Thinking about starting your affiliate business? There are three phases that you go through.

1. Pick an affiliate.

You must find out which specific audience you’d like to target. Most people go with whatever program with the first one they check out. They never consider if their target market will purchase this product. As long as people will pay for it and you can give them a quality product, you will be able to make a lot of money.

Choosing the right affiliate program to start with is very important. Brand yourself as resourceful by having quality products that have lots of value. You need to know what commission rate they plan on paying you and the program’s refund policy. You need to know when you get paid. Most take 30 to 45 days to mail you a check based on your previous month. Many affiliate programs cost nothing to join. However, some do require a start-up fee. It should be a discount for you to buy your own products. You must purchase whatever you plan to sell. If you don’t, why do you expect anyone else to?

2. Setup your mini-site.

Now, this is where most affiliates drop the ball. Affiliates promote their affiliate website but not there own. It takes seven visits for a prospective customer to turn into a paying customer. So what happens when they don’t buy from you the first time? How will you follow-up? They’ll visit someone else who probably will follow-up and get their business. You should be promoting your own email list. Highlight the benefits to your visitors of joining, then, set up a series of pitches, articles, etc. with your auto responder. The best formula to use is to promote for at least two whole weeks every other day before you introduce another product. Now all you need to do is set your website up. Find a domain name and register it. Then, find a quality web hosting service that server has no down time because it’s bad for business. Now, design your site with two pages. One has a strong headline, bulleted benefits and a place to sign up. The other is a Thank You page, where you can confirm their order.

3. Build Your List.

The best way to get customers to visit you is through advertising. Free advertising includes adding your site to your signature when you send out emails. (Never spam.) Swapping links, starting an ezine, and submitting articles are also free and time-consuming. Paid advertising includes ezine ads. Solo ads work better than classified ads.

Finally, develop a marketing plan. Treat it like a business and not a hobby. And for others, treat it like a job.

Ruth Marquis is an experienced marketer in various industries including affiliate, network, and small business marketing. To find out more information like this, visit rumarketing.com.

When a newbie begins an online business, the temptation can be high to join most any affiliate program they see in the hopes of making extra money. Given the amount of products and services that newbie get presented with, and since newbie have a burning desire to make money fast, it is easy to see how the online newbie can get lured into joining a lot of affiliate programs without knowing if they should join them or not.

For the newbie, the danger in joining lots of affiliate programs is multi-faceted. Joining affiliate programs takes time, time the newbie could be using defining their USP, learning about getting targeted traffic, or learning other Internet marketing skills that will actually generate revenue for them. In addition, the newbie who joins lots of affiliate programs in the hopes of making instant profits, is at risk of being disappointed when they don’t make money by joining the latest affiliate program and that leads to yet further "unproductivity" and poor use of time.

So, what steps do newbie take to identify the best affiliate program(s) that matches their USP?

1) Define how the affiliate program’s offering complements your USP.

You should be able to clearly map out what the affiliate program’s offering (product or service) will be useful to patrons or visitors of your web site, list or customer base.

2) Make sure that you fully review the product offered by the affiliate program, use it, and make your own assessment of it.

Don’t promote a product from any affiliate program unless you own the product yourself and love it. If you own and love the product that you are promoting, you will be able to sell it more effectively because your energy and excitement level will show through in the deliver of your message to would be customer.

3) Make certain that the web site that sells the affiliate program is set up correctly to sell the product, and sell it well.

The web site that sells the product of the affiliate program should be professional in its layout, design, sales copy, and delivery of the product itself. The web site should have a mechanism to capture the names and emails of the visitors. The web site should also have a strong auto responder series in place to follow up with and sell the visitors of that site on the product.

4) Check to see if the affiliate program should be tracked with cookies so that the referring web site will get credit for each affiliate sale, even the sales that come as a result of the auto responder series.

If the affiliate program doesn’t use cookies to track referrals, do not sign up.

5) Pay Per Click Ads

Pay Per Click Ads are a very popular way of promoting affiliate programs. You bid on a keyword, use your text ad and pay the amount you have bid on when someone clicks on your ads. Overture is the most popular, but also one of the most expensive. Use your search engine to do a search to find a ppc that fits your budget.

