Joint Venture experts know that there are a few guiding principles when setting up lucrative deals that provide ongoing, multiple streams of passive income and large, once-off windfalls. Research is essential before partnering up or even suggesting a Joint Venture to someone. Research is the foundation of successful Joint Ventures.

There are four aspects to Joint Venture research:

1. The industry or industries you’re targeting.

Be sure you are comfortable dealing with that industry, that it fits your public profile and values system, that it is aligned with your Mission Statement and identity, branding and business relationships. For example, you probably wouldn’t want to get involved in the sex industry. You might want to avoid contentious or controversial areas like politics, religion or tax shelters. Also, have enough information or access to information about that industry before diving in.

2. The deal.

If you’re good at Joint Ventures you can remove all the cost and risk. Don’t think a contract is going to protect you, by the way - it’s only as good as the people behind it. Triangulating deals (setting up a deal between two other parties and taking a piece of the profits) usually removes risk and cost if correctly set up. Make sure tracking and monitoring is in place and use the expertise of trusted others. Create a Memorandum of understanding that clearly defines the terms and options in the deal.

3. The people.

This is the most important part of any Joint Venture. Check them out - do your due diligence and research. Get references, do police and credit checks, even use a private detective if necessary. All that glitters is not gold and people claim some amazing things that are simply not true. Get specific information and avoid being bowled over by their charisma and sales abilities. Confidence tricksters use greed and ego to hoodwink their victims. Check them out. If they don’t have any money, be careful; desperate people tend to do desperate things. Don’t buy their stories. Look for a track record. If they’re over eager and urgent, step back. Consider applying for Membership in the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum - our elite members are carefully screened.

4. Education.

The more you learn, the more you can earn. We use Joint Venture Bootcamps and seminars, TeleClasses and JV Audits to educate and update people on Joint Ventures. Again, be careful who you’re learning from. Unless the person teaching you has a personal success track record, they don’t have the right to teach. Look for support, practicality and watch out for the "up sell" lurking in the shadows. Ongoing education in today’s changing world will complete your research cycle.

About Robin J. Elliott

For more than 19 years, Robin J. Elliott has worked with thousands of businesses in over 49 industries across the United States, Canada, and Africa. He specializes in helping small business entrepreneurs build wealth and gain access to new markets and profit centers through Joint Ventures. Through his Joint venture Seminars across North America he has thought thousands how to create increasing, multiple streams of income without cost or risk and very little time.

Get Robin J. Elliott’s FREE: "How To Grow Serious Wealth Using Joint Ventures" Mini-Course, and The Prophet of Profit e-Zine along with video blogs, world class articles, free video, and access to top Joint Venture Partners at http://www.jvwisdom.com.

Home Based Affiliate Business can be a saving grace for the newbie. Bereft of a website and a product or service, affiliate programs are like an oasis in a desert. In addition, it can all be done in the comforts of your own home.

Promoting other peoples products can be a very lucrative business. The commission income for those who have made it their bread and butter is very rewarding. The newbie who is adamant that nothing but their own product or service will do, would do well to seriously consider affiliate programs.

Wisely consider the following when choosing your Home Based Affiliate Business:

Choosing The Right Affiliate Program For You

Look at the track record, dependability, and success of the company. Examine the products and services. Did you purchase their product yourself?

How were you treated in the process? Did you experience any challenges with the product? If you did, how was their customer service? Have you checked out marketplace trends? Is there a demand for the product?

These and many other questions must be asked and answered to your satisfaction. After all, you’re the one who’s going to be promoting their product. By the way, do they provide tips, suggestions and tools to help you promote?

They must have an excellent tracking system. A system that tracks your referrals months down the road. People may not be prepared to buy initially. But if they come back later to purchase, you should be credited.

Look for companies whose affiliate program provides a good financial reward for efforts employed. Preferably a company with two tier commissions. This allows you to recruit others and retain a percentage of their sales.

Affiliate Links Should Be Cloaked

The Home Based Affiliate Business is not without its unscrupulous followers. Many will take your links and exchange them for their own. Or some will just bypass you and go directly to the company. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

The best thing to do is to cloak or hide your affiliate link. This can be done by using a free service that shortens your dead-giveaway affiliate URL. Go to google, type in free url and a myriad of them will come up.

