The Internet is a sprawling expanse that covers the Earth. If there are two companies that could arguably be identified as the best and the biggest prowling the Internet they might well be Empowerism and the mighty Strong Future International Marketing Group, better known as SFI.

I know a little bit about each of these organizations because I have helped Empowerism and SFI become what they are by being an active, paid member. I am no longer a member of either opportunity and have not been for some time.

I will write about my experience as a Newcomer with each opportunity and will start with Empowersim. I came to Empowerism as a member of Stone Evans’ Plug-In Profit (PIP) opportunity because joining Empowerism was a requirement of PIP.

I came to SFI the same way, through PIP. The only difference was my membership in Empowerism required a monthly fee of $19.95. While I was not required by PIP to become a paying member of SFI, I did choose immediately to upgrade my membership in SFI with a qualifying purchase of $29.95 monthly.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that both Empowerism and SFI are opportunities that some affiliate marketers have developed successfully. I am not one of those marketers.

Almost all Internet Marketing opportunities tell you that even the village idiot with no experience can make fantastic money when you follow their training programs, advertise like mad, and hang in there until you die.

They, of course, are dead wrong, but it certainly would hurt sales if they suggested that there are some marketers who could not build successful businesses even if their life depended upon it.

Smart, successful marketers know this to be true. If you do not have the skill set, ability, interest level, determination and initiative to make something happen, it will not happen, but who wants to tell a newcomer that they might actually have to do something and invest some money to even have a chance of succeeding.

Even if you try your level best to do everything right, the likelihood of it happening is still problematic.

The owners of the company that present the opportunity and a few distributors may earn some money, but I bet any company would be hard put to show that even 10% of its subscribed members are actually profitable after they subtract their expenses from any commissions earned.

Each of these opportunities give affiliate marketers a connection to a company server which generates a no-charge Internet site to promote their business as well as the company business.

Empowerism allows you to send prospects to any page on your website except the sign-up page. As a newcomer to Internet Marketing, I did not immediately pick up on the significance of this necessity, but it is this: Every prospect my paid advertising generated went to Empowerism and became part of its mailing list, whether my prospect signed up or not.

Every large, successful business tries to leverage its efforts to increase productivity and profits, and Empowerism and SFI are examples of this practice.

Once Empowerism has the e-mail address of a new prospect, whether they join or not, the new prospect is immediately inundated with e-mail pitches by auto-responder, which could potentially sent e-mails to a prospect every day for a year.

When newcomers, eager to learn the nuances of Internet Marketing, respond to dozens of free offers for software programs, secret techniques and insider information from gurus and assorted lesser lights, you can imagine the result.

This barrage of e-mails has nothing to do with the fact that you took advantage of the opportunity. They will continue until you opt-out of the sender’s offerings.

I found Empowerism’s iSend.info auto-responder to be beyond my technical skills and made little use of it. It annoyed me that unless you upgraded your membership Empowerism put its messages on top of your messages, calculated to not miss another opportunity to promote themselves even though the system was advertised to be of greatest benefit to its members.

Then the new Get Response system arrived, apparently because the iSend.info auto-responder system was not working as advertised. After using the Get Response system, it struck me as overpromoted, overused and not very effective.

I used paid advertising to drive hundreds of prospects to Empowerism’s sign-up page, and received the benefit of the 50 leads Empowerism threw in monthly. After months of experience I would learn that Empowerism’s 50 free leads monthly was one of the greatest examples of tokenism known to man. The result was that I sponsored in no one.

Remember that my paid advertising and the advertising of thousands of other members was adding prospects to Empowerism’s ever growing, massive mailing list. I suspect the powers to be at Empowerism were merely recycling names that they already had faster than a hungry man could chow down on a bowl of Cheerios and milk.

I was sitting there, looking at the list of my hundreds of prospects who chose not to sign up and speculating that "you would think that someone would see Empowerism as the best thing since chocolate chip cookies."

Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley

Ed Bagley is the author of Ed Bagley’s Blog, which he publishes daily with fresh, original writing intended to delight, inform, educate and motivate readers. Visit Ed at . . . http://www.edbagleyblog.com

People who look for income opportunities, do often come across the idea of affiliate marketing. At first sight, it looks like it’s just to have a banner posted on their web site to generate income.