6) Article Writing

Writing articles is a good way of advertising your affiliate programs for free. Write an article about something relevant to your business opportunity, and place your affiliate website url in the resource box at the end of your article. If the reader has enjoyed your article they may click on your link and you have a potential customer.

7) E-Zine Advertising

E-zine advertising is also a very good way of advertising your affiliate programs. Internet marketers with huge list will sell you space in their e-zine for you to advertise. Prices vary depending on the number of people subscribed to each person’s list. You can normally find marketers willing to sell you advertising space in ezine directories.

(c) ToonChooi Tan

Webmaster of Hot Niche Keywords which you’ll receive 75-100’s of Niches Keyword Lists Every single Month. Visit Free Niche Marketing Tips now to for various niche marketing tips. You may subscribe to his 6 part Niche Marketing Course which will reveal the insider tips and tactics that will show you how to find Hot and Untapped Niche Markets with Ease.

Remember high school?

I still shudder when I think about it. We all want to fit in. I know I did. If I could just fit in, maybe I could be popular too.

Now that I’m an adult, being different is more important. The reason why is that by being different, by being me, it has helped to improve my business.

You can use it to improve yours too.

It doesn’t matter if you sell affiliate programs, MLM, or even your own product, how you will benefit is that by being different, you are offering your potential customers something no one else is offering.

This is especially true with affiliate programs and MLM programs.

How can you be different from thousands of others who may be promoting the same program you are?

A few tips:

1. Write articles about your industry, resources that relate to the product or service you are selling, and tips about how to use your product or service.

This is probably the most overlooked way to market affiliate programs and MLM. By providing valuable content, you are offering your readers something new, something different, that makes your product or service more valuable than others selling the same product or service.

2. Build a website and buy a domain.

This will really help you because not only can you offer your primary product, affiliate program, or MLM, but you can also write reviews about other products or services that compare, as well as complement your current offering.

This is another way of building content and getting buyers to trust you, as well as diversifying your streams of income.

Having your own website can also help you with the search engines.

3. Write a free report to get subscribers.

Offer potential visitors a free report. Again, you can do the same with this report that you do with articles: write about your industry, tips about your product, etc.

Give away your report in exchange for the subscriber’s email and name. This allows you to build your own list so that you can recycle your traffic.

What makes the internet so much different from traditional offline advertising is that buyers are looking for information. Traditional advertising doesn’t provide the information the buyer needs.

By offering your potential buyers real information, you can build your business and increase your profits online.

Jinger Jarrett is a writer and internet marketer living in Alpharetta, GA. You can get all of her best free internet marketing resources, including freeware to help you market on the forums when you visit her site at http://www.askjinger.com

The Internet is a powerful selling tool. Never before has it been easier to start a business, be able to reach out to literally millions of potential customers and make your business succeed. Yet time has taught us that there is much more to success that simply having a website or using these tools.

A lot of money can be made by promoting products and services through a website, however in order to promote them effectively you will need to be committed to making it work.

Most affiliate programs will give us a unique URL, though these methods work (especially ezine advertising) they are limited to how long the ad stays visible. We can not generate long term promotion by just submitting ads using that URL.

A website of our own. Promoting affiliate programs whether it be MLMs or any other affiliate program where you are given a unique URL is limiting without a website of our very own. There are literally thousands of ways to promote if we have our own website. Therefore it is imperative that you decide how serious you are about your business and to what level you wish to take your business.

That’s why we’re devoting this issue to giving you the top six tests you can run on your web site right now. These tests are quick and easy to implement and can start increasing your sales by 400%… 700%… even 1,000%… in less than 48 hours!

Bottom line - testing is the ONLY way to discover what works - and what doesn’t - on your web site ,and it’s the BEST way to start increasing your sales exponentially.

And if you take the plunge and test even just one of the following six things, you’ll learn just how true this is - especially when you start seeing a dramatic improvement to *your* bottom line!

Test #1: Offer ONE product or service on your homepage.

We’ve found that offering fewer products in one place with more copy describing those products ALWAYS translates into higher sales. It’s all about focus. Instead of trying to please *everyone* who visits your web site by offering a large range of products with minimal detail about each one ,if you offer just one product (or one set of related products) ,you can really focus on one key set of benefits and answer *all* of the possible questions and doubts your visitors might have about your product.

