively, starting today. (This has as much to do with planning your life as it does building a successful and income-producing web site. You can take this skill and apply it all over the place for anything you want to accomplish.) So how can you use your pockets effectively? #1. Decide Make a decision that you are going to work on this project for at least 15 minutes each day, no matter what (you can take two days/week off). You can work more than that, but you must work at least 15 minutes every day on your site. Decide that you are going to make this site become reality within 6 months. (Be realistic with yourself. If you're only working 15 minutes/day, 6 months is a realistic goal.) #2. Take action in the right direction Begin with the end in mind. You have heard this before, but maybe you've never applied it. I'm saying to you now that you should read this article, and then apply the principle. Begin with the end in mind. Take 15 minutes/day for the next 5 days. Get your plan on paper. Figure out what you want your site to look like. Look at the general layout. Keep it simple, so that you can design it, or explain to someone else how to design it. Lay out so that anyone can easily navigate to any page of the site from any other part of the site. Put it on paper first. Have friends (and even strangers if you like) review your site plan. Ask for their honest feedback. Don't be offended if they tell you that you might try changing some things. Take what works and leave out what doesn't. Decide on a color scheme. Color is very important in marketing products. Here is the hazard of not beginning with the end in mind: You will spend hours of time working on completely unrelated projects, surfing the Internet, and reviewing affiliate programs which will not fit into the layout of your site. (Not having a layout for your site would be like climbing a ladder that you couldn't see the top of, but you thought would lead somewhere good, only to realize once you reached the top that your ladder wasn't even leaning against the right wall.) Start with the big picture of what you want your site to look like, and work from that plan. #3. 15 per day Working on it 15 minutes/day, it probably will take 6 months to put together a quality site, so break down the larger project into 15 minute pieces. Work the plan and the design backwards. A good-sized site with lots of content could be about 100 pages. Let's say you're building a site about, oh, I don't know. let's say baseball bats. (It's an example for purposes of this article.) Your site might be broken up into 4 sections like: History of Baseball bats Types of baseball bats The baseball bats of famous players Reviews and places to buy baseball bats online Each of these sections might have 22-25 pages each. So here's how you break it down: Month 1: Every day, you're going to create the content for 1 page in the History section Month 2: Every day, you're going to create the content for 1 page in the Types section .and so on. At this point, all you have done is taken 15 minutes/day to write a short article about some aspect of the larger section. Anyone can find or make 15 minutes of time every day, if this is truly something that they want to do. At the end of four months, writing 1 page/day, you will have written between 80-100 pages worth of content for your site. Now you might be thinking that you don't have 100 pages worth of content to write. That's fine. Take the first two months, develop a 35-50 page site, and then spend 15 minutes/day researching, finding affiliate programs, and getting relevant links into your site. Just use your pockets of time effectively. #4. Bring it all together You're now in month 5, and you're realizing how valuable your pockets really are, because you've created a great site about baseball bats (or whatever you want to create a site about), and you've done it in the pockets of time you had. Now it's time to take 15 minutes/day, and make sure everything is working right, that your pages are aesthetically pleasing, and that people can get around easily on your site. You will also be using these 15 minutes/day to find affiliate programs for your chosen topic, add the links to your site, make sure everything is running well, and then get your site up online. #5. Continue the process In month 6, getting traffic to your site will be where you spend your 15 minutes every day. (How to get links and what kinds of sites you trade links with will be reserved for another time, but continue the pocket principle.) Use the pockets of time you have, and rather than watching someone else on TV build their dream, start building your own dream through online business. You can do it if you realize that you do have small pockets of time, and then use the time in your pockets. If you're willing to do the work to make it happen, and are disciplined enough to build pages and write content no matter what, you will be successful. In short, you have got to start making your pockets more valuable. Thank-you for spending the fortune of your last 10 minute pocket reading my article. I hope it helps you be more effective at Internet affiliate marketing, and that you can apply these ideas and the process elsewhere in your life. About the Author Jonathan Kraft has been specializing in Internet affiliate marketing for nearly 4 years. He works with a team on http://www.affiliateadvice.us, which has been designed to help people of all design and ability levels to find and set up money generating sites through affiliate programs.