The truth is that you need to do a little more than that. You have to test and evaluate every necessary ingredient in your particular affiliate marketing niche. By testing and optimize you will learn how to get the most out of your efforts.

To be able to make money from your web site as an affiliate marketer. You need to get your site and your affiliate program to work together. It’s a team sport with two players, and to win the matches, booth players have to perform well.

Let’s have a look why this compability is so important. Your visitors come to your site because they want information on a specific topic. To be able to recommend a service or a product your visitors may be interested in, you must promote something that are related to your sites theme.

If you try to recommend a product unrelated to your theme, it will only result in a click at the back button. Once your visitor spot a banner or a text link that is not related to your page content. He will think you’re unprofessional. Or worse, he might think you try to scam him.

To make the affiliate marketing process work, you must keep your content and recommended products or services related. Your customer visit your site to find information and a solution of his problem. First you provide the information, then you recommend a solution for his problem.

Banner or text link placement is also an important ingredient. It will work best if you can weave it in to your content. Try to make it as a well flowing unit. However, Don’t hide the fact that your visitor will land on another web site when he click at your link. Build trust and confidence by being honest. To find the most efficient placement, you have to test and evaluate over time.

Once you’ve learned to master the art of affiliate marketing, it will give you a repeatable income. When your first program is up and running smoothly, It’s time to implement the next one.

All products or services have their ups and downs. Therefore it is wise to divide your sources of income. Your site must have one main theme, but there is no reason why you can’t have several sub themes. With that, comes the possibility to promote other products or services, that are related to these sub themes.

When you add more than one source of income, it will balance your income. It will help you to gain a stable financial situation.

Ove Nordkvist is the founder of the web site http://www.small-biz-ideas.net At site you’ll find small business ideas, free tools, e-books and lots of informative articles. Visit http://www.small-biz-ideas.net/affiliate-marketing-ideas.html To learn more about affiliate marketing ideas. Use the tutorial, download your free copy of an affiliate masters course.

If you are starting in affiliate marketing, one of the things you have to consider is having your own professional looking website. How do you build an affiliate marketing website? What are the steps to building one?

First, you must decide on the theme or niche of your website. If you already have an idea what products or services you are going to promote, this will help you plan the design and layout of your web pages.

Next, choose a domain name and get it hosted. The domain name is a unique name used to label the actual address of your website on the Internet. In deciding what domain name to register, look into the type of products you are endorsing and the theme of your site. Having the right keywords in your domain name gives you a better chance of attracting more visitors to your website. Also, choose a top level domain or extension, such as .com because it is more popular. In selecting your web host, consider the security of servers, support and up time guarantees.

Now, you can start creating your web pages. There are page generation tools and fast launch sites available online; it’s just a case of searching for them. Many online sources can help you build an affiliate marketing website, though you will need time to study and learn the whole process. This is a good reason why your site, or the products you are going to promote, should match your interest. Building your marketing website for the first time is easier if you know the theme of your site. If you don’t have time to make your own website, you could use templates or purchase readily available websites. The latter, however, is the more expensive option.

Creating an affiliate website on your own is cheaper and more interesting. In the process, you also increase your knowledge of information technology and the use of computers, software and the internet. This is a good thing because, as you educate yourself in these areas, you are increasing your competitive advantage over other affiliate marketers. It certainly helps however, if you already know the basics of web page development like programming languages and graphics software because you can then make your site look more professional, more convenient to use and easier to navigate. Furthermore, if you are knowledgeable in this area, you can concentrate more on the content of the page rather than the technicalities of the design.

The key to attracting visitors to your website is to have high quality content. There are several other factors that contribute to the success of your affiliate marketing site, but good content tops the list. This is precisely the reason why users choose to enter your site. They want to get information and, if they don’t find it, they go looking elsewhere.

You can write interesting articles related to your theme. If you have already sourced affiliate programs that complement your site, add links to their business sites and other good informative sites. Links also contribute to your listing in major search engines. Also, create pages for the products you are endorsing, but don’t just promote the products by writing hyped-up ads. Keep your readers interested by injecting lots of relevant and useful information. This will make them more likely to click the link to the business site and buy the product. Remember, not having good content means your site will not get regular visitors, therefore no sales and ultimately, will not earn you any commission.

