Every business need products or services to sell and without these you DO NOT have a businesss. Makes sense, right?

If you are thinking of starting an online business you need to decide whether you want to sell your own products or whether you want to do as I do and sell other peoples’ for commissions.

I have been making a full-time income from home as an Affiliate Marketer since 2004. I sell other people products and services.

If you are new to online marketing you may not believe it is possible to sell without ones own products. I was convinced when the company checks started rolling in.

Let us first look at some ideas for creating your own product.

Discovering what people need and want is tantamount to finding a lucrative market for your work at home business. There are three things you should look for in determining the profitability of a particular market:

1. How great is the demand? 2. How scarce is the supply? Or restated, how much competition will you encounter? 3. Will you be able to provide for this demand?

If the answer to all the three considerations above are favorable, then you have for yourself a good market that your online home business can cater to.

Of course, there are some tricks and tactics that you could use to find ideal markets. Here are some of them:

* Go to www.inventory.overture.com or www.nichebot.com and type in the type of business you wish to pursue. The results will show how many searches were made, direct or related, for that particular subject over the past few weeks.

* Make a search for the same business type in any of the search engines. These results will show how abundant or scarce your competition will be.

* From time to time, there are special reports that are published which enumerate hot niches waiting to be exploited. Niches, of course, are highly specialized markets that most businesses tend to overlook.

Once you find a market, it’s time to come up with a product. Information products, ie. E-books, are the most ideal for your online home business. They can be digitally delivered, and they don’t require physical space for stocking.

There are four popular ways by which you could come up with an information product for your online home business:

* You could create these products yourself. Maybe you are an expert in a certain area? Could you write a special report? Don’t forget to check out if there is a demand for the info as outlined above.

* You could hire someone to create them for you. Elance.com is a favourite for online marketers to have products created and I have used them on quite a few occasions myself.

* You could use existing products that have been created by others, through the purchase of their resale rights.

Mike Hill is an expert on using Public Domain Works for this purpose. You can check out his site here: http://www.malkeenan.com/offers/publicdomainworks.html

Then there is Affiliate Marketing…..

You can join affiliate programs in 1000s of different markets in almost any topic imaginable and choose to pre-sell any of the products they have to offer. As mentioned above this is my preferred method.

When choosing affiliate products you want something of quality which also offers high commissions. Most quality affiliate programs will also offer tools in the form of graphics and pre-written ad copy to help you make your money.

Some affiliate programs will offer 75% commission to you for selling their service online. I would be looking for at least 50%, especially for low priced products like e-books.

For high priced items, marketing seminars, marketing course etc. I would expect 30-50%.

The benefits of selling affiliate products is that you don’t have to worry about payment processors nor product support, which can be a nightmare.

Selling affiliate products frees up a lot of my time. The way I see it, there is no point working at home unless it allows me more freedom to do the things I like to do.

Whether you choose your own product or to go the affiliate route there is a lot of money to be made, IF you do the right things.

I am here to make your decision easier and give you whatever help and advice I can to enable you to proceed.

Contact me anytime for ideas and advice.

I genuinely want to help.

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of Home Based Business Opportunities Newsletter.
Visit his work at home opportunities website for more ideas, articles and resources PLUS your free 30 page home business success e-book.

It seems that the VERY popular fashion of article writing is not unlike real world clothing fashion in that; the same things keep coming around with seasonal regularity. In fact, more so with the fast paced development of the ‘home business’ or ‘work at home’ article topic conveyor.

I’m probably guilty of the above for writing on this specific subject itself, having seen a few others lament the continual rehashing of the ‘same ol’, same ol’. Although in my defense, today’s comment is not so much the same lamentation but, in my eyes at least, an attempt to put the record straight about a specific subject, of which I’ve read far too many articles about recently.

To be fair, I’m sure only good intentions (and a need for something to write about) are responsible for the latest round of ‘Affiliate marketing is simple’ and ‘You’ll be earning online in no time as an Affiliate’ type articles. In so many of these articles, Affiliate marketing is touted as the ‘way to go’ for anyone who has a website (or EVEN NOT, which is rubbish for all but a few).

I currently run seven Affiliate websites, recently ‘trimmed down’ from twelve because of the amount of time involved in all that was required to keep each website competitive in the Search Engines and interesting to visitors, both new and returning, chasing PR and generally maintaining what have become known as ‘affiliate content websites’.