Newbies, Don’t Forget Your Own Optin List

This is vital! While you are working your Home Base Affiliate Business, you will have many opportunities to build your list. Do it! As you become web savvy, use your newly acquired skills to work on your list. This will be the lifeblood of your future business.

Before you send your prospects to the affiliate, send them to your optin form first. Capture their name and email address. Don’t neglect this opportunity. Believe it or not you would in fact be throwing future earnings away. Can you afford that?

The names and addresses you capture for your affiliate program may purchase the product today. Whoopie…you get a commission today.

What about tomorrow? When you finally have your own product. Can you see what I mean? You may be able to sell to some of those names over and over.

When you take action things happen. Affiliate programs can keep you going great guns until your product launch. Hop on board. You’ll learn a lot, and while you’re learning, remember the list.

Home Based Affiliate Business has given many people a great start. It’s been so lucrative for some that affiliate selling is all they do. Wycliffe Williams has enjoyed selling using affiliate programs. He has a great website that does well. He would like for his newbie friends to have one too. Grab it here: http://www.wyclefinnovations.com

Instead of pushing your business card at people, pitching your product or service with a little "Elevator Speech" and hoping to make a sale, why not enjoy Multiple Streams of Passive Income Every Day from Joint Ventures? In fact, you don’t even need a business to do that!

All it take is a different mindset. Forget about what YOU want - (nobody cares, anyway!) and start looking for ways to get other people what THEY want. Then, get paid to deliver. And here’s the good news… sorry, GREAT news - you let someone else do all the work, carry all the risk and cost and pay YOU for the privilege! That’s right - Joint Ventures offer you the opportunity to earn a significant, even unlimited amount of money by brokering deals and connecting people. See, you do that anyway, don’t you? Problem is, you’re not getting paid for it, are you? Oh no, you’re Mr. or Mrs. Nice Guy. Mr Social Worker, right? You think people will reciprocate but they don’t. They take the business and often don’t even take the time to thank you. But you keep on giving and not getting.

Time to change. Time to get PAID.

Want to know more about how you can become an astute Joint Venture Broker, work from anywhere in the world with a telephone and an internet connection (or even without the internet!) part time or full time? And learn it in ONE DAY? "That’s too good to be true", you claim? Check out these testimonials then click on the link at the bottom of this article to see how to change your life!

This is a small sample of what Delegates of the Joint Venture Bootcamp in Vancouver on May 28th said: (Originals available)

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $40,000 per month” - Ron Brauer, President, One Stop Renovation, Surrey, BC.

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $100,000 more per year. What an exciting introduction to Joint Ventures!” - Faye R. Davis, PhD. Defense Logistics Agency Chair, Professor of Logistics: National Defense University, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Fort McNair, DC

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $10,000 per month more” - Paul Travis, Principal, Vivify LLC, Seattle WA

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $250,000 in the first year. This is one of the best seminars! Fabulous JV connections!” - Peggy Brauer, Owner, Energy 4 Ever, Surrey, BC

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $10,000 per month to start with! Great day – thank you. I’ll join the JV Forum.” - John Hewson, President, Peak One Consulting, Whistler, BC

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $2,000 - $5,000 per month more. Excellent, informative course, the most promising I’ve ever heard. Thanks, Robin” Michael Nault, Executive Director, Play Mate Promotions, Vancouver BC

“If I use and apply the information from this Bootcamp, I conservatively expect to make $5,000 - $10,000 per month more. This Bootcamp is the most valuable and greatest learning experience. Being a JV Broker is the final key for my life. Thank you so much, Robin; I’m creating my future.” Keith Tong, President, K&H Business Solutions Inc. Richmond, BC

“Your JV Broker Bootcamp completely blew away all my expectations! Using just three of the strategies you suggested, I conservatively expect to make at least $9,973 on a single joint venture deal within the next month. The experience of being able to mastermind million dollar ideas with the other participants alone is worth twice the price of admission. Your support and mentorship are second to none. Thanks for transforming my entire paradigm of what is possible in business!” Colin Skow, President - JV Synergy, LLC. Seattle, Washington

About Robin J. Elliott

For more than 19 years, Robin J. Elliott has worked with thousands of businesses in over 49 industries across the United States, Canada, and Africa. He specializes in helping small business entrepreneurs build wealth and gain access to new markets and profit centers through Joint Ventures. Through his Joint venture Seminars across North America he has thought thousands how to create increasing, multiple streams of income without cost or risk and very little time.