Make your site simple but with a touch of class in order to make it appear more of a professional business website rather than a personal one. This means the site should be pleasing to the eye and more interesting to browse. To help you with the design, you can check other successful online stores to get an idea of how you can make your site look better.

Make sure that you don’t place too many banner ads on your site since these can distract some site users; and as a result, instead of clicking on your ad, they might leave your site and look for other interesting websites. Remember, banner ads are not the only means of advertising your products.

Once your website is finished, submit its URL to major search engines to increase your traffic.

Learn about the use of keywords for search engine optimization and apply them in your content. Update your site regularly or add new pages. Make sure that you inform your prospects about the latest updates to your site. You can use newsletters to accomplish this.

Remember, continue to educate yourself on how to improve your website and you should soon find yourself becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Donald Cash has a detailed knowledge of internet marketing. You can read more tips, tricks and other information about affiliate marketing on his blog at affiliatesmarketinginformation.com

One way to increase your affiliate earnings, is to join two tier affiliate programs. With regular affiliate programs, you only earn money if and when you sell products and services for the program you’ve joined. With a two tier affiliate program though, you can also earn money when other people make sales… if they’ve signed up for the same affiliate program through your affiliate link.

You don’t make money just by having a new affiliate sign up under you. Instead you make money if that affiliate signs up under you, and then proceeds to make affiliate sales. These affiliates who sign up under you are usually called "sub affiliates".

Now, you don’t usually make tons of money from sub affiliates. In fact, you usually earn just a small fraction from them compared to what you can earn by making sales yourself. Let’s say for example, you’ve affiliated with a company that pays you 50% commission on any sales you make through your affiliate link. If that company offer a second tier option, they’re likely to pay just 10% to you, for any sales your sub affiliates make.

Now the sub affiliates will still earn 50% of their sales too. Your commissions will not be taken from theirs. Your commissions instead, are taken from the profit of the actual company you’re selling for.

Having sub affiliates is an excellent way to make extra money. In rare cases, you can make a very good living from sub affiliates. But to do this you must first sign up many affiliates under you. Signing up hundreds of affiliates might work decently, but the more the better because not all affiliates make sales. In fact, only about 5%-10% of them will make sales.

You can help increase the amount of sales your sub affiliates make, but it takes a lot of time, effort and hard work. Some of the ways you can help improve their performance is to train them, mentor them, create custom sales material for them, and give them bonuses they can use when promoting the program. In essence, if you become an independant affiliate program manager for your own group of sub affiliates, you can increase their sales greatly and in doing so, help build your own income streams too.

This is a profitable way to approach affiliate marketing, but it’s much more profitable if you also make direct sales yourself.

© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. Want to learn more about affiliate marketing now? Check out these excellent affiliate marketing resources at EasySideMoney.com

I would like to make something clear. I have visited many, many web sites and have seen a lot of people using this common phrase: Take action right now, don’t lose more time, and that is true because if you don’t take action nothing happens ( maybe the roof comes down but it does not depend on you). Therefore to take action is very important. But let’s stop for a moment. I am going to divide the vendors or merchants into two groups:

1- Those that give to their affiliates a referral link and say: replace the xxxx with your nickname or give them a link full of characters and then encourage the affiliates to promote with the famous take action now or nothing happens.

2- Those that give to their affiliates a referral link full of characters but with a better system - prewritten ads, e-zines, place where advertise etc, and then the big phrase take action now you have everything you need. And that is good, because the affiliates have their tools.

Who is the best?

Obviously the second one, because they are providing their affiliates with tools. It doesn’t matter if everybody is using the same place to advertise or the same prewritten ads. Of course the vendor can’t give a different tool to every single member. It’s impossible.

Now, what about the affiliates?

They are like robots.

Imagine a person that got into this world (when I say world I mean Internet Marketing) two or three days ago and finds the first group of vendors. What can he do? I suppose almost nothing, then he will leave this vendor and will look for a better one. Let’s suppose that he finds the second group quickly, without surfing too much, then discovers a better place with good tools that will help him.

He has everything, now he must take action. What do you think he can do? I think he will not go far. Maybe someone will agree with me. Ok, each person has her own opinion. Have you ever been a newbie? Who hasn’t been a newbie? Everybody has been a newbie.