Some merchants supply complete website templates, which are helpful, provided you have total SEO control, but even so, they are not generally well packed with content and certainly they don’t have ‘ready to go’ RSS feeds, news updates, blogs and articles etc. So even though, as I said, they do help, there is still much to be done initially and maintained continually to end up with a comprehensive, interesting and SE friendly Affiliate website.

I had to ‘trim down’ my activities simply because, even though I am fortunate enough to be a full time Internet home businessperson, I did not have the time to keep that number of websites producing viable ‘income for effort’. When you consider the amount of work involved in just one affiliate content website, I’m sure most will understand why I have had to ‘streamline’. At the same time, I hope a realization of the effort and time involved will also become apparent.

Of course, before we even start any of the following, we assume we have the ability to build our own websites with a degree of professionalism and functionality, templates aside. Without these two aspects at least, anyone who does visit, will leave shortly after. For the sake of the exercise, we have magically received the knowledge and experience to achieve this… overnight!

Our website will need to be nurtured through a period of at least 3 - 6 months of little or no activity (unless we also happen to be, again miraculously, well versed, experienced, and game enough to throw money at PPC engines). During this period we will be setting up and making use of the advantages of RSS feeds, blogs, content articles (both other’s and hopefully, some of our own). We’ll be updating and changing things almost daily in order to achieve some targeted traffic through the SEs, when we’re finally out of the ‘sandboxes’ etc.

While this is all coming together, we’re spending a lot of time on a link exchange program (not so much for PR, but because back links are an important component in the SE results). This needs to be done manually because the automatic programs do more harm to a website’s SE chances than help (but that’s another article!).

Slowly, our website is gaining some targeted traffic, the only kind of any use to an Affiliate website. We may even have managed a few sales, provided we have, again miraculously overnight, become confident and made good choices of Affiliate programs and products around which we have built and nurtured our website.

The traffic and occasional sale, although exciting to the ‘first-timer’ serve only to create more time consuming work. These ‘hits’, as we call them, need to be analyzed. We need to know where they came from, what particular promotional method brought them to us, what part of the world they originated, the referring URL if any and so on, so we can concentrate our efforts in the right places and forego those which don’t seem to be successful.

No serious Affiliate relies on a single product or program for an income. We all know about the security and sense in ‘multiple income streams’? Well, the concept is a very important aspect in Affiliate marketing., so this ONE website we’ve just managed to bring to a point where it MAY BEGIN paying for some of the time effort and expense involved in it’s inception, really needs to be one of a number for an Affiliate to hope to became self-sufficient through Affiliate marketing.

Of course, luck plays it’s role in all things and some do make good quickly and sometimes, one product or program WILL be sufficient for the desired income. Maybe, with some, the whole exercise is more a hobby or interest and a little pocket money to pay costs is all that’s wanted. These are all personal aspects, which are of no consequence. We’re talking about people who are being told how easy it is to become an Affiliate for ‘income’ purposes.

Having now totally destroyed the Affiliate dreams of thousands, I will now say that it IS a marvellous Internet home business model and you can start and progress to the point where you are making some income, without spending very much at all. In fact, the only outlay that is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, is the domain and hosting for your website. In that respect, Affiliate marketing is TRULY the ‘no-risk’ home based business model.

Still again, there is much to know about the domain and hosting aspect of the preparation, which will have consequences if not considered correctly, before we even think about what I have spoken about above.

Do yourself a favor if you’re relatively unfamiliar with Affiliate marketing or even halfway there, get the right advice from the right sources. The right sources are people who have been, and/or are doing it themselves and aren’t afraid to explain that it’s not all that EASY, but certainly possible for those who really WANT the ‘work at home’ dream for themselves and their families.

This article may be copied ONLY in it’s entirety and ONLY with this Author’s Resource attached with links functioning.

The 2005 Edition of Steve Brennan’s popular ebook title ‘The Affiliate Guide Book’ is available now. He also operates a number of Affiliate wesbites which include The Diet & Weight Loss Place and The Home Based Business & Affiliate Center.

There is a lot of money in affiliate marketing. However, this is true only for those who are seriously and zealously working on their affiliate program. A large part of affiliate success depends on determination and perseverance.

