Affiliate programs. Sounds like heavy stuff.

What are affiliate programs really?

These days, it’s so easy to set up your own webpage. If you have a computer and internet access, you can simply go to a site such as GeoCities or Yahoo and use ready-made templates to construct a simple personal page. These sites will give you a URL, store the content of your page and slap on some advertisements. In an hour or two, Voila! Your page is on the Web!

But what if you have a content-driven website and want to make money off your traffic? If you are an online merchant, how can you get people to your site to buy your products? This is where affiliate programs come in.

Simply put, affiliate programs, or associate programs, are arrangements in which an online merchant pays an affiliate website a commission to send them traffic. These affiliate websites post links to the merchant site and are paid according to a particular agreement. This agreement is usually based on the number of people the affiliate sends to the merchant’s site, or the number of people they send who buys something or perform some other action. Some arrangements pay according to the number of people who visit the page containing their merchant site’s banner advertisement. Basically, if a link on an affiliate site brings the merchant site traffic or money, the merchant site pays the affiliate site according to their agreement. Affiliate programs work great when selling products online, but it can also be a cheap and effective marketing strategy. It’s a good way to get the word out about your site.

Here’s a good example of affiliate programs in action. In 1996, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, popularized affiliate programs as an internet marketing strategy. Amazon.com attracts affiliates to post links to individual books for sale on Amazon.com, or for Amazon.com in general, by promising them a percentage of the profits if someone clicks on the link and then purchases books or other items. The affiliate helps make the sale, but Amazon.com does everything else: They take the order, collect the money and ship the book to the customer. With over 500,000 affiliate Web sites in participation, Amazon.com’s program is a resounding success.

Over the past few years, affiliate programs have grown enormously in popularity, taking many interesting forms. For many Web sites that don’t deal much in e-commerce, functioning as an affiliate is a good way to jump into e-commerce.

There are three basic types of affiliate programs payment arrangements:

Pay-per-sale - Amazon’s affiliate programs mentioned above is an example of a pay-per-sale arrangement. In this arrangement, the merchant site pays an affiliate when the affiliate sends them a customer who purchases something. Some merchant websites, like Amazon.com, pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale and others pay a fixed amount per sale.

Pay-per-click - In these affiliate programs, the merchant site pays the affiliate based on the number of visitors who click on the link to come to the merchant’s site. They don’t have to buy anything, and it doesn’t matter to the affiliate what a visitor does once he gets to the merchant’s site.

Pay-per-lead - Companies with these affiliate programs pay their affiliates based on the number of visitors they refer who sign up as leads. This simply means the visitor fills out some requested information at the merchant site, which the merchant site may use as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead.

There are a number of other arrangements as well. But basically, a company could set up affiliate programs based on any action that would benefit them, and then pay their affiliates based on the number of customers the affiliates send them who perform that action.

Most affiliate programs also prohibit offensive content, but generally speaking, any website could be involved in an affiliate program. Although they are commonly called merchants, websites don’t even need to sell anything to benefit from having affiliates. A lot of content-based Web sites get most of their money from advertisers, which are attracted by high traffic numbers. Because of this, traffic translates directly into profit for these sites.

There are all sorts of affiliate programs, from top Web sites to small personal pages. Basically any website can join affiliate programs, and if they choose well, they could just make some money off of it. Some sites, such as Memolink and MyPoints, are just big collections of affiliate programs. These sites join a variety of pay-per-click or pay-per-lead programs and then pay their visitors a fraction of the commission on each click or reward them with prizes.

Dirk Wagner is the CEO of http://www.internetmarketingoasis.com a powerful resource for needed marketing tools and creator of the #1 IMO Marketing Toolbar. He also is the publisher of a free home business online course at http://www.team4success.biz.

If there’s one affiliate absolute it is to NEVER, for any reason, send an unsolicited email to anyone that is promoting anything. No commercial messages, unless the recipient has specifically requested that you send him/her email promoting a product or service. And don’t ever buy, borrow, lease or trade email lists. If you send commercial email at all, carefully read up on spam regulations and penalties at http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtml.

The CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act took effect on January 1, 2004. It is a federal act, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission that requires unsolicited commercial email to be labeled as such. Included in the regulations (again, read it all, and any amendments that may be passed) is the requirement that all unsolicited email must include subject lines that are not deceptive, as well as opt-out instructions and the sender’s physical address. At present, the FTC is authorized to establish a “do not e-mail” registry similar to the “do not mail” and “do not call” registries, but it has not yet done so.

Not wanting to antagonize recipients, however targeted they may be, most mailers stick strictly to the double opt-in method, in which site visitors subscribe to a newsletter or ezine, are sent a confirmation email to the subscriber. Only when the subscriber confirms by return email that they wish to be a subscriber does the site begin sending them emails. Every ezine, newsletter, newsletter link or other email-based commercial message must include an opt out method, usually a link, as well as the actual street address of the mailer.

There’s just no point in sending unsolicited email. It dilutes your efforts and damages your reputation and makes you much less attractive as an affiliate partner.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:
http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

Today I will give you ideas from Ken Evoy. Ken has helped more people set up successful Internet businesses than anyone on the ‘Net. And I’m not exaggerating.

Just to prove my point, as your first free gift, I am including a full fledged course written by Ken on the subject of setting up multiple streams of income using affiliate programs. Just go here to download the Affiliate Masters Course: http://www.netman-ecommerce-guru.com/Aff-Masters.zip

The Affiliate Masters Course gives you a proven formula called CTPM.

C stands for content based on what people are looking for. If you know what people are looking for, it becomes easy to position your product as the solution. If your product solves a burning problem for people, you will get sales.

The whole issue of content revolves around choosing the right words. In order to build a real business you have to focus in on keywords that will attract both customers and the search engines. Customers look for words to help them determine whether or not they are interested in what you are offering. The search engines use words to help customers find your site.

The Affiliate Masters Course discusses several ways to select the right content so your success is assured even before you launch your site. Creating high profitability topics, based on key words will be discussed in part 2 of this series.

T stands for targeted traffic. Before you can make any money on the Internet, you have to have traffic to your site. Not just any traffic, but traffic that is interested in what you are selling. You can pay for highly targeted traffic by advertising in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines. You can establish relationships with other websites not directly competing with your own to generate traffic. The best way, however, is to get free traffic from the search engines. Several free, paid and relationship oriented strategies are discussed in parts 3 and 4 of this series.

P stands for pre-selling. Pre-selling is a process of creating credibility in the mind of the prospect. Nobody trusts the Internet these days. The only way to make any money is to provide valuable information that people need. Once they start trusting you, you can recommend products and services that will help your customers and make you money. The whole process is discussed in detail in the Course.

M stands for Monetization. Only AFTER you have gone through all of the above steps can you expect to make any money. The key in affiliate marketing is to choose the right affiliate programs. You can choose from backend providers, affiliate networks and aggregators. Each has its pros and cons (discussed in the Course).

Once you have identified some potential "directories" or other source of affiliates you need to dig into the details and find the really good ones. Check for quality of the product, strength and stability of the company, their ability to track sales made by affiliates, how they pay and how often, does their tracking system pay if the visitor comes back to the site directly and buys later, etc. The course contains too many details to cover here.

Right in the beginning of the Course is an example of how a complete novice used these principles to earn $49,000 in just over a year on his first attempt. He did much better on his second attempt by earning over $300,000.

I hope you will take the time to actually go through this course. You are getting it free of charge so you may tend not to give it much importance, but the Affiliate Masters Course is one of the best and most comprehensive resources on affiliate marketing.

Next week you will receive some free software that will help you find highly profitable keywords. We will discuss several strategies to use keywords to ensure your success in your online business.

Neeraj Varma.

For more Proven marketing concepts from people making big money on and off the Internet go to: http://www.netman-ecommerce-guru.com/mgzne

Why would site visitors sift through generalities when they can get specifics that focus on people like them? You know they won’t, so you started a web site for a niche market – on a subject near and dear to your heart, as focus and enthusiasm show. Say, do-it-yourself furniture caning.