Now you should think like a newbie who knows nothing about this world. How much would you make? Maybe not much.

Having the right tools doesn’t mean success. It’s not like that. It’s like giving you a car with everything needed, a road and a map and I tell you: "here are the keys start the engine and go". It is easy, right? But what happens if you have never driven a car? I don’t want to know it.

These affiliates are in your same situation. Well yours is worse because you are risking your life, they only their time or maybe some money. But why is this happening? Why do people have to waste time and money? It’s not correct. I don’t agree.

The problem is that the information you receive when you are a newbie is limited.

There are many people promising help, but when it comes time that you really need help your are alone, you are left to figure out on your own.

And that’s the reason why 31% or more of newbies are giving up after three months. Because they don’t find the way to go on and they are not making money.

And this is the point. Did you get it? Let me explain, what I mean is, the affiliates, besides the tools need more and this is information, explanation, knowledge. They need to be trained.

Then, what is the step before taking action? Now you know it very well. This step is Education.

The affiliates need to know the big picture, what it means and how to move into it.

What would happen if this affiliates were able to change the prewritten ads and e-mails keeping always the meaning? Surely more profit for everybody.

Let’s build a better world and we will all benefit!

My Mistakes And Experiences With I.M.

P.V. Reymond is an Internet Marketer author and publisher, who was walking with the crowd, learning how big marketers treat the customers and how the customers want to be treated. He has gone deep in the Internet Marketing Business and now he is helping people to build and develop business. His Free Internet Marketing Education is a good place for people that want to have a business online or want to increase their income. He is giving tips, advises, mini courses and much more. All for Free. To discover it, visit:

Free Internet Marketing Education

For most affiliate marketers, the use of effective keywords can make or break their campaigns. In order to make profits with affiliate marketing, you need to find and utilize correctly the best keywords for any product you are promoting.

Keywords are what a user types into a search engine when they are looking for products or information on the computer. In order to use keywords effectively, you need to figure out all the possible words that a person could use to look for information on the internet relating to the program that you are promoting. You then can group these keywords into ad groups and target specific areas relating to the product you are promoting.

To find all the possible keywords, you need to do some research. There are some free keyword tools at Overture. You can also think of all possible keywords on your own, then type each one into Google and see what else pops up. Google Adwords also has a keyword suggestion tool that you can utilize as you are setting up your Adwords ads. There are also excellent keyword generating software program s available if you don’t like doing the research yourself.

You have to think to yourself, if I were looking for this product, what would I type into Google? If my husband/wife was looking for the same thing, would he/she use the same words, or would they say something else? How about a teenager, senior citizen? Can the product be called multiple names? Are there many different brands? You can use a Thesaurus to look for other words that mean the same thing that you may not have thought of. The more keywords you come up with the better.

The most popular may not be the best, especially for the beginning marketer. They are most likely the most expensive and have the most competition. When you are first starting out, it is better to use less popular keywords that still generate traffic because this will help keep your costs low. Once you get the hang of finding and utilizing keywords to your advantage, you can expand your budget accordingly.

Jennie Crawford is the stay at home mom of two small children. For more information on keywords, go to http://www.jenniecrawford.com/clickadequalizer.

Empowerism touted its massive and intensive training system. I do have to admit that it went on forever, seemingly with the stated objective of leaving no stone unturned in answering questions.

In fact, Empowerism’s knowledge base was so huge that it purported to answer 99.9% of all possible questions about its wonderful opportunity. So comprehensive and effective that I was not allowed to e-mail them without first reading and apparently memorizing the knowledge base.

This is not an uncommon occurrence among big time marketing opportunities because automation is such a big deal. It was pretty clear that Empowerism preferred not to answer any e-mail questions whatsoever, and, of course, it was impossible to talk to a real person on the phone (which would be akin to committing a sin of unmentionable proportions).

Empowerism in particular fancied itself as having the gold standard of all training programs. Any question asked seemed to have an extensive answer, whether it answered the question efficiently or not.

Empowerism seemed to have so much written material one could get overwhelmed just attempting to read it all. I thought Empowerism had raised giving extensive information to an art form, and more often than not with a feeling of righteousness.

I know this: Empowerism was dancing around a topic to such an extent that it was impossible to find clear, concise answers. The same point was repeated so many times so many different ways that after awhile I had to stop reading just to stay awake.