The truth about affiliate programs and how to make money online

by: Mac

The truth about affiliate programs and how to make money on the net! Have you ever wondered how to make money sitting at home or even keeping your job while you build a residual income on the internet? You may be struggling to make a living and wanting to find a way of building a residual income for yourself on the internet. I found the biggest challenge in joining the affiliate marketing scene on the web was the isolation I experienced. "Am I doing this correctly?" was the constant question I asked of myself. Like you, maybe, when I was starting off, I wasn't sure if my affiliate links were properly set, I continually worried about whether the search engines would rank me high enough to get traffic. Waiting for indexing was agonizing at times!!!!! Someone with a successful online business, who would have talked to me about their experience in establishing their affiliate networks would have been worth their weight in $$$$$. I would have appreciated a mentor!!! You can talk to us, we have done the homework for you and sorted out the best affiliate programs on the web today. You will have seen all the "hype" about how to earn enormous amounts of money on the Internet. Most of these people have never earned a dollar online!! All they are trying to do is sell you a gimmick that has no substance. It won't earn you a dollar either. If you are fed up and are ready to hear some truth about the internet and affiliate marketing read on. Have you ever heard anyone say "there's no money to be made by promoting affiliate programs"? NOT TRUE. They have either not tried it themselves, or are keeping the secret, not wanting you to share in the wealth. The truth is you can make money online by promoting affiliate programs. A lot of people have been able to leave their jobs and make a fantastic living just by promoting other people's products. Look at this list, just a small sample of BIG brand name companies that use affiliate programs to promote their products online .Amazon.com .Barnes & Noble .Dell .Discover Card .Dollar Rent-a-Car .eBay .Eddie Bauer .Gateway .Gap .KMart .New York Times .NBC .Old Navy .Patagonia .PayLess Shoes .PetSmart .SONY .Sports Authority .Staples .TimeLife .USA Today .Verizon Wireless .Weight Watchers Read this and consider again the value of affiliate programs!!! Commission Junction, Linkshare and BeFree have been built solely to administer online merchants' affiliate programs. We can tell you, form experience, that any company trying to do business on the web WITHOUT an affiliate program nowadays, is going to have a tough time.. The first step in making money online is to get your products! Making money online is not any different from making money anywhere. You need to have in demand, high quality products to sell and an effective method for marketing those products. Finding top quality products to sell is easy. All you have to do is join a reputable affiliate program and resell other people's products for profit. You can make money online as an affiliate every time someone visits your website and clicks on a link to learn more about one of the products Here's how it works: When someone visits your website and clicks on a product link, they will be redirected to a new sales page and have the opportunity to purchase the product. Just for providing the link to the product from your site, you will earn a generous commission every time a sale is made. In fact, all the actual selling, follow-up, product delivery and customer satisfaction issues will be handled for you automatically. Your ONLY job is to promote the website I setup for you (I'll show you how do that... In fact it's really easy!) and cash your checks each month. It really is that simple. Many people earn a full-time income working from home as an affiliate and many can earn over $10000.00 per year in this business. To make that happen, you absolutely must choose affiliate programs that pay generous commissions for top quality products that are in high demand! You can have a professionally designed website 100 % ready to take orders right now! Your new website will be designed to sell products from 5 of the MOST respected, MOST reliable and HIGHEST PAYING affiliate programs in the world. Empowerism SFI Internet Marketing Warriors Traffic Swarm Internet Marketing Center These affiliate programs include international moneymaking ventures like Empowerism who provides a powerful and proven system to take a one-time $25 investment and turn it into $2,000.00 over and over again! You can't lose with all this support and expertise at your fingertips!! Click here http://www.pluginforprofit.com/pips.html and get your new website today. Guaranteed residual income for the rest of your life! About the Author I am a small business owner in New Zealand

The Truth About Affiliate Programs

by: Elena Fawkner

The Truth About Affiliate Programs © 2002 Elena Fawkner Affiliate programs are a brilliant idea. For the owner of the product, they're a way of recruiting a veritable army of salespeople to promote your product without having to pay them a dime unless and until they generate a sale. For the affiliate, they're a great way of earning extra cash from an existing, high-traffic website with virtually zero additional effort. Only problem is, most affiliates don't HAVE an existing, high-traffic website and they're suckered into thinking that it's a simple matter of signing up for an affiliate program and "driving traffic" to the product owner's site using a uniquely-coded URL. Well, it IS that simple. And it isn't. If you don't already have your own high-traffic website, how do you think you're going to drive traffic to the product owner's site in the hope of generating a sale? Well, there are a few ways, actually. And all of them are going to cost you either time or money. First off, you're going to have to spend money on advertising. How much? Well, consider this. Estimates vary but, roughly, only 2-4% of people who see your ad will actually click on your link. Of that 2-4%, only 1% or so of THEM will go on to buy. In addition, it takes, on average, 7 or 8 exposures to your ad before people will click on it. AND to achieve even these piddly numbers your market must be targeted in the first place. This is, as you can see, nothing but a numbers game. Pure and simple. So what does all this mean to you, the advertiser without a website? Well, to start with you're going to want to advertise where a LOT of people are going to see your ad. But not just ANY people. People interested in the product you're wanting to sell - your target market. So this cuts out the free classifieds and FFAs. And it means you're going to have to spend advertising dollars. Where do you go to advertise then? The most effective form of advertising is in ezines. Take mine, for example. At the time of writing, my subscriber database is around 14,000. Each week I run an ad for my own opportunity (in addition to running ads from other paying advertisers). I generally get about 500 click-throughs over the course of the 2 or 3 days following publication. That's a click-through rate of about 3.6%, about in line with the average. If you were to pay to advertise in my ezine, it would cost you $70 for a single classified based on my $5 CPM ($5 per every 1,000 subscribers) pricing formula. This is not an uncommon formula for pricing ezine advertising. You're therefore paying around 14 cents per click. That's not bad. Other than that, what can you do? Well, you can choose to spend time rather than money. An obvious choice considering what I've just said is to start your OWN ezine. Build your own list and over time you will have a large subscriber database to put your ad in front of too ... and it won't cost you a dime. But this takes time and it takes work. It's taken me two and a half years to build a list of 14,000 subscribers. And it takes a few hours of work to put together the ezine itself including writing the feature article. Every week, week in, week out. Is it worth it? Absolutely. And once you're publishing your own ezine, it's a simple enough matter to distribute your articles for other ezine publishers to run in their ezines. That 4 or 5 liner at the end telling readers who you are with a link to your website (or, if you don't have one, the website of the owner of the product you're selling) is effectively free advertising for you. Not all publishers accept article submissions though, so be sure to find out whether they do before submitting your articles to them. But think about this. If you're doing all this work anyway, doesn't it make sense to create your OWN website (in addition to your ezine)? Sure it takes time and it takes work and it takes money (but not a lot - hosting fees can be pretty cheap if you know where to go). But once it's done and you're just in maintenance mode - adding fresh content every few days, uploading your latest ezine and maintaining your archives - your website does so much of the work for you. Generate a few hundred unique visitors a day and you can be getting the same click- through rate to your affiliate site *for nothing* that you were paying someone else 14 cents a click for. EVERY SINGLE DAY. 24/7/365. So, this is the truth about affiliate programs. They're great if you're the product owner and they're great if you can link to your affiliate site from your own high-traffic site. But if you don't have your own site, you're going to have to buy traffic to your affiliate site - either with money, time or both. How many sales are you going to have to generate to earn enough commission to more than cover your time and costs and leave you with a profit? Bottom line? Setting out to make money with affiliate programs before you have your own site in place is putting the cart before the horse. Yes, you want to make money and you want to do it quickly. But it just doesn't work that way. Not with affiliate programs, anyway. So adjust your expectations and do first steps first. It will be slow going to start. It will take you weeks to create a worthwhile site and then MONTHS to generate the kind of traffic you need. But if you take a long-term approach to your business and take the time now to lay the proper foundation, you'll reap the dividends for years to come. ------ ** Reprinting of this article is welcome! ** This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you include the following resource box; and (2) you only mail to a 100% opt-in list. Here's the resource box to use if reprinting this article: ------ Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical home business ideas for the work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com _______________________________________________________________ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elena Fawkner, a lawyer by training, has recently relocated to Los Angeles from her native Melbourne, Australia. Before her move, Elena worked full-time as a corporate lawyer in Australia and has been running "A Home-Based Business Online", her online business dedicated to work-from-home entrepreneurs, part-time since July 1999.