And you don’t have to stop selling your other products — you can always offer them to your customers from other web pages or by using follow-up offers .

Test #2: Reposition your opt-in offer to BOOST your opt-ins and build a bigger list of loyal subscribers.

Your opt-in offer is your tool for gathering your customers’ e-mail addresses. In exchange for their address ,you might offer them a free report containing valuable information or a regular free newsletter. Your opt-in is your mechanism for building your e-mail list , which allows you to regularly keep in touch with your subscribers ,build relationships of trust and loyalty ,and sell them your products or services.

Test placing your opt-in in the "first fold" of your salesletter — the area of screen first visible to a visitor before they scroll down the page. If you have a long salesletter ,you should test placing it within your second "page" of text — after you’ve grabbed your visitors’ attention by identifying a problem they have and established your credibility by impressing them with your credentials , experience ,and glowing testimonials from happy customers.

You should also test placing your opt-in offer on EVERY page of your web site so it’s always in front of your visitors ,and try using a "hover ad" (see below). The more sign-up opportunities you provide, the more subscribers you’re likely to get. Test it and see!

Test #3: Add impact to your promotions with "hover ads"

I’m sure everyone’s familiar with pop-ups. They’re the small windows containing a special offer or other information that sometimes "pop up" when you visit a web site.

Love them or hate them ,pop-ups have been a very useful online marketing tool for years.However, because a percentage of Internet users disliked them, Google, AOL, Netscape, and others developed pop-up blocking software to combat them But that was before we discovered a very impressive technology that actually lets you use ads that BEHAVE like pop-ups, but that are NOT pop-ups - so they don’t get blocked. They’re called "hover ads" and they’re well worth testing on your site.

In fact, when we tested adding a hover ad to our site ,sales increased by 162%! They’re effective because they put important information, such as your opt-in offer or a special time limited promotion, right in front of your targeted visitors.

Test #4: Establish a problem in your copy and show how you can solve it.

In the first couple of paragraphs that appear on your homepage, you need to go into more detail about the problem you introduced in your headline - showing your audience that you relate to them. (Only when your audience feels you understand their problem will they feel confident that you can solve it.)

Once the problem is established ,you can then begin introducing your product or service as the solution to this problem. By emphasizing exactly *how* your product or service will solve the reader’s problem ,you are guaranteed to see a boost in sales!

Test # 5 : Focus on your readers - not yourself.

The most successful salescopy focuses on the reader. Too often, business owners neglect this simple golden rule. Look carefully at your salescopy. Is it filled with references to "I," "me," and "we"? Instead of using sentences like, "I designed my time-management software with the busy homeowner in mind," try "Your new time-management software will free up hours of time for you to spend with your family." See how much more powerful that is? Try searching on "I," "me," and "our" in your salescopy and replace them with "you" and "your."

It’s very important that your salescopy instills a sense of urgency in your visitors, compelling them to buy NOW. The best place to do this is towards the end of your salesletter, near the call to action (when you ask for the sale). Here are a few of the most effective ways to create a sense of urgency. Try testing each one against your current copy:

- Offer a limited-time price discount offer where

visitors must buy before a certain date in order to

qualify for the discount.

- Offer additional bonuses for free if they buy within a

certain time frame.

- Offer only a limited quantity of your products or

services.

Test #6: Boost your product’s desirability by adding images.

Images of your products make them seem more tangible and "real" to your visitors and are a powerful sales tool. In fact, our testing shows that you can increase sales by more than 10% just by adding product images. But sometimes revealing what the product is too early in the sales process can kill the sale - you may need to highlight the product benefits and value before you reveal exactly what it is. Test placing images near the top of the page against placing them near the call to action at the bottom (where you’re asking for the sale). You should also test adding images to your order page ,and test the response to using no images at all. By carefully analyzing sales during each test, you’ll learn exactly where to place product images for maximum impact.