Get Robin J. Elliott’s FREE: "How To Grow Serious Wealth Using Joint Ventures" Mini-Course, and The Prophet of Profit e-Zine along with video blogs, world class articles, free video, and access to top Joint Venture Partners at http://www.jvwisdom.com.

If you are an affiliate marketer, then you know that traditionally the conversion rate is the ratio of potential customers who visit the product site and those who actually purchase the product. However, there are other aspects that need to be considered when you calculate the overall conversion rate.

Besides the traditional conversion rate, another factor you want to consider when you calculate the product conversion rate is the rate of returns. In my own affiliate marketing endeavors, I have found that some products may convert as high as 5%, but with a 60% return rate. At this rate of return, the actual conversion rate is lowered to 2%. Other products have had a 20% return rate, which lowers the overall conversion rate to 4% if the initial conversion rate is 5%.

One of the problems of not calculating in the rate of return is that you may end up calculating how much you can spend on advertising your product if you are using a search engine ppc advertising scheme. For example, let’s say you have a product that you make $30 per sale on. You advertise your product in a leading search engine having calculated your cost-per-click based on a 2% conversion rate. To break even you should only spend 60 cents per visitor. Now let’s say the product has a 20% return rate. This means that out of every 10 buyers, 2 return the product. Your new conversion rate then becomes 1.6%. If you are advertising based on a 2% conversion rate, you are spending too much and will end up losing money. At a 1.6% conversion rate, you should only be spending 48 cents per click in order to break even. As you lower your cost per click, however, you also lose potential traffic to your affiliate site.

Another factor to consider in calculating the conversion rate is the rate of chargebacks and insufficient funds. Taken together, they can represent about 10% of your sales. Using the same model above, this further lowers your overall conversion rate to 1.4%, which means you will lose money if you are advertising the product for more than 42 cents per click.

Since conversion rates for any given product can change over time, you want to make sure you are constantly recalculating your advertising costs based not only on the basic conversion rate, but also on the rate of return and the rate of chargebacks and insufficient funds. Without considering all three of these factors, you could end up losing a significant amount of money on advertising and be out of the affiliate marketing game.

For more articles on affiliate marketing tips and resources, go to AffiliateMarketing101.net

The author of this article runs AffiliateMarketing101.net and AffiliateMarketingGuides.com, an affiliate marketing guides review site.

We’ve all heard the astonishing success stories of people who choose to build an online business and achieve grand results and unbelievable profit margins. But is it really that easy? Can you really make real money at home with nothing more than a personal computer and a lot of motivation?

While a great deal of what you see advertised as hugely successful get rich quick schemes are actually only hollow promises, there are real online businesses that succeed. One of the most promising at home career opportunities is affiliate marketing.

What does and Affiliate Marketer do?

Affiliate marketers help increase the growth of online businesses by directing traffic to their clients’ websites. They do this in a variety of ways and are compensated for each click, registrant, or sale that their labor produces.

And with more and more online businesses trying to break through the masses to rank in the top ten of the major search engines and increase hits on their website, affiliate marketing is a booming business. In fact, affiliate marketing is rated as the single fastest growing industry online. It is also applauded as being one of the easiest, fastest, and most creative ways to have a career and make money on the internet.

While starting any type of business is challenging, affiliate marketing may be the answer you are looking for.

Look at this example:

With this type of career you can work the hours that you want to work, work from the comfort of your own home; spend more time with your family, and the bonus? You can make real money at home by being an affiliate marketer.

And when I say make real money I mean that the income generated by this type of business is limited only to the amount of effort you are willing to put into it. I have to say that many are already making thousands of dollars each year as affiliate marketers and the number of those that are successful at it only keeps getting larger.

Jake Dufield knows Affiliate Marketing. He’s been at it for a year and knows that there are countless of guides on how to start affiliate marketing, but only the best will take you to the top. To begin racking up profits visit http://www.theprojectxguide.com for the revolutionizing guide that shifted the way people market on the net.