Even the best affiliate program will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not build their business on a solid foundation. Extra diligence is required when you engage in affiliate marketing using ads. Nothing happens if the links or banners you place online just decorate a web page. The affiliate must convince the visitor to click on it and proceed to the program site to buy the products. No click-through means no income for an affiliate marketer.

You can generate a full-time income as an affiliate marketer. You can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. Does this sound too easy?

It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate campaign well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Steps such as choosing an excellent product, designing a content rich website with banners and product reviews, writing copy for advertising in newsletters and emails to your opt-in subscribers, publishing articles that highlight the benefits your product provides, and placing PPC advertising.

The key to making all these promotional techniques produce the results you desire is an advertising tracking tool. Experienced and successful affiliate marketers know that ad tracking is essential to a successful affiliate marketing campaign.

What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a software program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors to your program’s sale site via your referral link. Best of all you know exactly where you placed the link that produced the click through. You can purchase the ad tracking software or use a service provider.

With an ad tracker, you can monitor the progress of your marketing campaigns, even offline advertising. This tool is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.

Of course, after investing your time, you want to make sure you are getting paid for your effort. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar you invest in your advertising campaign is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links were clicked on. It will also act as an email ad tracker. How many of those who opened your email clicked through to the program site? Which of your banner ads brought the most leads and sales? All this data will allow you to do a marketing analysis of each affiliate program and advertising medium you are using. You will easily determine which of your marketing strategies are most effective and beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.

Every decision you make must be well grounded in facts. Using an ad tracker, you will be able to generate a website traffic report for your affiliate program sales page. Armed with this wealth of information you will be able to test and tweak your promotions to reach maximum profitability with confidence.

If you are serious about affiliate marketing, remember that your success depends on the response of those viewing your promotions. Find the advertising techniques that produce the desired customer response. Test everything. Get an ad tracker and begin making informed decisions about your promotional budget. Now you are on the track to success!

Pam Jenkins of What Worx! Marketing publishes an online ezine, What Worx!. You may subscribe here.

Whether you realize it or not, if you’ve been on the Internet today, you have encountered affiliate marketing. If you have ever “clicked thru” one site to order something from another, the first site probably received a portion of the sale. For instance, independent booksellers have limited shelf space for books. But they can offer their customers an almost unlimited inventory of titles by affiliating with companies like Amazon or Powell’s. The more orders, the bigger the affiliate percentage.

Visitors to your site are interested in lots of things that may or may not be related to your product. But when you know your customers well, it’s simply a matter of affiliating yourself with sites that offer what they want. What you receive is just a small percentage of the sale, but it adds up, especially when you consider that all it costs you is a link on your web page. And usually, the more sales your affiliate makes from your “click thru” traffic, the bigger your percentage will be.

The key to success in affiliate marketing is being able to track referred customers. As an affiliate manager, you want a system that reliably tracks what you want, with minimal effort on your part, and without affecting the performance of your site or server. Over the last few years a variety of technologies and strategies have been developed in an attempt to improve accuracy, convenience, and flexibility.

There are at least half a dozen methods, but by far the most preferred method is Cookie Tracking. It’s popular because it makes tracking affiliate-referred sales so convenient, without negatively impacting your site. This system writes a small text file, called a “cookie,” to a user’s browser when they click on an affiliate link. When you are the referring affiliate, the cookie holds your ID, so that at the merchant’s order page, you get credit for referring the sale. One drawback is that many computer users disable cookies, although most choose not to, since their favorite sites require them. One bonus is that the merchant can save the information, so that even if a customer buys long after clicking through your site, you still get credit for the sale.

Affiliate marketing, at its best, is a win-win scenario. It’s an easy way to offer your customers more of what they want, while you benefit, both in terms of building goodwill and making money.

Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com

All companies treat their affiliates differently. In fact, your affiliates are your driving sales force. Unlike in the off-line world, they don’t get paid by the hour, they get paid for the sales they make.

This means you, the business owner, only pay for what you sell, but it also means that you need to train your affiliates to motivate themselves to dedicate their time to marketing and selling the products that will bring you and them a an above average income.

No matter if you’re an affiliate owner or just a participant in some or other affiliate program, you make money when you and your downline make sales. Having 500 affiliates will do you little good and bring in little money, if they won’t sell.