Erny Setyawati is Editor and Publisher of Bali Global market Ezine who has been writing many articles for Internet Marketers. She also campaign about Indonesia culture, history and traditional foods. To know more, visit us at : http://www.baliglobalmarket.com

95% of all affiliates make $0 - $100 a year. I don’t know about you, but in my books, this is not a living. In this quick “How To” guide, we’ll take a look at how you can become part of the 5% who ARE making their living online. This guide does not guarantee that you’ll make a fortune, but it will point you in the right direction if you’re interested in making a living as an affiliate.

1. Mindset: Get in touch with your grey matter. Program your mind with positive, committed thoughts. If you can believe it,you can achieve it. It sounds a bit like a sales seminar, but bottom line is, if you don’t believe you can make a living online, you won’t. You have to be committed. Commit to yourself that you will develop an income online – no matter what it takes. Think of your business as a bacon and eggs breakfast. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed!

2. Viewpoint: This is your business. Once you’ve accomplished your first hurdle and committed yourself to making this work, you have to look at your business from the proper viewpoint. No rose coloured glasses here. This is your business. You are the CEO of your own marketing company. You can choose to offer your services to one or several companies. Bottom line, you are responsible for every action in your company. Every decision you make affects your bottom line.

3. Learning Curve: Expect it. Becoming an affiliate is like going to college or university. You start at the beginning, learn the basics and build on what you learn. Take it step-by-step and you’ll build a much stronger business. Think of it like becoming a doctor. One doesn’t decide to become a doctor with the expectation of opening a successful practice one week from now. It takes time to learn the products or services you’re marketing and it takes time to learn to run your business.

4. Budget: Time and money. Set a general budget for both. As a business owner, you’ll use plenty of time developing and promoting your affiliate business. Budget as much time as you can each day and make sure you use your time wisely. Set up a budget for your monetary expenses too. You can run a business online with a shoestring budget, just don’t expect a mammoth income in the beginning. The more you can invest in your business, the better. This doesn’t mean that simply throwing money at your business will make it grow. Every dollar that goes out your door, needs to come back in and bring another dollar with it.

5. Goals: s/he shoots - s/he scores! Your goals will get you through the tough times. There’ll be lots of days when you feel like quitting. If you make your goals tangible, you’ll make it through the tough days. Money isn’t a motivator, but what money can buy, is. Set your goals for a family vacation, a new car, boat, or home. It’s much easier to get excited about a shiny red corvette in your driveway than $100,000 sitting in your bank account. Money is only numbers on a pieceof paper or a computer screen, but it can bring you a luxurious lifestyle, and that’s where the fun is.

6. Nuts and Bolts: Once you’ve got your house in order, with the proper mindset, you’re looking at your business from a realistic viewpoint, you’ve got an open mind and you’re ready to learn, you’ve set aside some time and money and you’ve got pictures of your dream house, car and vacation plastered on your wall, you’re ready to go hunting. The next step is to find a business that interests you and offers an affiliate program with a reasonable commission. For information products, one of the most popular and profitable online, you can and should expect a commission of 25% or more.

Pick a product that interests you. Buy it and use it. Your business is based on your recommendations of a product or service. If you haven’t used it, how can you recommend it? Avoid running around in circles after the newest, hottest selling product of the day, it only leaves you dizzy and broke.

Choose a product you’re interested in. If you like astronomy, becoming an affiliate of a star chart company may be a good fit. Selling women’s pantyhose may not.

7. Look before you leap: Finding a company to represent as an affiliate is one thing, finding a company that respects its affiliates is another. Do a bit of research before you jump on the bandwagon. Send an email to the company as if you’re a potential customer. 24 – 48 hours is a good response time. This shows that someone is actually running the company. It also gives you an idea of their commitment. Generally, the faster the response, the more committed the company is to doing business. The quality of the response is also important.Did the response answer your question? Was it written in a friendly, professional manor? Did they answer your question directly or simply send you to a FAQ sheet?

8. Flip the switch: If everything checks out up to this point,then your next step is to take action. Fill out the affiliate application form and get your affiliate URL. Now the ball is in your court. It’s time to get down to brass tacks. If you freeze now, you make no money and flush your goals down the toilet. If you take action, you make it one step closer to your goals.