Internet affiliate programs are the best return for your effort with the least demand on your time. This has an appeal to the Boomer Entrepreneur as a retirement job since we want to run the business and not have it run us. We want to have time to “kick back and smell the roses”.

The attraction to this model as a retirement job is that it is virtually risk free except for your time. It costs you nothing to sign up as an affiliate. You recommend the product and send your visitors to the website where the product is sold. If the customer purchases the product, you are paid a commission. Amazon.com is credited with being the first businesses on the Net to fully develop the affiliate concept and now all the major companies have affiliate programs.

How does it work?

When you sign up as an affiliate, you will be given an affiliate number, and a special link to use for linking to the affiliate website. This link will send your visitor to the business site and at the same time tell the business that you sent the visitor so you will receive the commission in the case of a sale.

As an example, here is what an affiliate link to eBay looks like. This article site does not allow active affiliate links so this is presented without the standard prefix of the http :// and the world wide web abbreviation (.anrdoezrs.net/click-1929835-5902069). The text presented would show a link to eBay, but the underlying code would be to the anrdoezrs.net site.

This link with all these numbers that does not even reference eBay is called a “hoplink”. It is called this since it goes to an intermediate website that does the accounting for the affiliate program. The intermediate site records the affiliate ID which is one of the numbers in the link and then “hops” the visitor to the proper eBay page. It takes place so fast that the visitor is not aware that the intermediate step has taken place. Pretty slick, don’t you think?

A Quick Tip — If you are using Internet Explorer, you can place your cursor over a hyperlink on a web page and the actual link information will appear in the bottom left corner of the screen. Try it. If the link information is the same as the link on the printed page, it is not an affiliate link, but if it has some letters and numbers in it in addition to the URL name, it is an affiliate link.

Who does all this accounting?

There are companies that do the accounting and act as the coordinator between affiliates and the companies they represent. These are called affiliate program providers (APP’s). One of the major sites for handling affiliate accounting is called Commission Junction. It handles eBay and others. The major site for electronic products is ClickBank. Other sites are BeFree, Linkshare, and Performics. A German APP is Affili.net.

How do I get paid?

The reason that you are working in a retirement job is to ultimately have money flowing into your bank account, Right? When you set up your account with your chosen APP site, you specify your business bank account. On the designated payment dates, an electronic funds transfer will occur and the funds will be deposited in your account. When you set this up properly, it is almost on autopilot.

How do I find affiliate programs?

When you join Commission Junction (“CJ”) or ClickBank, you will be able to view the thousands of affiliate companies that are available. I suggest that you sign up at CJ and ClickBank and look for affiliates. You will be able to study the companies or products that are available and the commission structure of each. You can then join the program that you want to join. The signup as an affiliate takes place right in CJ or ClickBank.

Some of the approvals in CJ are immediate and some will notify you later if you have been accepted.

You almost don’t have to find affiliate programs, they will find you. That statement may be a little far fetched, but if you go to Google and type in “affiliate programs” you will be inundated with selections of every possible affiliate under the sun.

A word of caution: Affiliate programs must be coupled with another activity to make money. You can become an affiliate of multiple programs, but unless you have a way to drive the potential customer to the affiliate site so they click a “Buy Button”, you will not make a dime.

These programs can be coupled with publishing. You make a recommendation to your readers in your newsletter or on your website or blog to try an item sold by one of your affiliates.

You can also couple these programs with Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. This is called pay per click advertising and is an excellent way to direct your reader to an affiliate site.

Explore these affiliate programs as a possible retirement job. Once you learn about them and see the tremendous potential, you will probably wonder why you did not sign up earlier for your retirement job.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.

You’ve just signed up with Clickbank, you’ve just created an AdWords account, you’re eager to start earning some money but you’ve no experience of Clickbank and even less of AdWords. Where do you begin?

Let’s start with some important pieces of information that do not seem to be obvious to many people in this situation.