How can you successfully train your affiliates to achieve the best sales results on-line or off-line?

The key answer is- spread by word of mouth.

You can explain how your program works to people. While word of moth can be powerful when applied to other areas, advertising is very weak when applied to sales training. However, it can function as a good tool with other methods. Training by word of mouth works primarily on the mind by acquainting people with something either by confirming or denying a certain way of thinking.

Sometimes even a single word or sentence read is enough to unleash an avalanche of new ideas or experiences. Although, when that happens, the person was already on the verge of change and just needed one final push to get there.

The Art of Repetition. Either you repeat what you said or repeat what you’ve demonstrated. There are only two possible consequences. 1) either the trainee will accept what you are offering and build towards critical mass in this new direction. 2) they will reject what you’re offering and turn inward.

If you say or show things that this person is not yet ready for pushing, every repetition will generate a new and greater resentment. By doing this you are building a critical mass of negative feelings towards whatever it is you are pushing the person to accept. The best way is to teach by example. This is the only way that really works in real life.

People do not generally "do as you say," they "do as you do." It’s also the only method where you can’t be aggressive and doesn’t compromise the person’s integrity. Speaking may be welcome if the person you speak to really wants to hear what you have to say. They may feel unwelcome and forceful if the person isn’t yet ready to open up to new information.

First, you must show how something can be done and the right avenue to achieve it. This means you lay out the exact steps your affiliates should take when marketing your products.

Give them correct and trustworthy directions with real life experiences of how those very steps worked for you. Give them all the sales material you can generate and also tell them exactly how each piece worked for you and how to use it best. But do not give them empty words and promises. Never show them something you yourself haven’t tried before and cannot back up.

People will feel when you are just saying something to make them sell harder, but haven’t really succeeded with it yourself. This is especially important if you are a only part of some affiliate program and are trying to teach your affiliates how to market more successfully.

If you try to teach them things that you are not 100% certain in they will get worn out and lose faith in you in the long haul. Most affiliate programs offer their affiliates old steps that everyone already knows about.

People today are much smarter than before and most know they don’t work anymore. This can be YOUR point of difference. The most important thing to remember is to say what you mean when you mean it. Tell your affiliates everything you know. Show by example and provide them with all the information you can create. This will help build a trustworthy relationship.

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter on your web site as long as the byline is included and the article is included in it’s entirety. I also ask that you activate any html links found in the article and in the byline. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to: support@multiplestreammktg.com

Build Trustworthy Relationships with your Affiliates By Abe Cherian Copyright © 2005

Abe Cherian is the founder of Multiple Stream Media, a leading performance-based Internet advertising company dedicated in helping small businesses create online presence, brand recognition and online automation. Main company web site: http://www.multiplestreammktg.com

I’ve been an affiliate for a long time, trying different ways and many different sites to make money. When I first started there were many things I didn’t know and it seemed like I was banging my head against the wall just to make a few dollars… and sometimes just a few cents… but over time I learned a few tips and tricks.

1. One website isn’t enough. When I first became an affiliate, I had one website; a site for women that featured recipes, articles, a shopping section, and more. I put affiliate ads on every page, but the shopping section was exclusively affiliate advertising. I spent more than a year submitting this site EVERYWHERE, constantly. I never made more than 20 dollars a month. To profit from affiliate advertising, you need many websites. Do you think having multiple sites is too much to maintain? Once you get them set up and get the hang of it, you will only spend a few hours a day on them, especially if you use BLOGS instead of the standard html sites, as mentioned below in the next tip.

2. BLOG! There are some advantages to having blogs and using them for your affilate advertising. You don’t have to know html. Blogging has been made so easy that you just click here, copy and paste there, and you’re done. Blogging can be FREE. Many sites such as blogger.com offer you a free blog. Blog articles get picked up VERY quickly at Google and other search engines, especially if you allow people to comment to your posts. If you get a blog, add to it every day, and put your affiliate advertising right into your article. The more blogs you have the better. I have a blog for coupons and savings, one for personal articles, one for news articles, one for just jewelry, one for coupons, one with a punk theme, one for poker, and one for internet chat logs, and I’m always trying to think of new blog ideas. They all link to each other and they all have affiliate advertising on them. In fact, my friends and I are working on building a blog empire!