Empowerism also offered two apparent investment programs, a "Revenue Sharing Value Plan" (RSVP) and a "Most Valuable Player" (MVP) program (I think I have these acronyms correct, and give Empowerism credit for two examples of snappy and effective, if not trite, acronyms).

As I remember it, when leads were sold to Empowerism members the funds were paid into a pool and then commissions were paid out to members.

You could apparently invest as little as $25 in a leads package and eventually could be paid as much as $2,000 over a timetable not mentioned or guaranteed. Your fortunes rode with the company. I bought some of these packages.

Empowerism said at the time that it had paid out more than $5 million in commissions and touted RSVP as "the most successful business model of its kind" (Empowerism’s words exactly).

All of this came back to me in early November when Empowerism sent me a letter. I had stopped building the Empowerism opportunity for some time and stopped paying my monthly dues, so I was not a member at the time.

I had assumed that when I stopped paying my dues I had forfeited my right to any commissions and any investments I had made. I wrote off the investments and continued on with my life.

Basically, Empowerism’s letter said "long-awaited changes to RSVP and MVP" had been implemented because "we can all agree that the current status of RSVP and MVP is not appealing to anyone." It appears that the original program could not continue to pay out as forecasted.

To make good on any prior investments, purchasers were given 3 injunctions:

1) You would need to be a paid subscriber by the close of the month (Nov. 30, 2006).

2) Starting in December 2006 "a leads purchase equivalent to 1% of your total RSVP order value must be made before the end of the month."

3) Starting in January 2007, "a solo mailing (ad package) purchase of $2 for each $200 MVP order and $1 for each $100 MVP order is required by the end of the month."

Empowerism’s letter did not disappoint in that it spent two pages outlining every detail of the conditions to make good on any prior investments.

The thought immediately occurred to me that investors were being asked for more money in order to return their original investment.

I am sure there was nothing immoral, illegal or dishonest about Empowerism’s RSVP and MVP programs, but these programs have a habit of running out of gas at some point when more people and more investments become involved. It was just a matter of time before it went bust.

It must have taken me 3 seconds to decide to ignore the letter, and let Empowerism keep the investments I had made. I could not see how subsidizing Empowerism was in my best interest, Empowerism clearly needs the money to straighten out its affairs much more than I do.

Copyright © 2006 Ed Bagley

Ed Bagley is the author of Ed Bagley’s Blog, which he publishes daily with fresh, original writing intended to delight, inform, educate and motivate readers. Visit Ed at . . .

As a new affiliate marketer, you may have started coming across the term "residual" or "recurring" in reference to affiliate programs. So what does it mean? Quite simply: You sell something once, yet continue to be paid month after month.

Residual affiliate programs can be quite lucrative for an affiliate to promote. Because you’re selling something that requires a monthly fee - such as a membership site, ongoing service, or products that get consumed and must be replaced - you can continue earning affiliate income from sales made months and even years ago.

Now, residual income does not last forever. How long it actually lasts depends on the type of products or services you’re promoting.

If you’re promoting a membership site for instance, you’ll continue to earn income as long as the people you referred to the site remain members. If that site is good, your referrals may continue paying for the site for years to come. On average though, many people cancel membership based sites within 3 months.

If you’re promoting something like website hosting accounts though - particularly if you’re promoting them to businesses - these are quite likely to continue for many years. Assuming the hosting company you’re promoting is good, businesses will sign up and continue paying for an indefinite amount of time. Since they’re a business and website hosting is a requirement to run the business, they’ll probably keep the hosting as long as they are in business, or until they decide to try another… if they ever decide to.

So website hosting services can be extremely lucrative for an affiliate to promote. You simply spend time, money and effort to get the new customer, then you continue to earn from that customer for months, or years, into the future. This adds up very nicely over time. If you signed up just one new customer per month for instance, and each one continues their membership for an entire year, then you’ll be earning from 12 by the end of a year.

Another niche market where residual income can be quite profitable is with health and wellness products. I’m not talking about fitness equipment here… instead I’m talking about products that are consumed. Vitamins for instance, or make up, or wrinkle creams. A customer buys these, and uses them every day. After a period of time they run out of the product and must order more. And this is where it gets profitable for an affiliate. If you sold the product through a residual income affiliate program, you’ll earn money again when the customer runs out of their product and orders more.