1. AdWords was not created for the sole benefit of people wanting to make money through Clickbank.
2. AdWords is completely and utterly separate from Clickbank
3. There are many other advertisers (i.e. non-clickbank users) using AdWords
4. There are many Clickbank advertisers and those from other affiliate programs
5. AdWords will only allow one advertiser per destination URL to be displayed at any one time
6. AdWords is currently actively trying to reduce the number of affiliate advertisers being displayed on any single results page

Introduction to Clickbank

From the perspective of this article, Clickbank.com is, essentially, a directory of affiliate programs . . . a list of products & services that you can sell on behalf of someone else in order to earn commission. When someone clicks on a Clickbank hyperlink, known as a "hoplink," a cookie is placed on that user’s computer that tells Clickbank whose link (or ad) the user clicked on in order to get to that product’s Clickbank page. If that user then makes a purchase, the affiliate whose Clickbank ID is stored in the relevant cookie gets his/her Clickbank account credited with a certain amount of commission. The amount of commission depends on the particular affiliate program in question.

What is a Hoplink?

A hoplink is simply a particular URL in a regular hyperlink that indicates 2 important things:

1. The Clickbank ID of the affiliate (i.e. the person trying to earn money by promoting the product)
2. Another Clickbank code for the product being promoted

For example, if my clickbank ID was "abc" and the code for the product I was promoting was "zyx," the hoplink URL would look something like:

http://abc.zyx.hop.clickbank.net

This tells Clickbank that any commission resulting from this action needs to be placed in user abc’s account and that the product being advertised is product code zyx. Furthermore, the product code also tells Clickbank which page to direct the user’s web browser too. For example, a hoplink promoting SEO Elite software takes the user’s web browser to http://www.seoelite.com/index2.htm. This is the page that is, in a sense, trying to sell/promote the product to the user.

Where AdWords Fits In

Many people that are new to Clickbank do not seem to realize that AdWords is in no way directly related to Clickbank and that the stats they provide are completely unconnected. AdWords is merely one way of getting people to click on your hoplink in the hope the person clicking will go on to buy whatever product is being advertised. AdWords can tell you how many times your ads have been shown and how many times they have been clicked on but, at the moment, it cannot tell you how many Clickbank sales you have made or how much you have earned from those sales. [Note: AdWords can provide that information for people that can add tracking code into their own web pages.] In order to find out your sales figures you need to log in to Clickbank, NOT AdWords.

Introduction to AdWords

AdWords has two available "editions:" Starter Edition and Standard Edition. Anyone serious about advertising with AdWords should immediately register for the Standard Edition.

A detailed overview of how AdWords works is beyond the scope of this article so I will just quickly run through the process of creating ads in a very brief manner.

AdWords has a hierarchical structure as follows. An AdWords account is comprised of one or more campaigns. A campaign is comprised of one or more ad groups. An ad group contains one or more ads and one set of keywords. For more information on this structure, visit the AdWords Learning Center topic, which has both a text lesson and a multimedia lesson.

If you are advertising multiple Clickbank products, each product should have its own ad group that contains a set of keywords specific to that product. In addition, every ad group should contain at least 2 ads for the product so that you can test which ad performs best. This process is known as split-testing. It is also important that you concentrate on writing effective ads, which is an art in and of itself.

Specific Tips for Clickbank Users

As mentioned earlier, AdWords does not seem to be very keen on affiliate advertisers at the moment and, as a result, if your ad contains your hoplink as the "destination URL" (that is, the URL the person clicking on the ad will be taken to), you may well find that you have a $5 or more minimum bid requirement for your keywords to be "active for search." There are two main ways round this.

First, if you have any free (or paid for!) web space, you can create an intermediate page between your AdWords ad that contains a hyperlink that incorporates your Clickbank hoplink. In that way, the ad’s destination URL will then be to your own page and NOT your direct hoplink. Note, you cannot use an interim page that automatically redirects the user to the target hoplink page because that is against AdWords policies. Of course, if you use this method, the user will still have to click on your hyperlink, so the page needs to be well-written in order to entice the user to do just that!

To illustrate:

My Ad —> myWebPage —> (hyperlinked hoplink to) –> Clickbank product page

Second (and preferred solution), if you are promoting a range of related products, you can create your own web site based around the theme of those products and that contains hoplinks to the products that you are promoting. Using this method, you simply use your ads as a means of getting traffic to your site. In essence, this is the approach to affiliate marketing that Rosalind Gardner, author of "The Super Affiliate Handbook" has taken (though I don’t know if she uses AdWords at all). An additional benefit of this approach is that you don’t even need to use AdWords at all, you can simply use other search engine optimization and web site promotion methods to get visitors to your site. Of course, you can also use AdWords to complement your other marketing efforts.