3. One affiliate company isn’t enough. In the beginning I was only signed up at linkshare.com. Sure, I was an affiliate at 100s of online stores through LinkShare, but I didn’t realize how much I was limiting myself. You need to also sign up at Commission Junction (cj.com) and ShareaSale.com, and maybe one or two more. Many merchants only use one affiliate site. For instance, if you want to be a Macy’s affiliate you’ll need to be a member of Linkshare, but if you want commissions from Liz Clayborne, it’s Commision Junction you’ll need. Don’t limit yourself!

4. Coupons and Sales. Many merchants offer coupon and promotional codes to their affiliates. Look for them and take advantage of them. Advertise the sales, too! People love saving money! Have you ever shopped online and then at the checkout you saw a box for coupon or promo code? Did you then open another browser and go try to find a coupon code for that site? I’ve done that a few times, as many people have. If you have a blog article entitled "Perfume.com coupon code" and then list the code as an affiliate link in the article with "click here to redeem", someone shopping at perfume.com WILL find it. When they see the box at the checkout for coupon code, many people will go to Google, type in "perfume.com coupon code," and find your article listed near the top. Like I said earlier, blog articles get into the search engines very quickly. Of course, my coupon blog, percentsavings.com, is filled with nothing but coupon codes and sales from 100s of online stores, and it’s all affilate advertising.

5. Don’t just add a link. Tell a little about the store/company and what they offer. If they were proudly founded in 1930, say so! If your link goes to their apparel section but they also offer bedding and kitchenware and dog collars, say so in your post! When you become an affiliate, you become a salesman. If you want commissions, make the merchant sound great!

6. Submitting isn’t just for search engines. In addition to the search engines, submit your blog to forums sites that list blogs. Every incoming link helps, no matter where it is! For the sites that list blogs (bloggerinity.com, technorati.com, bloglines.com, etc.) you’ll be required to link back to them, but that’s a good thing! You should spend at least an hour a day just finding new places to submit to.

7. Consider Pay-Per-Click. Not to your site, but to the merchant’s site, with your affiliate link as the URL. For instance, I use Google AdWords to advertise single sites I’m affiliated with, or even single products. Because of the Terms of Service I agreed to, I can’t use the word "ZALES" as one of my keywords. But when I was notified by the affiliate company that ZALES was having a sale on children’s jewelry, and I was given an affiliate link that landed on the sale page, I started a Google pay-per-click ad for it. I used the URL they gave me as the landing page so that it would have my affiliate tracking link in it, but I used "Zales.com" as the URL that shows up in the results, so that when it’s clicked on in Google it goes to Zales but I still get a commission if they purchase. My search terms were Children’s Jewelry, and Children’s Jewelry Sale. I set it to 5 cents per click, and my entire Adwords campaign stops each day after I’ve spent $1. I kept this ad running for the duration of the sale. With the small number of clicks the ad got, I only spent about $6, but one purchase of an expensive item of jewelry gave me a commission of $34. Keep in mind, I’m using affiliate advertising, in this case, without ever having the link on any of my websites or blogs.

8. RSS. RSS feeds are becoming more and more popular. I subscribe to several blogs’ RSS feeds, myself. It’s just so much easier to get new articles to all my favorite blogs all in one place (I use Mozilla Thunderbird), and I know people who subscribe to RSS feeds appreciate seeing an RSS button on my site. It’s very easy to implement, too. Just add a link on your blog to "http://yourdomain.com/?feed=rss2" and then anyone with an aggregator can subscribe to it. If you want to give them the option to subscribe to your blog’s comments as well, the url is "http://yourdomain.com/?feed=comments-rss2." If you have a blog similar to my coupon site, RSS can really help you by sending your new items directly to a subscriber’s aggregator, without you having to do anything at all!

9. Email signatures. For your email signature, use links to all your sites that have affiliate advertising on them. Family, friends, clients… anyone can be enticed to click on your ads!

10. Don’t give up, and POST POST POST! It can become frustrating but NEVER give up! It takes time! Just keep working at it and you WILL start seeing some commissions eventually. My first blog was online for a few months and being added to daily before I started seeing commissions. Just be sure to post articles to your blogs constantly! Never miss a day!