The Multi Level Affiliate Program (MLAP) FAQ

by: Terence Tan

What is a Multi Level Affiliate Program(MLAP)? A MLAP is an affiliate program that is free to join, and pays affiliates a commission when they make a sale, as well as when subaffiliates under them make sales. How is a MLAP better than basic affiliate programs for webmasters, ezine publishers, and forum owners? When affiliates promote products using their affiliate links on their sites,only a small percentage of visitors/members/subscribers will end up buying the products.The other "impressions" are wasted. Because MLAPs are free to join, a proportion of these "wasted" visitors will sign up as subaffiliates to sell products to their freinds and contacts. As a result, when they subsequently make sales (or recruit further subaffiliates), the original affiliate member gets paid a leveraged, passive income through no further effort on his part. Depending on the number of levels the MLAP incorporates, the potential for profit could be HUGE, at no risk! How is a MLAP better for merchants than traditional affiliate programs? While basic affiliate programs are a wonderful no risk, cost per action way for merchants to make sales, their popularity has resulted in a huge abundance of different programs, each competing for the same, limited number of affiliates to promote their products.In fact, recruiting affiliates has become almost as hard as making sales for many merchants. MLAPs offer merchants a way to make their programs and products stand out from the crowd, to recruit new affiliates much more quickly and effectively, thereby boosting their "sales force" and eventual sales and profits. How is a MLAP better than MLM for affiliates? While MLAPs have the huge income potential of MLM programs due to the use of the leveraged downline concept, because they are free to join, they present a zero risk alternative to people wary of losing money in poorly executed MLM programs. How is a MLAP better than MLM for merchants? MLMs, while a very effective and profitable means of product distribution, have been getting a bad reputation because of the poor execution by some companies. The need to first buy a product or pay a joining fee has drawn some criticism, as well as hampered many would be "salesmen" from joining these programs. MLAPs allow merchants to much more effectively win affiliates, without the risk of being labelled a "MLM company". Where is the best place to find MLAPs to join? As MLAPs are still relatively uncommon, it is very hard and time consuming to find them online. An effective way would be to go to a specialised MLAP directory, like Hugeaffiliate.com , which continuously combs the web for such programs to list in an organised manner. Where can I get affiliates for my MLAP? While it is possible to sign up affiliates by listing your MLAP in normal affiliate program directories, it is also very useful to list your MLAPs in specialised directories like Hugeaffiliates.com . This is because this is where most affiliates interested in MLAPs go to locate new programs to join. Where can I learn more about MLAPs? Go to our extensive resource bank and discussion forum designed specially to help both affiliates interested in learining how to make money using MLAPs, as well merchants thinking of setting up their own MLAPs. How popular are MLAPs? While still relatively new, these programs are quickly gaining popularity because of the distinct benefits they offer to both affiliates and merchants. Terence Tan is the founder of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visithttp://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions. (Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made). terence@hugevoice.com

The Best Affiliate Programs Increase Your Website's Earnings

by: Paul Colligan

Taking full advantage of your website's earning potential is as simple as making use of the best affiliate programs available on the Net. Business websites and personal websites can both use affiliate links to earn additional revenue and make the most of their webspace. You'll find that the best affiliate programs on the World Wide Web have some of the biggest names on the Net as potential partners and commission bonuses that you wouldn't believe. Many website owners never even consider using the best affiliate programs to their advantage and struggle every day with marginal sales and minimal income being generated. Not taking advantage of every tool available for generating additional revenue may be the cause of so many disappearing websites. The commissions earned from click through links can mean the difference between making money and making plans to close your website. Let me let you in on a little secret, research shows that text links that can be customized to suit your needs are one of the best ways to add earning potential to your home on the Web. The best affiliate programs make tracking your commissions and referral bonuses easy and let you sit back and make money every day without lifting a finger. Let the traffic your website generates push your ability to make money to new heights and watch your dreams come true. Copyright © - Paul Colligan, the Affiliate Guy, http://www.theaffiliateguy.com