Then what?

Go to conferences, read books and articles and do some interviews in order to find out just what a do yourself caner wants to know.

Put up your content with a twist specifically toward your niche. No need to skip the more general or related articles or information, such as the history of caning, or art museums that have exquisite caned chair examples, but provide them by using links to broader, more general sites, and complementary sites that target offshoots of your core subject Pull together the best instructional materials you can on every aspect of caning, organized the way you’ve found your visitors think and proceed. videos, charts, how-to articles on techniques of caning, minor repairs to a chair before caning, how and when to stain, oil or paint, common materials used for caning, etc.

Now, ask novice caners to go through your site, and see where they got lost. Terminology? Maybe you need a glossary. Instructions too difficult or assume things? Maybe you need more steps or drawings. Perhaps a help line in the future, sponsored by advertisers?

Do the same with experts – and see what they want to learn, or even better, share. Ask them to author articles or write a column on the site. Ask visitors about caning events in their local areas, and start compiling the great caning event calendar. Host a contest or competition. Write articles and send them to your local and national press, especially if you’ve found that there’s an annual caned chair day. If there isn’t one, start one, by putting reminders on your site, stationery, press releases. Have everything refer back to your site.

Now you are ready to add highly focused affiliates that your visitors are likely to buy from – from specialty paint stores, to artisan caning reed sellers (how else would anyone outside of their locale find them?), book and video sellers, handicraft schools. You have the market they’ve been looking for.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:
http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

Making money with affiliate programs isn’t rocket science. You don’t need a marketing degree or a college degree to do it. In fact, affiliate programs are an excellent way to make money online and it can be easy to do if you go in knowing some key points.

First, to make money with an affiliate program, you need to understand how they work. An affiliate program works by signing up people to represent certain products or services and then paying those people a commission to sell the company’s product or service. This is a great way for companies to expand their sales force and market share. Nowadays, with the Internet making the world your global marketplace, making money online through affiliate programs is more feasible than ever.

Hundreds of thousands of firms have launched affiliate programs that have continued to be a great success. Big names you know such as Ebay, Amazon, and Google have affiliate programs where it’s possible for an individual to make a good amount of money online through their affiliate programs.

If you’re not sure how to begin the process of making money online through an affiliate program, here is a brief outline to get you started.

First, find a company with a product or service you’d like to represent. Normally you will sign up at the company’s website. If they don’t manage their own affiliate programs you might be registering at an affiliate management site such as Commission Junction or ClickBank. You will be given your own unique i.d. as an affiliate of the company to sell its products online through its affiliate program.

Then, set up a blog or your own website and advertise your product with a link to the company’s site that includes your affiliate i.d. so you can be given credit for each sale. When people hit your blog or website, they will see the advertisement for the product or service you’re representing and when they click the link to go to the company website, you will be given credit if they buy the product or service. You probably won’t have a problem finding products to sell in an online affiliate marketing program to make money. There are numerous products in categories such as art, automotive products, cards, computers, credit cards and finance, gambling and adult venues, home businesses, magazines, matchmaking sites, web hosting services and so much more. It’s just a matter of deciding what you feel has mass public appeal and what type of products or services you’d be comfortable representing.

There are two key points to being a successful affiliate and making money online through affiliate programs. Number one, you must market yourself. The previously mentioned blog is an excellent way to market your affiliate program and make money online. With a blog you can write personal, newsy messages and you can go a step further and keyword enhance them to give your page more relevance in search engine return results. It’s a great way to "soft sell" the public on your affiliate program items. If you don’t want to use a blog, set up a website. Don’t put a bunch of screaming graphics or huge letters. The most successful affiliate sites are not full of fluffy words and empty promises about products. The successful websites are low-key in design using low graphics and light colors. Another great way to market yourself is to write articles about your service or product you’re selling. Use a product review style and post them on any of the free article databases out there with a link back to your site.

The second key point in making money online through affiliate programs is to be organized. You can use your computer and build a spreadsheet, make notes on a pad and keep it in your desk drawer. Whatever works for you so you can keep track of your programs. You just need to be consistent and diligent about keeping records of your clicks and sales to insure that you make money in your affiliate programs.