Ian Feavearyear, J.D. has over 20 years’ experience in I.T., having worked as an I.T. consultant both in California and the United Kingdom. He currently manages several AdWords advertising campaigns and is also the webmaster of AdWords-for-Profit.com, a site devoted to "making money from Google AdWords and AdSense." Ian is also the editor of the ezine newsletter, "The AdWords Prophet." As well as holding a B.A. from the U.K., Ian also graduated from Concord Law School, Los Angeles, in July 2005, where he was class valedictorian.

The affiliate program is probably the best return for your effort with the least demand on your time. This has an appeal to the Boomer Entrepreneur since we want to run the business and not have it run us. We want to have time to “kick back and smell the roses”.

The attraction to this model is that it is virtually risk free except for your time. It costs you nothing to sign up as an affiliate. You recommend the product and send your visitors to the website where the product is sold and if the customer purchases the product, you are paid a commission. Amazon.com is credited with being the first businesses on the Net to fully develop the affiliate concept and now all the major companies have affiliate programs.

When you sign up as an affiliate, you will be given an affiliate number, and a special link to use for linking to the affiliate website. This link will send your visitor to the business site and at the same time tell the business that you sent the visitor so you will receive the commission in the case of a sale.

There are companies that do the accounting and act as the coordinator between affiliates and the companies they represent. These are called affiliate program providers (APP’s). One of the major sites for handling affiliate accounting is called Commission Junction. It handles eBay and others. The major site for electronic products is ClickBank. Other sites are BeFree, Linkshare, and Performics. A German APP is Affili.net.

Commission Junction is the largest APP and handles many great companies. To fully explore what is available, you need to sign up at CJ and look for affiliates there. You will be able to see who the companies are and the commission structure of each. You can then join the program right in CJ without having to go to each company and apply.

I suggest that you join CJ and study the many companies that are represented. Take note of a few that you feel might be ones that you would like to represent. Don’t join the affiliate program yet, but go to Google and research the company website. See if they sell themselves well and will support the sales effort that you are going to expend to sell their products or services. Also, from CJ, you can link to the landing page in the company website. Go there and check it out to see if it sells well.

Step by Step Start

The following will lead you through the sign up process as a Commission Junction publisher. This process is longer than most that you have previously completed. Be prepared to complete two pages of information. The second page is long and detailed.

First page: Select your language, country, and currency. Click NEXT.

Second page: After swearing to abide by the rules and regs, you will be asked for information about your newsletter or website (URL). If you have a website, you can enter it. If not, make up a name for the eZine that you may plan to publish. For this application, you must make up a newsletter name if you do not have a website (URL). Be creative!

You will then be asked about your promotional methods. Click the Website/Content and Search Engine Marketing buttons. Next click “NO” on the radio button that asks if you donate any proceeds to charity (unless you want to do so).

Next you will be asked to enter all the information needed for setting up your account. You might have to attempt this page a couple of times since you might not have all the info you might need the first time. A key item you will need is social security number or tax ID if you are registering as a business. If you want to have your payments direct deposited, get a blank check so you will have the info to set up the banking information.

When you finish giving CJ your entire pedigree, click “Accept Terms” and you are on your way. Check your Inbox for an email from CJ with your acceptance message and password.

Sign up for Commission Junction at https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do

Once you have received your acceptance email from Commission Junction, log in to www.cj.com and use your password to enter. When you are logged in, you will be on your Commission Junction Home Page. It shows your account status and basic accounting info. It also shows the new advertisers on CJ. You might see if any of these look appealing since you can jump right on them and get a head start.

Near the top of the page click on “Account”. This is where you can update the information that you entered on your application.

Now down to business. Click on the “Get Links” tab near the top and you will be presented the page where you can find advertisers. There are several ways to view it: By category, by advertiser name, by Smart Zone, and by relationship which will list all the accounts with which you have an established relationship.

As an example, to find a company with which you are familiar (eBay), select the Category view and in the left column under Commerce, click “Auctions”. The page that is presented will contain various auction sites, but you will recognize most of them as the various eBay sites for the USA and other countries.