9. If you build it – they will come: OK not really, but you do have to build it. If you want to maximize your income and be taken seriously, you need to own a website. Just like a brick and mortar business, you need a professional location to offer your products. Yes, you get an affiliate URL when you sign up as an affiliate, but promoting an affiliate link looks amateur and will help you LOSE 98% of your sales. We’ll cover this in point 10.

10. Follow-up = Sales: Only 2% of your prospects will sign up or buy what you’re offering, on their first visit. 98% of yoursales will be made from your follow up. There’s a very simple method for following up and making sales automatically.

i. Check your favourite search engine to locate a free ebook, software program or report that relates to your offer. If you’re promoting a website that sells peanut butter, a free peanut butter recipe book would be a good match. Your give-away must always relate to the product you’re promoting to maximize the results of this system.

ii. Build a page on your website to give away your free peanutbutter recipe book. Design the page as if you were designing a sales page. Make people’s mouths water until they want the recipes so bad they’d gladly pay for them, but then give it to them free. All they have to do is fill in their name and email address in the simple form and you’ll send their recipe book to them instantly via email.

iii. As soon as your peanut butter prospect fills out the formon your site and clicks the send button, they are taken to your affiliate URL where they can buy peanut butter. At the same time, the peanut butter recipe book is sent to their email address.

iv. Now your peanut butter prospect receives an email from you each week with new tips and useful peanut butter information. This information positions you as a peanut butterexpert and gives you the opportunity to promote your peanut butter affiliate website once a week, to hot prospects. This is where you’ll make 98% of your sales.

Although this may seem like an overwhelming amount of work for the beginner, it’s all very simple. The whole process is run from an autoresponder, a simple piece of email software that automatically sends your prewritten email messages on a predetermined schedule.

Your success as an affiliate is determined by you. 95% of the people that read this simple How To guide will do nothing withit. 5% of the people that read this guide will put all the pieces in place and start making a living as an affiliate. You have to decide which side of the coin you want to be on.

This Article Was Published By Hans Hasselfors, from The Business Professional. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and make your living online. Become a member of The Business Professional network: http://www.internet-marketing-experts-online.com

If you truly want to generate sales, one great way to do so is to create separate web pages for each of your affiliate products and include reviews of each product. Pictures, of course, speak a thousand words, and a picture of each product is very important to closing the sale.

Why does this process work so well? It’s simple; people want to see and know all about a product before the pull out their credit card! Here are some points to be sure to include in your affiliate product review pages:

* Always have an uncluttered web page with blocks of text that are easy to read and understand. If you crowd a great deal of information, few people will read all of it. It has been scientifically proven that most people read only about one-third of the information contained in any sales page or review. So, make your web page product review easy to scan and grab specific points from without reading every single word.

* Use highlights to call out specific important points. Again, this goes back to the fact that few people will read all the words. If a specific area is highlighted in yellow or another bright color, their eyes will be drawn to that specific region and that may be all that they read. If you can convince the reader with you highlighted section that they simply MUST know all about this product, then they will probably read more. If you do not grab their attention with compelling information, they will probably continue to another web page.

* Specific benefits to the reader must be described in very few words. Tell the reader exactly what the product will do for them and call them to action!

* Please graphic help attract a person to spend a moment looking at your page. A boring page, in terms of graphics, will probably not hold the reader’s attention long enough to even get them to read the highlights, much less the sales information.

* Focus on compelling, eye-catching headlines for each page. If your review begins with a bang, then people will read more of the text. A headline such as "How Product XYZ Saved My Life - And Can Save Yours, Too" will generate more readers than a headline such as "Product XYZ Works Great".

* Never produce web page affiliate product reviews that are totally essay-style. Remember; make the page so that the reader who simply scans will pick up enough information to compel them to read more.

* Make the reader have to take an action to get more information. The more a person becomes involved with a product review page, the more likely they will follow all the way through to the payment process and complete the sale. A short poll, a signup for a free report, anything that makes the person provide input can get them involved enough to follow through. Think about Publisher’s Clearing House; they always make you participate to fill out an entry form. Use the same concept but apply it to your affiliate product review pages.

* Keep the page short! 500-600 words are enough to convey almost any concept you wish to send. No one wants to read on and on and on without gaining truly new information. Shorter is often better than longer. The European style seems to be, of late, a long, long web page, but many Americans just won’t stand for scrolling down over and over to get to the prize!