Melody Ralls
http://percentsavings.com

If you are an affiliate marketer, or if you hope to become one, there is a marketing technique that is very popular, very effective, and very free. Writing an article for affiliate programs is one of the most effective forms of free advertising that you can use today. If you’ve never considered writing an article for affiliate programs now is the time, and here is the way to do it.

First, you don’t want to use your affiliate links when writing an article for affiliate programs. In most cases, it is just too long and too obvious. You are better off using a shorter URL if possible, and if that isn’t possible, you will need to use a link that directs the reader to your own website – with a short URL – and then make sure that there is a link from the page they will arrive at to the affiliate product or service. In all cases, avoid using the affiliate link in the article.

Once you’ve determined which product or products you will promote in your article, and which URL you will be directing the reader to, it is time to get down to the business of writing an article for affiliate programs. What you need to realize is that other affiliates of the same products and services may also write articles, and yours needs to be quite unique. Therefore, writing an article that just describes the product or service really won’t do.

Before starting your article, really think about the product or service that you are promoting. What can you say about it that no other affiliate will say? Can you describe new ways to use the product or service? Can you write about using specific features? What about benefits? If you can’t think of anything unique to say, you will do well to head in a different direction.

Can you combine more than one affiliate product or service in one article? For instance, if you were writing an article to promote several health products that women are interested in, such as a hair care product, nail products, and skin care products, you might write an article about how to give yourself a spa treatment at home – and work those products into the text of the how-to article.

Articles are typically about 350 words long. This is about one page using a twelve point font. That is not a lot of space to fill, so do not allow it to overwhelm you. It is also important to note that you are not trying to produce award winning journalism. Many people never begin an article simply because they think that it is much harder than it actually is. In fact, it the hardest part of writing an article is determining what you will write about.

If you are still having trouble coming up with something to write about when you are writing an article for affiliate programs, visit the websites of the affiliate programs and look for ideas there. Read articles that other affiliates have written if you can locate them. Read articles that were written about similar products or services. Just remember you are doing this to get ideas. You still want your article to be as different from other articles as possible.

It does take thought to get started, but your efforts will be well worth it in the end. Your article can be submitted to article banks and delivered via email to ezine publishers as well. Other people will visit the article banks to find content for their newsletters and websites, and if you are providing a link to your own website, your link popularity will rise, which will boost your ratings in the search engines as well. You should consider a service like http://www.Article-Marketer.com for submitting your articles to as many places as possible, too. The more places you submit to, the more your article (and affiliate links!) will be seen.

Jason is a successful Internet Marketer, and posts regularly on his Adventures In Internet Marketing blog. Take a minute right now to sign up for his newsletter for more great information!

If you are planning to take the path of the reseller in your Internet Business undertakings, you will do well to use these power tips I have laid out for you. I hope you will find them useful as they have been for me.

[1] Source for Quality Products at Exclusive Resell Rights Membership Sites

A good way to source for quality products with great demand is to purchase a yearly (or even lifetime!) access to membership websites dedicated to resale rights. These membership sites offer products such as E-books, software, templates, and audio/video with resell rights.

You are advised to look for membership sites which its webmaster regularly sources for such products, preferably either the webmaster does his homework often or he has a good connection with other product creators that he usually has the product before the launch day, if not one of the first to get it.

[2] Do Not Purchase a Product with Resell Rights If the Product Is Outdated

Chances are that the product is either over-saturated on the Internet, devalued over time or did not survive the test of time (especially true if the product contained a lot of time-sensitive information).

[3] Avoid Purchasing Packaged Products with Resell Rights That Are So-called Worth $2,500 but Sells for $47

In most cases, the bundled packages are really worth just that amount. If the product and its resell rights are too cheap to be true, this is often because either product is already old (I personally consider over 2 years old as ‘old’), over-saturated on the Internet or devalued due to low prices offered by other resellers on the Internet (as you can see, becoming a reseller is tough competition!).

Consider purchasing the product and its resell rights only if you want to give them away for free, give as a bonus, or bundle them into packages where you can add value and sell at a higher price.

[4] Choose Quality Products with Resell Rights That Have Limited Competition

Preferably if the product is rather new, you have a good chance of having a head-start. Also if the author sells to customers whom most of them do not have really great marketing power, this can be your good chance as an Internet Business owner to leverage on your own connections, Joint Venture partner’s efforts, and more.