If people are clicking your links and you’re not getting sales. Obviously you need to tweak out the wording for your products. People are turned off by phrases such as "It’s the Best" or "You MUST have this product/service". Instead, tell people how they will benefit from the product or service with out using sales fluff and filler words, give them a few uses for it, show them why they should purchase from you, and they will. You in turn, will make money online for simply hosting an affiliate program.

When a sale is made, you will be given credit as long as your affiliate i.d. was associated with the sale. Most affiliate programs let you sign up for free and pay you a percentage of the sale. You don’t do any shipping or direct sales. Usually, if you market hard and consistently, you stand to make a good deal of money online through affiliate programs. That’s the sheer beauty of using online affiliate programs.

Now that you know the potential for making money online with affiliate programs, sign up for some affiliate programs to represent products or services you feel have a mass appeal. It’s not too late to get in on one of the fastest and easiest moneymaking opportunities you can find to make money online.

David Cooper can help you make money online with affiliate programs. He specializes in helping people with their affiliate marketing efforts by offering real world tips and strategies. Download his FREE Affiliate Marketing Primer ebook at: http://www.affiliatemarketingarticles.com

It’s true that it doesn’t cost the affiliate anything to sign up with an established program of a merchant or advertiser. But just because the cost of this mechanism – the cookies, links, banners, specials, check payments etc – are paid for by the merchant, that’s no reason to treat the affiliate role as if it’s cost-free.

An affiliate needs to devote resources to keeping up a site that’s current, relevant, informative, fun etc. and to promoting the site so the greatest number of sales possible// are directed to your merchant sites.

So what should you spend money on? Analysis: Rank the merchants and/or products you are selling, and understand why. Are they seasonal, increasing in volume, decreasing in volume? Be on the lookout for trends, so you can make changes before you’re caught in the complacency = loss of profitability equation. Content: If you can‘t write, or don’t have time, pay others do it for you. But be specific about what you want, including length, specific subjects, keyword and key phrase density, ownership pf content, absolutely no plagiarism etc. Content is king in search engines (along with blogs) so paying up here is an investment, not just a cost. Site continuity and navigability: If your site isn’t easy to read and use, visitors will be gone before that even realize you have merchant partners. Keep a file of bookmarks labeled ”Great Sites”, no matter what business they’re in. Include all the sites that just hit you right, and take note of how they make the segue between content and/or products and the products of their merchant partners.

Successful sites know change is constant – budget for it.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:

http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

See that title? Many of us see that at least once a day online. However, most people get the wrong idea. It sounds like a get rich quick scheme and people use it accordingly.

The biggest mistake people make is they throw up a website with 100 blinding banners. Set it and forget it might sound good for informercial rotating ovens, but it doesn’t work when your trying to create a successful website.

There are probably millions of dead websites out there where people became an affiliate and quit when they saw nothing in return. But how do you expect to get traffic and income if no one knows about your site?

The best advice is to choose an affiliate that doesn’t have huge competition. It will be hard to get your foot in the door if 10 million other people are advertising the same product. I know of one person who makes a comfortable amount per month as an affiliate for a foot product. Not many would pay attention to it and that left him with a lot of room to advertise without being over taken by similar ads and competition.

If you want to be an affiliate but don’t want the hassle of a website, then consider using a landing page. Some affiliates such as dentalplans give you a free landing page but not many do. A landing page is your own website you can post to search engines, and ad services. It’s different because many affiliates give you a link, banner, or buttons to put on your website. But if you don’t have a website you have no place to put them. So you get a free web page or free website and use that page to presell that product before showing them the door to actually see and buy the product.

Now with invention and popularity of ad services the average person can afford like google’s adsense, adwords, and yahoo’s overture, you can now advertise that page for $5.00 a day and get traffic.

That’s the biggest problem. Traffic. If no one visits your site how can you sell the product? Here are a few tips on gaining traffic.