* Be sure you are providing good information that the product you are promoting will actually provide. There is no need to tell "fish tales" to make a sale. A good product, where only the facts are provided in the review, will sell itself!

These few points can make your affiliate product review pages stand out among the crowd. And there is a crowd, so you have to work hard to really stand out. It is worth the time and effort in sales you will generate!

This article was authored by Jason Gazaway. This 22 year old, ‘regular’ college kid was able to quit his 7-4 "job" because of his affiliate marketing business. He now wants to help others and show you how he did it!

You’ve built your website, and you’re generating sales. You recognize that starting an affiliate program will bring in even more business, but you don’t have the time or technical capability of setting up and maintaining an affiliate program by yourself. You decide you will go through a middleman to take care of all this for you - an affiliate network.

What should you look for? What should you be aware of? Here are some tips to help you out.

Compare Fees
Make sure you’re aware of all fees you will incur by becoming a merchant. There are plenty of fees you should be aware of including start-up fees, monthly maintenance fees, annual renewal fees, network percentage fees, etc. Make sure you’re clear on exactly how much your affiliate network will be charging you.
Tip: Many affiliate networks (especially the new and/or smaller ones) have promotions for reduced fees in order to gain a larger amount of merchants – watch for these.

Tracking Sophistication
Reliable and honest tracking through the network should be always provided. The latest tracking technologies should be in place, and detailed reporting should be available to both you (the merchant), and the affiliates (the publishers) of the network.

Fraud Protection
What kind of safeguards does the affiliate network have in place to protect both merchants and publishers from fraud? This is something that should especially be a concern if you choose to go with a CPC (cost-per-click) model.

Reputation
Unfortunately there are a number of affiliate networks that are just plain dishonest. Most problems lie with tracking, and commissions not being credited towards affiliates. Don’t be fooled – the big players in the industry don’t necessarily have a clean record either. Do your research; don’t sign up with a network that has a bad reputation with its affiliates. Remember that the network you choose is a reflection of you and your business – for better or for worse.

Number of Affiliates in Network
How many affiliates are members of the affiliate network? If it’s an especially small or large number, make sure you understand why. Some networks have a huge amount of publishers, but many of them are inactive, of questionable nature, or produce very few sales. The opposite can also be true; a small network of publishers can often generate huge traffic and sales for its merchants. It’s best to look for a combination of quality as well as quantity. You should also learn what kind of criteria the network has in place for accepting new publishers. It may also be good idea to ask whether or not the network is still actively recruiting new affiliates.

Customer Service
This goes hand-in-hand with reputation. A good affiliate network will provide excellent customer service to both its merchants and publishers. Ideally you will want your own account manager who will work with you to help your affiliate program succeed and grow.

Direct Affiliate Contact
Similar to customer service, you should inquire whether or not it is possible to contact your affiliates directly. This may or may not be an option through the network, so it is important to ask. As an example, you may discover that a certain affiliate could perform much better if they used different creatives on their website. By being able to contact affiliates directly, you will have the option of forming closer and mutually beneficial relationships with your affiliates.

Affiliate Program Promotion
After you sign up as a merchant, what will your affiliate network do to get the word out about you to its publishers? Will it include your program in its newsletter and e-mailings, place a link on its website, issue a press release, or promote you as a “client” on a merchant list on their website? Try to get as much exposure as possible from your affiliate program network.

Make sure your newly chosen affiliate network works both with and for you. By going through a third party, you are introducing service charges into the mix. Make sure you know how much you will be paying, and exactly what you will be paying for.

Affiliate program networks are convenient and great to use – do your research before diving in head first, and your affiliate program will be a success!

Veronica Dubak is an SEO expert, internet entrepreneur, and the owner of the successful SurveyBounty.com free online paid surveys directory. With a comprehensive listing of online market research companies classified by region, and background information on the online survey industry, SurveyBounty.com is the legitimate source for online survey information.

Affiliate programs are the latest money making tools available on the Internet. While there is definitely not a lack of options available, there is a lack of good options available.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your affiliate program.