Search Engines, directories, affiliate programs, paid placement

by: Brett Egan

The eagerly awaited conclusion to this interview with Mr John Cussen, Director, Small Business Services for LookSmart International Pty Ltd. Search Engines, directories, affiliate programs, paid placement! Have you ever wondered where the value is for you? Vortex Media recently conducted an exclusive interview with Mr John Cussen, Director, Small Business Services for LookSmart International Pty Ltd. Part one can be viewed at"Vortex Media" Here is the eagerly awaited conclusion to this interview. Vortex Media: Yahoo recently made a US$235 million bid to take over Inktomi search engines and in all probability it will be successful. What impact can you see this having on the services LookSmart will need to provide to maintain market share in Australia? John Cussen: We're still not sure of the implications of Yahoo's decision, but it does highlight how important search is to the major portals. In particular, it emphasises a point that we've been making for some time: major portals are looking for alternatives to Google to supply search results, because Google is now so clearly a competitor to those sites, and is focused on building its own consumer brand. Because the LookSmart Australia brand doesn't compete with our partners Elike Yahoo! Australia & NZ, or ninemsn Efor consumer traffic, we're able to increase our market share in Australia, a trend that's been quite clear over the past 18 months. Vortex Media: There has been great dispute in the past on the effectiveness of "Paid Placement" programs with reports of a vast majority of users avoiding the top 3 - 5 positions of results on search engines known to undertake "Paid Placement" advertising. Can you shed any light on this? And do you think it is the responsibility of search engines/directories to notify their users on which results are "Paid Placement"? John Cussen: Our experience with the LookListings product doesn't indicate a change in behaviour at all. Our experience may be different because relevancy is a primary component of the LookListings search algorithm. I know that other "paid placementEservices use price as the only ranking attribute and I agree that that may not be a sustainable approach. Search engine users learn to avoid irrelevant content. Poorly targeted banner ads had a lot to do with the collapse of the banner advertising market in recent years. Users learned to avoid that part of the page. I'm surprised that some companies in our industry have not learned from that. Our LookListings partners certainly understand that relevance is important to the long-term future of their business, which is why they like our approach with the LookListings product. A high cost per click is of no use to anyone if no one clicks on the link, or if, once they've clicked, the page doesn't turn out to be what they were looking for. Relevancy really matters to both advertisers and the portals which is why we built LookListings the way we did. Vortex Media: Under your "SmartListings" product it is stated that 'Up to 3 URLs per domain' may be included into the LookSmart directory. Are participating clients able to specify which 3 URL's are to be included? John Cussen: Absolutely! Our submission forms include and facility to include titles, descriptions and URLs for each of the three submissions. It's important that the customer tells us which pages are most important to their business. A company may offer 8 different products or services but might specialize in two areas. If that's where they make their money or where they need to find more customers then they should submit links to the homepage plus links to both of those areas. It increases their profile in the directory and multiplies their chance of being found in the search results on our partner sites. Vortex Media: With a large number of websites now being set-up solely for affiliate based Internet Marketing purposes and with this number seeming to increase by the thousands every week, does LookSmart deem these sites to contain relevant material and as such should they be included into the LookSmart directory? And where do affiliate centered sites stand with LookSmart? John Cussen: We assess each submission on its merits. Our guidelines include three relevant requirements here. We require that: a)Your site should contain original content. b)Your site should contain sufficient pages and recognisable content c)Your site cannot mirror or redirect to another website. There are some sites that do not make any attempt to add value and merely have a random list of affiliate links on their site. We reserve the right to reject that submission because they are not offering any value to a search engine user. In the past people have merely submitted an affiliate link to the SmartListings service or set up a page that later redirects to the affiliate link. We reject those submissions as well. However, some sites that gather together affiliate based links do a great job of organizing links and provide original content that helps users find products and services. I have no problem with the site owner making some money for their effort and we will accept those submissions. Vortex Media: Are there any specifications or criteria a website must meet before being considered for inclusion into LookSmart? John Cussen: The SmartListings product is designed for legitimate businesses that already have a functioning web site that is useful to Australian search engine users. Our submission guidelines are merely designed to exclude illegal, offensive, unusable, or irrelevant web sites from the LookSmart Australia Directory. The vast majority of SmartListings submissions are accepted without any problem. The specifics of LookSmartsEguidelines are available"here" and follow the guidelines tab. Vortex Media: If a website has been turned down for inclusion, penalised or blacklisted for any reason, what recourse will the website owner have to get their site reassessed? John Cussen: We provide a simple and fast way to discuss the situation if this does occur. If a site is rejected, we give the specific reason for the rejection and provide the customer with the opportunity to resubmit. The SmartListings service entitles you to resubmit once per URL, at no additional charge. You may request one reconsideration of your site via email to LookSmart within 30 days from the date you received your decline notification. Simply reply to the email you received notifying you that your site was declined, or send an appeal to the SmartListings team at As in "Part 1" we thank Mr John Cussen, Director, Small Business Services for LookSmart International Pty Ltd for his time. "Find out more or list with LookSmart here." copyright Vortex Media 2003 About the Author It's a goldmine. Capitalise your site with a positive cash flow. Simple to understand tips that can quickly improve traffic and sales. FREE additional article request or opt in to informative newsletters and ezine

Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

by: Vickie J Scanlon

If you are not creating articles for your website and your affiliate programs, you should. Why? Even though it may seem like a lot of work, and it may take you time to build -- articles add a valuable commodity to your site -- content. And my friend, the search engines and people alike are always on the lookout for good content. If you are creating articles, you are always looking to find ways to get your article out to the masses - and the more exposure your article has the greater the opportunity that people will read your article and want to visit your website. Should you submit your articles manually or should you use an article marketer submission service that will choose for you -- where your article goes? Is an article submission service a good option for you when submitting articles? I hope to show you both the pros and cons of this service and let you be the judge. Pro to Article Submission Service Article Submission Service can be a great help when your time is limited and you want to get your articles to all the article sites and groups. However, when the service is tiered, based on what you pay and don't pay - you have to be aware of what you are getting.. All services give you a sampling with a free service - and I did find the free service to be on the, well, expected side. After submitting to the free service of an article submission service I received the following: 1. I received several emails that stated my article had been received by a site and would be looked at. This is usual, and a good sign. 2. I received emails from the yahoo groups, which is a good sign but I didn't partake because I knew that I would be receiving articles from other authors on a regular basis and did not want to overwhelm my private email address. Thus, be aware, use a yahoo email address and keep your private email address separate. The article submission to the article sites such as Ezine Articles (Which, by the way, is one of my favorite sites) and Go Articles will require a small outlay of money for each article on a monthly basis. Thus, I would use a submission service if: 1. I had a separate email address to catch the other authors' articles that I would be receiving from the yahoo groups. 2. I wanted to part with my money to take advantage of the service. 3. Needed more time. 4. I have a desire for a wider exposure of my articles and thus, more traffic to my site. Cons of Using an Article Admission Service When looking at anything new, you must determine when it is to your advantage to use a service or to do it yourself. These are some of the issues I would have to overcome: 1. If I do the submission myself, I know that the article or articles have reached it expected destination or destinations - but the exposure my article gets will be limited by the sites that I know. 2. If I'm restricted by General Titles will the article sites kick my article out because of not possibly abiding by the rules. 3. If I do it myself, I can target my article to the specific, intended audience. For me, I will use the paid submission service when I am low on time and I have the money in hand. However, I will not waste my time on the free service because the return is very limited and from what I have seen offers little benefit to my site. To conclude, you need to try different methods of getting your articles out to the masses. And the success of these different methods is dependent on your own satisfaction or lack there of, of the results rendered by such services. My advise, experiment and determine for yourself what services will help your business, who knows, that one service may be the punch in the arm your business needs to grow. And if you want to try an article submission service or would like additional information, you can go to my site athttp://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_Free_Tools.htm and take a look at the Article Submission Service and what it has to offer for yourself. To your success. About The Author Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities, services and products - to meet your budget and needs

Promoting My Affiliate Programs--How?

by: Vickie J Scanlon

Getting your website up, is really just the first phase of your journey to a career on the Internet. You must promote your website, your product or your service to the world. Well, how do you do it? There are many different ways to promote your affiliate program, however, it depends upon what type of program it is, "Your Turnkey Program" or Affiliate Linked-Program for selling a product. Hmm-mm, interesting. What works, what doesn't? GET OUT THE WORD Bulk Emailing - Bulk emailing use to be the craze. Did you notice the word use to be the craze. That has changed with the stricter spam rules and penalties - all to protect us. But bulk emailing can be done, if you have an opt-in list - such as, through a newsletter. But don't overextend the use, you may lose subscribers. Classified Ads - With free classified ads you can definitely get hits - and possibly some sales. But don't choose this as your only way of getting sales. There are some drawbacks. You ask, "What drawbacks". From my own experience, I've encountered individuals requesting information about my program - as a ploy to getting me to listen to their sales pitch. SPAM? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely. The height of annoyance is when they ask me to call them long distance, so that I can speak with them - only to have them give me a sales pitch on their program. However, if you have a classified ad site on your website - you've got yourself a built-in opt-in list. You can gently sell to them, while verifying or thanking them for their ad. Traffic Generators - Traffic generators can work on a turnkey site that many others are also partaking in to generate money for themselves. What I found is traffic generators are better suited for turnkey businesses. It is basically a simple way for you to entice other people in business to look at your program. You know - it's the "I'm not really happy with what I'm doing. I wonder what else is out there" syndrome. Or it's the - "I really need another program so that I'm not a one-man Joe in business" syndrome. In either case, it's a safe place to see what's happening or new on the Internet. Messageboards, Discussion Groups, Forums -- These are great ways to get your message out and be personal at the same time. But you have to follow the rules, and you should contribute constructive and/or helpful information that is relevant to the discussion at hand. This is a time-consuming way to build sales - but a great way to build credibility, business relationships, and sales. Note: Please don't blatantly advertising. This action could cause the following problems to occur: 1) you being banned from the forum; 2) your advertising being eliminated and noted by the administrator; 3) making the other members angry and thus, losing credibility. All in all, follow the rules. I'm currently in a forum - they give you a webpage, and in the back office you are allowed to advertise your services/products of businesses. And trust me, they do read them - and as an added benefit - your links are being picked up by the search engines. Yeah, you got it - more traffic. If you want to join for free or just take a look at it, go to my home page atwww.myaffiliateplace.biz and register. Ezine and Safelist Advertising -- Ezine advertising and safelist advertising are good methods of advertising. In each case, you have to join their list and follow their rules to submit your ads. If you want to try your hand at safelist advertising, I would suggest that you create a separate free email account on Yahoo. Why? A safelist allows all that have joined to submit their ads to you, as well as, you to them. Here, your subject line is your eye catcher - so choose wisely. Ezine advertising is a very good way to advertise your turnkey site, website, product or service. You have the option for free (need to watch for their instructions), and various paid ads. What's great about ezines? It's an opportunity to sell to a more targeted market. The more targeted your market, the better the opportunity to get a sale. Articles - Articles are a great way to get the word out about your website and your product or products. However, please make the article informative - or you'll lose your credibility and the reader. Search Engine Optimization - If you have a website you should submit to the search engines. To review the process on how and where, you can go to my site athttp://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_Info_SEO_Keyword.htm. Linking - Linking is the exchange of your link with that of another webmaster. This can be very beneficial, however, make sure the websites that you link to compliment but does not compete with your site. I've touched on only some of the methods of advertising that you can use to get the word out about your product/service or website. The most important thing to remember is to keep your mind and eyes open for new ways to promote your product or service - and do your research. ==================== Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. She left the corporate world as an Reports Programmer, to begin her journey as an Internet Marketer. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, and how to info. or check her blog for additional insights to the Affiliate Business - http://myaffiliateplace.blogspot.com/