[5] Choose Quality Products that Have Attractive Back-End Income Opportunity

Choose product with resell rights that also give you an extra income opportunity to earn more from the same customers. In the first three years of the resell rights mania, products with resell rights where created only to benefit their authors. Now, things are different. Like any other wise resellers, choose to sell quality products that not only enable you to earn up-front income but also back-end income from the same customers. If possible, choose a product that allows you to earn recurring income from back-end sales.

[6] Be Sure That the Quality Product with Resell Rights Has a Persuasive Sales Letter

This should be another deciding factor in choosing your product to resell for your own. If the sales letter is not convincing, it won’t sell no matter how good the product is. The best litmus test is to read the sales letter yourself. If it does not persuade you, it won’t persuade your customers, either.

Also be sure that the sales letter has quality testimonials as I tend to notice that most sales letters for resell right products don’t have testimonials, which is very risky on the part of the reseller.

There, the power tips explained! When you make your first ten sales, send me twenty percent of your profits and a thank you note. You know the address.

Copyright (c) Edmund Loh

Edmund Loh is the author of E-Biz Wiz Blog and Starting An Internet Business Special Report with over 6 years of web designing experience before he engaged in Internet Marketing. Go to http://www.ebizmodelsyoucancopy.com/ to find out how you can be in business in 3 days with your own top quality product that you don’t have to create yourself plus an opportunity to earn recurring income.

If you have just put up a website, you probably all ready have heard words like: keywords, Google Adwords, GoogleAdsense, SEO. Adwords, Adsense, SEO have one thing in common – Keywords. How important are keywords? Very Important.

Google Adwords

Adwords, be it through Google, Miva, or any pay-per-click search engines, you need keywords. With Adwords, you create a three-line ad – 25 word title, with two 35 word lines of ad copy – then you create your keywords. To get the hits, you have to brainstorm for different keywords, that are different but relevant to your target audience. Sound easy? It’s not. It takes time, patience, constant tweaking, and hoping that the product you are selling is not already saturated — to much competition, makes it a little more difficult for the novice to make a profit.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is an advertising program created by Google, and which is beginning to be explored by other search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN – that allows you to put targeted ads on your website. If someone clicks on the ad, you earn a small amount of money. These ads are keyword driven and are relevant to your webpage or website.

Sounds simple? Well, not really. There is more too it than just putting an ad on your website and expecting someone to click on it. What’s involved? Let’s see – color, position, style, to name just a few.

SEO

Search engine optimization – this for me has been a time-consuming process – since I am still learning. SEO is keyword driven – the search engines pull the keywords from your web copy – not, to my surprise, from the meta keywords tag. Granted, I still use the meta keywords tag, but maybe in the near future, I will slowly eliminate the tag from my webpages… The search engines do, however, pull information from Meta Description, Meta Title, and the content of your webpages. Thus, content does reign supreme.

Since content reigns supreme, each page should contain useful content and most importantly, your most relevant keywords that you want to emphasize. Secondly, it is best to try and base your keywords around a central theme. I have found that when the keywords diverts away from the main theme – that sends a red flag to search engines. So, if you want to look at your keywords and the density of the keywords on your webpage or webpages – You can get a quick rundown at: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html . It’s a free tool, and very helpful.

To conclude, keywords is one of the main ingredients that leads people to your website, product, service and/or ad. …AND, keywords based around your quality content will help with your positioning on your website.

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles related to affiliate marketing, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities – all aimed toward the affiliate marketer and the marketing process.

We already know about wal mart because of their ads in local papers, on billboards, on the radio and TV. So finding a local Wal Mart is easy, and so should it also be easy to find your web site. Although you may not need to use radio and TV advertisements, you should still use offline promotion such as business cards or direct mail. Naturally, you want other web sites to put your billboard ad onto theirs. So that’s our first lesson on how Wal Mart can teach us effective affiliate marketing. Now let’s visit a Wal Mart store.

Once we arrive at Wal Mart, we enter a huge parking lot. Your web site must also enable a lot of visitors. If your site is on a slow server, you may be losing customers. That’s lesson #2.

As soon as we enter Wal Mart, we are welcomed by a Wal Mart greeter. This greeter not only welcomes us to the store, but also offers help in pointing out where to find what you’re looking for. That’s lesson 3a and 3b. Your site should welcome visitors and provide navigation to all the products and services you offer. You can do this by simply including a graphic on your page that says "Welcome, Click Here to find what you’re looking for" and have that link go to your site map.