1) Be careful -

The biggest mistake most people make with their first affiliate program is that they jump into the first one they come across, and expect huge profits. This is a big myth, and can be accredited to commercial advertisements that make big promises that they can’t keep.

2) Know what you’re getting into - Do not expect to be able to quit your job, or get something for nothing. The field of affiliate marketing is getting more and more competitive each day. Affiliates want to maximize their profits, and there are people who are willing to work harder for less. You should be willing to bide your time.

3) Do your research -

Affiliate programs these days don’t always give you the whole story, right away. Make sure you read through the fine print, so you don’t end up losing money.

4) Do not burn out -

Some people think that they’re really smart by getting into three, or four affiliate programs at a time, when in fact they end up making only a few bucks in each one, and not enough to get a payout in any of them! Start small- a couple of affiliate programs to begin with, and if you can honestly say you’re ready for it, then pick up another affiliate.

These are just a few tips to get you started. Remember the most important thing you can do with anything in life is to have patience!

Larry Blake is Publisher of http://Infobook-Ezine.com and manages marketing for Free Internet Marketing System. Expert Tips,Insider Secrets, and Step-by-Step Strategies for building your Internet Marketing Empire! For more Internet Marketing Information and Resources visit: Free Internet Marketing System

For affiliate Marketers (AMs) success is all about investing in effective advertising. That sounds simple enough. Except that, for every successful AM, there are dozens who never get past the "first base" of making an income (no matter how small) from their efforts.

Why not?

Because, no matter what the elements of any advertising campaign,one vital factor is knowing how to choose the best, most cost-effective products (advertising tools), for the investment dollar. In short, they need to learn how to shop smart.

While "smart shopping" is a term usually reserved for back-to-school moms or the choice of a ripe melon (in which case, the ladies definitely have it all over the guys in this segment of the business), for an AM to break out and start showing a profit, they must adopt the same, basic principles. They must find good, cost-effective, yet quality products and services.

Here, then, are the basics of smart Shopping, Affiliate Marketer-style:

1. THE WORLD (WIDE WEB) IS YOUR OYSTER
No matter the service — whether it’s lead generators, auto-responders, links, ad trackers, you-name-it — when looking for a product or service, enjoy the advantages of the competitive marketplace. In other words, shop around. The time is past of being blindly led, either by recommendations, past experience or, worst of all, habit.

Realize the potential and look around because every day, just as in any other aspect of the internet, new advertising competitors are joining the ranks, with fresh ideas, competitive pricing, new or better offerings. For example, while many still swear by such lead generators as Lead Factory and Cutting Edge Media, SimplerLeads.com has stepped in to offer true high-quality, double opt-in leads, plus offer their own auto-responding system and auto-mail system for true auto-pilot access– all at rates lower than the competition.

2. INVEST NOW, IT PAYS LATER
Invest the time now to research and study the various companies and it will pay off richly later. Pick a few different companies, research them, get familiar with the various features of all of them. Or, even more importantly, features that some companies have while others don’t.

In doing all this — and, yes, it often takes a week or two — a marketer not only benefits from the education, but can can also gain a clear perspective of what’s available and a product versus pricing comparison.

3. ASK AWAY– EMAILS TO CUST SVC
Never be afraid to ask questions. Even stupid ones. It’s all part of the educational process. And that’s what Customer Service — bless their CS little hearts! — are there for. And, too, CS gives a marketer a good idea of the quality of the company. It a good idea to note their turn around time. By and large, companies go out of their way for their newest and/or prospective customers. So if their response is anything less than stellar, keep looking. After all, if they treat new customers shabbily, how will they treat existing customers. Note, however, two things about CS: 1) They MAY have a good reason for a poor response rate (such giving preference to existing customers); 2) Never bother a company with truly silly questions. Don’t, for instance, ask their cost, when it is clearly visible. Find questions that are relevent and genuinely add to your information. Then wait for the response.

4. NOTES, NOTES, NOTES
While it sometimes happens that one company stands out among the rest, it’s more common for the differences to be slight or the offers varied enough to leave a marketer dizzy. So note-taking becomes essential in the research process. For anyone who never kept good notes in school, the marketing version is simply a matter of deciding on the key factors in the proposed business, then keeping track of those factors from prospective business to business.