Promoting My Affiliate Programs. How?

by: Vickie J. Scanlon

Getting your website up, is really just the first phase of your journey to a career on the Internet. You must promote your website, your product or your service to the world. Well, how do you do it? Maybe this article might help you in getting started or give you additional ideas. There are many different ways to promote your affiliate program, however, it depends upon what type of program it is, "Your Turnkey Program" or Affiliate Linked-Program for selling a product. Hmm-mm, interesting. What works, what doesn't? GET OUT THE WORD Bulk Emailing - Bulk emailing use to be the craze. Did you notice the word use to be the craze. That has changed with the stricter spam rules and penalties - all to protect us. But bulk emailing can be done, if you have an opt-in list - such as, through a newsletter. But don't overextend the use, you may lose subscribers. Classified Ads - With free classified ads you can definitely get hits - and possibly some sales. But don't choose this as your only way of getting sales. There are some drawbacks. You ask, "What drawbacks". From my own experience, I've encountered individuals requesting information about my program - as a ploy to getting me to listen to their sales pitch. SPAM? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely. The height of annoyance is when they ask me to call them long distance, so that I can speak with them - only to have them give me a sales pitch on their program. However, if you have a classified ad site on your website - you've got yourself a built-in opt-in list. You can gently sell to them, while verifying or thanking them for their ad. Traffic Generators - Traffic generators can work on a turnkey site that many others are also partaking in to generate money for themselves. What I found is traffic generators are better suited for turnkey businesses. It is basically a simple way for you to entice other people in business to look at your program. You know - it's the "I'm not really happy with what I'm doing. I wonder what else is out there" syndrome. Or it's the - "I really need another program so that I'm not a one-man Joe in business" syndrome. In either case, it's a safe place to see what's happening or new on the Internet. Messageboards, Discussion Groups, Forums -- These are great ways to get your message out and be personal at the same time. But you have to follow the rules, and you should contribute constructive and/or helpful information that is relevant to the discussion at hand. This is a time-consuming way to build sales - but a great way to build credibility, business relationships, and sales. Note: Please don't blatantly advertising. This action could cause the following problems to occur: 1) you being banned from the forum; 2) your advertising being eliminated and noted by the administrator; 3) making the other members angry and thus, losing credibility. All in all, follow the rules. I'm currently in a forum - they give you a webpage, and in the back office you are allowed to advertise your services/products of businesses. And trust me, they do read them - and as an added benefit - your links are being picked up by the search engines. Yeah, you got it - more traffic. If you want to join for free or just take a look at it, go to my home page at www.myaffiliateplace.biz and register. Ezine and Safelist Advertising -- Ezine advertising and safelist advertising are good methods of advertising. In each case, you have to join their list and follow their rules to submit your ads. If you want to try your hand at safelist advertising, I would suggest that you create a separate free email account on Yahoo. Why? A safelist allows all that have joined to submit their ads to you, as well as, you to them. Here, your subject line is your eye catcher - so choose wisely. Ezine advertising is a very good way to advertise your turnkey site, website, product or service. You have the option for free (need to watch for their instructions), and various paid ads. What's great about ezines? It's an opportunity to sell to a more targeted market. The more targeted your market, the better the opportunity to get a sale. Articles - Articles are a great way to get the word out about your website and your product or products. However, please make the article informative - or you'll lose your credibility and the reader. Search Engine Optimization - If you have a website you should submit to the search engines. To review the process on how and where, you can go to my site athttp://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_Info_SEO_Keyword.htm. Linking - Linking is the exchange of your link with that of another webmaster. This can be very beneficial, however, make sure the websites that you link to compliment but does not compete with your site. I've touched on only some of the methods of advertising that you can use to get the word out about your product/service or website. The most important thing to remember is to keep your mind and eyes open for new ways to promote your product or service - and do your research. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. She left the corporate world as an Reports Programmer, to begin her journey as an Internet Marketer. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, and how to info. or check her blog for additional insights to the Affiliate Business - http://myaffiliateplace.blogspot.com/