To join an affiliate, click on the “View Links” in the box with the affiliate name. You will be presented with the various banner ads and links for the affiliate. Pick one and click on it. If you are not a member of the affiliate program, you will be presented a page describing the program and at the bottom of the page is a button “Join Program”. Click this and see the response. Sometimes you will be accepted immediately and sometimes you will get a message that you will be notified after your application has been reviewed. Go ahead and join eBay USA since you should be accepted immediately by it.

The sequence of “Get Links” and “Join Program” is how you sign up for the affiliate programs that you want to represent. It is all in Commission Junction and it makes it very easy for you to grow an affiliate program as your online job.

Note: Some affiliates require that you have a website when you sign up with them. You can build a website later and reapply if this affiliate program is one you want to pursue as an online job.

A word of caution: Becoming an affiliate does not automatically make you rich. Becoming an affiliate establishes the relationship to let you promote a product and get paid for successful promotion. It is up to you to do the work of driving traffic to the affiliate site. If you do your job well, a percentage of the traffic will purchase from the site and you will be paid a commission for those purchases.

This concludes your education about Commission Junction. It is a powerful website and is a “must join” if you are going to create an affiliate program.

Good luck with your future affiliate programs.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.

So you are an affiliate marketer. And what is your number one goal? To maximize affiliate revenue? Just a guess. Hope I was right.

So you are driving traffic to your affiliate links and they are sending you huge checks every month, right?

What if you drove that traffic to a squeeze page instead and captured your visitors’ name and email address so that you can send them to multiple affiliate sites rather than just one?

This month, I have sold more than 10 items for every 100 subscribers on my list. That is equivalent to about a one-time conversion rate of 10%. That would be practically impossible if I just sent them to one site one time.

But I develop a relationship with my subscribers. And then when I send them to a website, they trust me. They buy. And around 10% of them have this month.

So what do articles have to do with 10%? I personally believe that one of the big reasons my conversion rate is so high is that the bulk of my subscribers have come from one of the articles I have written. You see, it is all about trust. And articles are kind of like a trust-screening mechanism.

I mean, think about it. You have been reading my article for about one minute now. Do you trust me? If you do not, you will click out when you get to the end of this paragraph. If you do, you will opt in to one of my lists. I will send you a free something, depending on the list. I will send you more free stuff and information, and I will also send you to my web pages and my affiliate recommendations. And because you trust me, you will try some of it out. But you would not have if you had just stumbled on my sales page on a search engine.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed a brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has created over 280 articles in print and 7 published ebooks online.

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is promoting a web-based business. When the visitor you refer subscribes or becomes a customer of site, the affiliate is paid either a percentage of the sale or for the lead.

Affiliate programs are attractive to the merchant because they only pay if the campaign is successful. In other words, their return on investment is guaranteed.

Affiliate marketing reportedly was the brainchild of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. The story goes that he was at a dinner party and was approached by a woman who wanted to sell books on her website. Bezos idea was that he could link the woman to Amazon and could pay the woman a commission for the books she sold. That idea later became known as the "Amazon Associates Program" and linked associate websites to Amazon through the use of a banner ad.

Since then, the idea is widely practiced and is available in many forms of compensation models.

Models:

Pay-per-sale (PPS) or Cost-per-sale (CPS)

Pay-per-sale pays the affiliate or publisher a percentage of the sale amount generated by the referral. This is by far the most common type of affiliate program used by online retailers.

Pay-per-click (PPC) or Cost-per-click (CPC)

The Pay-per-click model pays the publisher every time a potential customer clicks on the merchant’s Ad. The most popular example of this model is one run by Google with its program called Adsense.

Pay-per-impression (PPI) or Cost-per-mil (CPM)

Mil=1000 times an ad is displayed (M is the Roman numeral for 1000). The affiliate is paid an amount $X for every 1000 times the Ad is displayed on the affiliate website. The cost per impression is not tied to actual clicks.

Pay-per-lead (PPL) Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) Cost-per-lead (CPL)

Cost per lead affiliate model pays publishers for every referral to their website who performs an action like filling out a survey or signing up for a newsletter. This is a popular method for sites that sell services.

Well, that gives you a basic overview of the evolution of affiliate programs and the forms they take. In a future article, we will explore some of the higher rated affiliate programs, their benefits and weaknesses.

Happy marketing!

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