Article Writing - Write and submit articles. There are literally hundreds of places that let you submit an article for free. What this does is get you free exposure. Websites, blogs, ezines and many other places see the article and use it, but they usually have to leave your info intact. So you put your website address and soon it’s being seen many different places.

Search Engine Submisssion - While Google and many other places has spiders that crawl new and updated sights, don’t forget to submit your site to all the search engines that you can.

Web Directories - Spoke to a new website creator last week who had no idea what directories are. These are other places that you can submit your websites to. One of the most known is dmoz.org.

Also find sites that are similar to yours and kindly ask the webmaster if they would like to trade links. You will be surprised but there are a few that are willing. Don’t trade links with sites that have nothing in common with yours. If you are selling shoes, don’t trade with a site that sells porn. Google and other sites don’t look favorably on these sites

Stay away from link and banner farms. They do nothing but send you tons of emails a day. Even though they promise lots of traffic to your website, that rarely happens, and when it does, it’s traffic from a popup window that came up on someones website. Think of how often you pay attention to popup ads and now think of how others will react to your popup on their screen. Popups long ago stopped being effective and everyday more and more popup blockers and killers are born. So it’s rare if someone even sees your popup before it’s quickly killed.

Many of these link farms and banner exchanges are free, and that goes to say that you get exactly what you pay for and that is absolutely nothing.

Bottom line there are many great articles and free ebooks out there. Do some research before jumping onto the affiliate bandwagon, it could save you a lot of headaches in the future. Good luck with new business and also take a look at all about traffic below.

Written by Marsha James

Please feel free to add my article to your website, forum, blog, newsletters and other ventures if you leave it in full format. If used in a newsletter please send it to me that I may view where my work is going. Thank You.

SEO copywriting or Search Engine Optimized Copywriting is the writing (or re-writing) of text – articles, product reviews, comparisons, how-to’s etc. in a way that they rank high in a search engine search. That is, if a person is searching for a particular keyword, (“swan”) or key phrase (“mute swan signet”) and one or both are keywords/keyword phrases for your site, that you will rank well in a search. The first page or two are what counts, because most people won’t go any further.

SEO copywriting needs to accomplish two objectives: To attract the search engine and obtain a good ranking once it crawls the site, and to provide interest and value to the reader. When your site ranks high, more people will see it and visit and you will have the ability to increase your sales or fulfill other objectives, such as membership or contributions.

Using search term tools, such as Wordtracker, find relevant words and phrases that describe your content, and are popular, but not highly competitive, with a multitude of users. There’s no exact science to the number of keywords or density percentage on a page, but they should be spread throughout the page and always appear in the first sentence and the headings. Be sure to use singular and plural of the words as well as synonyms, and other related words, such as waterfowl in the swan example. The keywords and Key phrases should use HTML header codes H1 for primary headlines, and H2 for subheads. Title tags appear as the title of your page in search engine results, and should contain your most relevant keywords for each page, so the searcher is delivered to highest area of interest and remains there to take the action it was created for.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:

http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

The Good Old Days

Remember the good old days? You’d purchase a domain name, set up your site (with a few swear words here and there), and place some banner ads (while crossing your fingers for the best banner ad click-through results). This all worked great–for a while; until people managed to avoid our banner ads like the plague. Life got more complex. What were us internet marketers to do? We had to become more savvy. Fortunately for us, the affiliate model was introduced.

Ah, the affiliate marketing model. It never hurts to get a little help from your friends, right? Affiliate marketing networks offer a wide range of advantages to businesses. In short: it’s a booming business with dollar signs all around it. Sure, affiliate marketing can be a profitable business, but it can also be very aggravating, time consuming, and antisocial. So here’s the big question: Why the heck do we keep putting ourselves through all of this pain? The answer, although seemingly complex, is quite simple: easy money.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The average person thinks of affiliate marketing as a “get rich quick” scheme for geeks and nerds. Actually, it’s the farthest thing from the truth. Nowadays, you’re just as likely to find a High School dropout behind an affiliate marketing operation; as you are to find a computer science major.