7 Powerful Tactics To Promote Any Affiliate Program Instant

by: Ewen Chia

Copyright 2005 Ewen Chia Affiliate marketing is truly one of the most powerful and easiest models online to generate massive cash quickly, fact is you can get started in minutes from now without the hassle of creating your own products or websites. While there're many factors to consider in the affiliate marketing business, one of the most critical questions I get every time from newer marketers is always... "Ewen, How Do I Promote My Affiliate Link?" Here then are 7 powerful tactics you can use today to promote any affiliate program with: ==> Tactic #1: Your Own Opt-In List If you've your own existing opt-in list this would obviously be the quickest way to start. However I'd like to provide you with some ideas to maximize the response and results you wouldn't otherwise get if you never applied them. It's always a good tactic to provide some kind of time-sensitive bonuses to entice your list to buy through your affiliate link. It has always work and it'll continue to work. You should also do at least 3 follow-up mailings as statistics have proven that you will get the most sales from your 2nd and 3rd mailings. Now what if you don't have your own list to begin with? The most logical action would be to seriously consider building your own money-making list without delay. A complete course to build and profit from your own opt-in list is at http://www.ewenchia.com/listsecrets.htm Alternatively a 'second-rate' method is to use... ==> Tactic #2: Other People's Lists What do I mean by this? One quick method to leverage on someone else's list is through ezine advertising, particularly with solo ads. As in all kinds of advertising, what you want to do besides advertising the affiliate program is also to build your own list. A simple way to do this while promoting the affiliate program is by using a catchy one-two sentence signature file after your name. The best advertising you can get is to pre-qualified targeted lists of like-minded people, especially people with money in hand. While these are rare and even harder to identify, an amazing resource can be found here http://www.ewenchia.com/ultimatetraffic.htm ==> Tactic #3: Google AdWords You can start promoting any affiliate program in less than 15 minutes with pay-per-click advertising, especially Goolge AdWords. Since Jan 6th 2005, there had been some changes to Google's policies regarding advertising of affiliate products on Google AdWords. Without going into boring details, you can still advertise affiliate programs by using landing pages customized to the affiliate program you're promoting. As I've provided in detail exactly how you can use Google AdWords in "Striking Affiliate Gold", I won't repeat it again. You can download a copy of the manual at http://undergroundsalesletters.com/strikegold.pdf ==> Tactic #4: Article Marketing This is one tactic you got to get started on because it works. I've made tons of affiliate sales purely from articles. In fact, one of my articles generated over 25 affiliate sales in a little over 3 days on autopilot. The key to successful article writing is to provide real information and tips. Make sure it doesn't sound like an outright sales pitch. Any recommendations you make should be added value to the article. The recommendation should not be its main purpose. Again I won't be repeating information I've already covered. If you're interested in using articles as an affiliate promotional weapon, download these two revealing reports I've written: http://www.marketingebookreview.com/LifetimeTraffic.pdf http://www.stuffyourinboxwithcash.com/lazy.zip ==> Tactic #5: Leverage On Your Existing Web Pages There're 3 main ways to go about doing this... One is to simply promote your affiliate programs on highly trafficked and relevant pages of your website. Check your website statistics to see which pages visitors view the most. These are great target areas for your promotions, especially if they are relevant to the affiliate product in question. Two, recommend affiliate products on your thank you pages. After a visitor has made a purchase from you or sign up for your ezine, all you've to do is add in a short recommendation of an affiliate product prominently on the thank you page. Third, use your custom error (404) pages as affiliate marketing tools. This is the page that shows up when visitors enter a wrong URL or extension, there's no point in wasting this space so why not use it to promote an affiliate product? ==> Tactic #6: Capture Exit Traffic On Demand You can quickly make extra affiliate sales just by using an exit window or pop up window to promote your affiliate programs. While there're popup killers out there, you'll be surprised just how many percent of people actually install them - I don't. Fact is, pop ups, especially exit pop ups still produce good results. Stick with one tasteful pop-up targeted to your visitors and you'll see great results. ==> Tactic #7: Other Quick And Simple Tips Recommend affiliate products in your 'thank you emails'. This is a no-brainer, whether you're saying thanks for joining your ezine or for buying a product, always give your email recipients an affiliate recommendation for a targeted product you've personally found useful. You can also create autoresponder courses on topics related to the affiliate program you're promoting as a form of follow-up preselling. That's it for now and I hope this article has been useful. If you're interested, you can read the FULL article at http://www.ewenchia.com/affiliate.html Go and profit from your affiliate programs with confidence! About the Author Ewen Chia's Free Secret Manual "Web Money Formula" Reveals How You Can Start Making Quick Cash Online In As Little As 7 Days...Even From Scratch! Click Now For Instant Download: http://www.InstantMarketingSecrets.com