In some cases, the customer actually signs up for an auto shipment. This means they don’t have to remember to order more product when theirs is gone. Instead, they automatically receive a new shipment each month, or every three months. And they’re automatically billed to, thus you as the affiliate don’t have to worry about whether they’ve reordered or not. It’s all done automatically, so your earnings repeat automatically.

© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. Want to learn more about affiliate marketing now? Check out these excellent affiliate marketing resources at EasySideMoney.com

Are you finally fed up with being scammed? All the lousy promises, I call them lies by the way, you know the ones!! Make a $1000 per week no capital and spend an hour doing it, the truth is it just does not happen. I like you tried all the programmes, books etc and funny this, found none that made me a red cent, cost me to try them though, that is until now, I found Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate has helped me to see the light, this is a membership site that gives you all the help you can possibly want and on tap. The forum on the Wealthy Affiliate program to be honest is worth the money I pay to be a member, as all the forum members have gone through exactly what we have all been through, and because of the problems they have encountered they can show you how to resolve them.

Here is some of the content of this Site:

1. One-on-One support
2. Research Center
3. Keyword Lists
4. Turnkey Feeder Websites
5. Forum
6. Resources & Courses
7. Affiliate Network Tools

This is a small amount of the information available on the Wealthy Affiliate, the way the site is constructed is great for the beginner and the advanced affiliate as the training offered will quickly make you an advanced affiliate, or at least well on your way to becoming one. The training courses are Fab you see, and if you get stuck anywhere then try the forum, not only do Kyle and Carson the Writers frequent the forum, also several affiliates who have learnt the ways of Wealthy Affiliate are on hand to help, they are a great bunch, you never know you might find me there too.

Click Here For Wealthy Affiliate Information

David Murray is an Affiliate Marketer trained by Carson and Kyle of Wealthy Affiliate Fame

Are you tired of working 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for some company that you are not really interested in? Do you want to have your own home business that provides non-stop income that keeps growing and growing?

If you answered yes to either of these questions then web hosting affiliate program is for you. Web hosting affiliate program can provide more income than you ever have. There may be people in the Internet that says affiliate marketing doesn’t work or it doesn’t generate any money at all, but these people are those who have never tried affiliate programs before or have tried it but didn’t to it the right way.

In fact, there are people who earn a lot of money from web hosting affiliate programs that they even quit their day jobs and concentrate more on this very lucrative business. These people saw the potential in affiliate programs and they saw that it is a great home business opportunity that they would want to continue.

One benefit of web hosting affiliate program is that it allows you to build your income every month and every year. Web hosting affiliate programs is much better than making a commission from every product sold now and then.

In web hosting affiliate program, you will be making commission if you refer people to open an account in the web-hosting program. This means that you will be making a lot of money every month if you just refer about 100 accounts. For example, if you get a commission of 5 dollars per account, you will be making 500 dollars every month.

This is why you have to refer someone to a web hosting affiliate program in order to increase your income every month and every year. So, if you hear someone that there’s no money in the internet or selling stuff in the internet is the only way to make money, tell them that web hosting affiliates is one of those things commonly overlooked that creates a good money-making potential.

All you need is hard work and dedications. With enough hard work, you will see that you will be making a lot of money in web hosting affiliates. You will also see that with the money you will be making, you will eventually quit your day job and prefer to stay at home with your family and concentrate on your home business.

To start your web hosting affiliate program, you first have to look for one that offers instant account activation for customers. These are one of the features you should look for in order to attract more customers for your web hosting affiliate program. The fact that people would want to get what they pay for immediately is why you should look for a web hosting affiliate program like this.

A good customer support service should also be present. In case your customer runs into a problem, they can have an easy access on customer support services to help them with their problems.

These are the things you should consider when you are considering starting a web hosting affiliate program as a home business. In time, you will see that you will be making a lot of money out of this small business. You have to think that there are a lot of people using the Internet today who wants to open up their account. Think big in order to make it big.

Steven Gerber is a protégé student of Dan Lok – The World’s #1 Website Conversion Expert. Find out how Dan’s webmaster affiliate program has affiliates making thousands with the best affiliate programs.