Despite the revenue advantages, many successful affiliate managers are weary of transparent affiliates. After all, there’s a lot of trickery out there. You have to be on the lookout for the ‘Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ That’s right folk, if you’re the good guy, beware of the bad and the ugly affiliates. They’re out there right now placing infectious adware on an unsuspecting consumer’s computer.

As a marketer, it’s your responsibility to investigate your affiliates use of adware. Don’t turn your head and look the other way. It’s OUR consumers that may receive unwanted and/or destructive ads. Can you blame them for becoming angry at the marketer who (perhaps inadvertently) funds adware infections? Of course not. Destructive ads shouldn’t even be considered a marketing strategy. It’s completely unethical.

The New Guy

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a great starting point. If you experience success–run with the ball. Explore additional performance compensation structures. But before you even consider jumping into the game, you should ask yourself the following questions (to avoid business pitfalls):

1). Will affiliate marketing assist you in reaching all of your business targets?

2). Will affiliate marketing have advantages over other types of online marketing?

3). Do you have the time and commitment to run a developing affiliate operation (which will require time to flourish and succeed?

4). How flexible is your budget for affiliate marketing?

Here’s some background information for the ‘new guy’: Time and commitment are essential to your success. While running a network of affiliates doesn’t require a college degree, it does require your attention for details. Perhaps this is why merchants find outsourced providers offer a very appealing solution. In addition, the new guy should realize:

• Not everyone will make five figures a month with affiliate marketing. There’s a lot of marketers out there. You’re the new guy, remember? Find some successful companies that use affiliate marketing. Research them. What did they do to become such a success? Can you duplicate that plan?

• You’re not going to make any money eating potato chips in front of the television. If it were that easy–I’d be doing that instead of writing this article on affiliate marketing. Be prepared to devote a lot of time to your business and your affiliate relations.

• Don’t take blind referrals from anyone! You’ll discover the best affiliate opportunities through your own research.

The Future

In just the last few years, affiliate marketing has become a very powerful force on ecommerce. Every day thousands, if not millions, of merchants rely on affiliate marketing to drive their businesses. But is affiliate marketing all just a big hype? What ever happened to customer service? What strange times we live in; as the value of business is no longer placed on the customer–but on the relationship with whoever facilitated the connection.

This just goes to prove that affiliate marketing is only as good as the people who run it. Remember, there are ways to get your affiliate program noticed; just make sure that you get it noticed for the right reasons. If you value internet based businesses and you’d like more job leads, educational information, and tools to aid your internet entrepreunership, than visit: eByro (a Vertical Portal for Internet Entrepreneurs).

Marissa Ranello is an independent marketing consultant with clients in the United States and Canada. As an employee of eByro , a Vertical Portal for Internet Entrepreneurs, Marissa devotes her time to internet business, performance-based marketing, and affilate programs. Visit: http://www.ebyro.com

Every affiliate needs to define its user groups. Interests, product needs, products they probably already have (with potential for upgrades), favorite activities, income – describe the typical visitor as you would a person. Then describe the focus of your site or primary products. Then the easiest way to begin is to review and add a few highly relevant sites from Affiliate Marketers, such as Linkshare and Commission Junction. Then go to the sites of brands and products you know appeal to your market. Look for a link to their affiliate program and join them individually, once you are satisfied with the site quality and the quality of the products.

Decide where on your pages you want to put affiliate links and banners. You may not want every page to be a selling page, and the best positioning on each page will depend upon the content. Links at the end of an article are a natural, following the flow of the reader’s eye. Links or banners on pages that are transactional, with buttons and boxes, work better near the action.

Once your site visitors have had the opportunity to shop at your merchant sites, take a hard look at what is working and what is not, and make some adjustments. With knowledge of what your visitors want, make a wish list of companies and products that will round out your merchandise offerings. Then search the web and identify the sites. There’s no problem if their sites don’t make reference to affiliate programs. Approach them anyway, and negotiate an agreement. You’ll know the range of commissions customarily paid for their categories of goods and services from your relationships with other merchants. And if you are polling your site visitors you’ll know products, product features and accessories they are ready and willing to buy.

Karen Kari’s articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:

http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com