Beyond the greeter is a wide path that branches out to different areas of the store with banners overhead that tell you what you can find in those areas. Your site map should consist of main links, as well as sub-links to corresponding pages. Now we get to lesson 4, that each page of your site needs to have a topic, a main header, that defines what each page is about, as well as provide links, pathways to corresponding pages, because you’ll notice that Wal-Mart arranges their store to group products that are similar. The hardware section is near the automotive center, housewares are near food items, lawn and garden items are near the hardware and pet supply areas, etc. But you can still get from one area to another.

As you browse the shelves, you see more than one type of item. If you’re in the grocery section; for example, you’ll see many different types of beans. Canned beans, dry beans, even beans from different companies. That’s lesson #5. You should offer your site visitors more than one choice. If your site offers auto loans, for example, offer your visitors new auto loans, used auto loans, even auto refinancing loans. And, you may want to offer them more than one choice for each type of auto loan. Afterall, visitors came to your site because they are shopping around… so let them shop and choose from multiple options. Just remember not to stick cheese products in your automotive section!

Another thing you’ll notice as you browse the shelves, which leads us to lesson #6… although the shelves are stocked full, it’s still easy to pick out your favorite can of beans. This is because the shelves are stocked neatly and orderly. The ads you put onto your site should also be neat and orderly. Mixing in tall banners with short banners and having banners for totally different products and services can make shopping your site more difficult. For example, if you have a page about auto loans, you wouldn’t want to put a tall auto loan banner right next to a short casino banner. Instead, put a tall auto insurance banner next to the tall auto loan banner.

As you roam the store, you frequently encounter employess who can help you find items. This goes back to lessons 3a and 3b. Each page of your site should have a help link to your site map, or you should have a site search.

Since Wal Mart makes it easy to find an employee to ask for assistance, that leads us to another lesson: Does you site offer customer service? Can visitors click on a button to ask you questions before they make a decision? Or do they simply exit your site?

Lesson #7: How many times have you heard announcements in Wal Mart? They frequently announce specials over their public address system. We are not suggesting that you force visitors to endure slow loading sound files. But you can make sound an option. To see how you can use this marketing option, go to www.geocities.com/pulsarmarketing

We have an example there on how you can offer your visitors the option to hear your audible promotion without forcing them to listen and making your pages load slow. All you have to do is create a wav sound file, and launch it by using a graphic or text link such as: "Click Here to listen to our promotion".

The personal touch of a person’s voice on your site can help increase your conversions. But don’t force the loading of sound files. Instead, use the method we recommend at the URL below:
www.geocities.com/pulsarmarketing

Another thing you can do to tell your site visitors about specials or new products and services your site offers, is to offer them a free subscription to your newsletter. Now that we’ve toured Wal Mart and we’re ready to make our purchase, we know our way to the checkout counter because Wal Mart makes it easy for us. That’s lesson #8. Your site needs to make it easy for visitors to purchase. If you do not provide any of your own products or services and strictly use affiliate programs, you need to make sure your relevant banners and text links are at the top of the page, clearly and readily visible, to the people visiting that page.

When we arrive at the checkout counter, besides asking us if we want paper or plastic and if we will be purchasing with cash or credit, the cashier asks if we found everything we needed. That’s lesson #9. Make sure you offer your site visitors more options when they checkout. And, once again, if you do not directly sell your own products or services and you strictly use affiliate programs, you can offer your site visitors two links to click on: One link that opens the offer into a new window so the person may continue browsing your site after they are done applying or buying from your sponsor, and another link that simply goes directly to the sponsor in the same window.

Think we’re done learning from Wal Mart? No. After we make our purchase, and even after we go home, there’s lesson #10… the return policy. If you sell your own products or services, you need to assure your visitors that you stand behind what you sell, and make your return policy very clear. If you do not sell your own products and services, does your site have a way for customers to resolve problems, or to ask pre-sale questions? If not, you may lose customers to sites that do provide online customer service.

10 things Wal Mart can teach about affiliate marketing was presented by Pulsar Marketing. For more marketing tips, you can listen to the podcasts at http://www.pulsarmarketing.com/newsletter