Mining For Gold With The Best Affiliate Programs

by: Colin McDougall

Colin McDougall tinkered around with affiliate programs earning a few dollars, nothing much to write home about, even had his own e-commerce site, known as the man’s mall. In theory that site was supposed to offer all sorts of gadgets for guys. Colin created the site with the concept “build it they will come” but in reality no one did. Like so many dot.com ventures, it was a huge disappointment, lots of hard work and no pay off. Colin says, “The man’s mall failed because I started the venture blindly, I didn’t have a clue how the search engines worked or how to make money with affiliate programs. Without an action plan and a map on how to get the gold it was all pointless. But not anymore, I hit the internet gold mine, a virtual moneymaking machine.” Read on to learn the facts about affiliate marketing and how Colin went from failing on the Internet to making serious money with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is paying off for retailers 2003 online sales are bucking the retail trend. With traditional retail sales down, retailers are forced to do more with less. They’ve shifted budgets away from expensive portal deals to performance-based affiliate marketing and search engine marketing and it’s paying off. (Source: Forrester Research) It’s no surprise that traditional advertisers such as American Express, National Geographic, Toshiba and even Disney are flocking to the emerging affiliate marketing model. Advertisers have a very low risk with affiliate marketing; they simply pay a commission for actual sales. No sales, no commission. Affiliates love it too Affiliates who understand the affiliate marketing business are earning huge incomes, even those who are doing it as a hobby, in many cases, are earning a few hundred to a few thousand extra dollars each month. Jeff Pullen, President of Commission Junction, a third party provider of infrastructure and tracking told the crowd at a recent conference held in Santa Barbara that, “Commissions are up 80% over the previous year”. According to the Affiliate Summit, held in early November 2003 in New York City, affiliate marketing is already a $14 billion industry. (Source: Marketing Sherpa) Online shopping is booming – the future is bright Affiliate marketing works because the pay for performance model makes sense. Plus, people are flocking to the Internet in droves to shop online. According to Forrester Research, a Massachusetts-based research firm, nationally online sales are expected to total $96 billion this year and climb to $229 billion by 2008. Affiliate marketing in a nutshell An affiliate program is a business relationship where one website owner (a “merchant”) agrees to pay another website owner (an “affiliate”) a commission simply for referring customers. Merchants typically manage their affiliate program by joining a commission network such as Commission Junction or LinkShare who provide third-party tracking and infrastructure or by purchasing and installing specialized tracking software on their own server. See Commission Junction and LinkShare.com for a list of merchants who are looking for affiliates to promote their products and services. How Colin got involved with affiliate marketing Colin says: “I found the treasure map; the Affiliate Marketers Handbook written by James Martell,” an entrepreneur and successful affiliate marketer. The first time Colin read the Affiliate Marketers Handbook he mentions, that it was like looking at the horizon through binoculars; he could see where he was headed. The second time reading the book Colin, it was like looking at a road map and seeing how to reach the riches on the horizon. Colin says, “With the book, you learn how to get organized, plan the site, run the business, and focus on the riches along the horizon.” Colin learned firsthand, with the man’s mall, that without understanding the search engines, your business is dead in the water. The “build it they will come” mind set, just doesn’t cut it. As Colin says: “The book’s system for using keywords really makes sense, after my prior experience it’s like this light bulb went off…so that’s how I’m going to attract visitors and making money. In my old business, I was set up to fail, with the handbook I’m set up to win.” Got Dot: How did you go from failing at the Internet to make money? Colin explains, “By reading James’ handbook. His book is real, it’s not the stuff of Internet legends, but it’s an honest, to goodness road map. James really shares what works. I’ve followed his 8-step system™ and now have a bigger house, a bigger car and financial independence. At first, I was amazed at how much the book gives away, but that’s James. He really wants everybody to succeed, he’s got things all laid out in his book. If you follow it the money’s there, it’s up to the reader to go for the gold.” Got Dot: What was it like getting started? Colin says, “In the beginning I was skeptical, making money with affiliate marketing, just seemed unreal. After attending James’ original class in Vancouver, at the prodding of a friend Chuck Anderson, and actually meeting with other people, earning lots of money with affiliate marketing, the whole process really resonated. I knew I could do it, if they could.” Got Dot: Why was that so hard to grasp? Colin: “As a system tech I was working 50% harder for a measly 5% raise, all of $250/month. It was awful. In the class all these people were making a lot more money than me, working just a few hours a day. What a wake up call. I felt like a dummy slaving away at 60 hours a week, with practically nothing to show for it.” Colin adds, “The hard part for me was getting over my past, removing the skepticism, and just running. My disbelief held me back four months. So I started off small spending one hour a day doing affiliate marketing. The beginning search engine traffic and commission checks…just blew me away, talk about a real eye-opener. Nothing like numbers to get a techie excited.” Got Dot: What’s the money like? Colin: “When I first started I earned $400 a month, nearly double my raise as a system tech. By the end of the year I hoped to make $5k a month (my system tech salary). I hit that mark in six months. Within 9 months I earned $120K. The day job is now history. The money’s astounding, it just keeps growing.” Got Dot: What is your product niche? Colin says, “In the beginning, I went after the big paycheck, like credit cards. My newer sites feature things I want to learn more about or hobbies.” Colin follows the same methods for web site construction developed by James Martell. These principals are incorporated into Colin’s successful sites featuring: mortgage loans, furniture slip covers and credit card applications. Got Dot: What is a typical day like? Colin says, “Its ideal. How many fathers can say they have time to play Barbie’s with their daughter? Everyday I work for two hours and spend an afternoon in the park with the family, then another hour or two of work and its dinner time, what a day!” Got Dot: What tips do have for someone starting out? Colin says: “Buy the Affiliate Marketers Handbook, follow it step-by-step. Don’t jump ahead. Devote one hour a day to affiliate marketing, when you get home from work. Make the sacrifice. The short term pain is worth the long term gain. Don’t settle for fool’s gold, searching through the “best affiliate programs”, find the real gold, James Martell’s 8-step system™, it’s within your grasp. Go for the gold.” Colin McDougall followed a simple 8-step-system™ for affiliate marketing created by James Martell, entrepreneur, successful affiliate marketer, and developer of over 70 specialty shopping sites with topics that range from motorized scooters to treadmill comparisons; and also educates people who want to start a homebased business using affiliate programs and the Internet! Colin McDougall is the editor of the credit review site, Only the best credit cards online. You can visit this site at http://www.only-the-best-credit-cards-online.com/