5. COMPARE COST VS. SERVICE
This is when those notes become elemental in the process. Once several different companies have been explored and notes compiled, it simply becomes a matter of choosing which company offers the best product/service for the money.

6. TRIAL PERIOD
Once chosen, the process is far from complete, however. As the old saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding," meaning that a marketer will see how a company/service performs only once they begin using it.

The next step is to follow a company closely for the first 1-3 weeks, making a note of any problems, delays, etc., that might arise. This doesn’t necessarily kill a company’s possible success, but a bad experience at this point does not bode well.

If there is a continued or repeated problem, the company should be re-evaluated, based on the new information.

7. REGULAR REVIEW
Okay, so the AM has all the marketing they need, the business is well-established and the advertising has performed well. The AM’s smart shopping has been successful and the job is done, right? Wrong.

As mentioned in Tip #1, above, the market is constantly changing and so are the advertising options available. Plus, while a company may perform well initially, their performance could change. Sometimes those changes are sudden and dramatic. But more often they experience a gradual decline that only becomes discernable when analyzed over a period of time.

So, unless a marketer decides to *opt-out* themselves, it is essential to continuously monitor and regularly review their advertiser’s performance. And, when necessary, begin the process of smart-shopping all over again.

Does it ever end? Expert marketers know this is just one part of the on-going process known as affiliate marketing.

Marige O’Brien has worked as a writer, web designer and, most recently, affiliate marketer. Her own website can be found at http://www.trackermo.com, where she actively lists the best opportunities and affiliate tools available

Every affiliate marketer is looking for exactly what allows those truly successful markets to make the big affiliate paychecks. It seems at times to be almost a magic formula! It is not. It’s just good marketing practices that have been proven over years and year.

These tactics worked before the advent of online marketing and continue to work in today’s online affiliate marketing world. With these top three affiliate marketing tips, you should be able to increase your sales within seven days after implementing all three tips!

1. Use unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Don’t try to lump a bunch of products together to save a bit of money on web hosting. Have a site dedicated to each product and to nothing else. Include affiliate product reviews on the website to spell out exactly what the product will do for the purchaser. Include testimonials from users who have enjoyed the product and are willing to allow you to use their names and photos on your website for that product.

Write articles highlighting uses for the product and include them on the website as additional pages. Make the web pages compelling, and include calls to act on the information. Every headline must attract the reader to read more. Bullets and highlights of special points will help the reader who is scanning to learn what the page is about find that they have to know more!

2. At the very top or top side of your web page, where it simply can’t be missed, offer free reports to your readers. Then create autoresponder messages that will be emailed to those who input their personal information into the sign-up box. Research has proven that it is usually on the seventh contact with a prospect that a sale is closed.

With a web page alone, one of two things will happen: the sale is closed or the prospect will leave the page and never return. By placing useful information at no cost into their inbox at periods specified by your, you will remind them of the product they thought they might want later, and often will find the sale is closed. Be sure your content is directed toward the specific reasons to buy the product, but doesn’t come across as "sales pitch".

Fact filled uses for a product and ways that the product will make life better and more enjoyable; these are the points on which to focus. Be sure you include a compelling subject line in the email and don’t use the word "free" because some of the older spam filters will cause your mail to be dumped into the junk mail box before anyone reads it. Convince the reader who signed up for your free reports that they simply can’t live without your product!

3. Get traffic to your website that is targeted to your product. After all, if the person who finds your website has no interest at all in what you are selling, they will be one of the 99 out of 100 who move on and never come back without further encouragement. By writing articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports, you can locate publications which focus on your target consumer base and grab their interest.

By writing as few as 2 articles per week, each only 350-600 words in length, you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a single day. The more articles you get out to people, the greater your chances of closing sales within your targeted audience.

This doesn’t sound very difficult, does it? It really isn’t difficult at all. It just requires you to take a little time and create a plan of action. Use each of these tips in the order given and you will be prepared when that flood of targeted traffic hits your website.

Keep in mind, only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product. If you generate 1,000 targeted hits to your website per day, that means that you will have made 10 sales based on statistical average! If you use these tips for several different affiliate marketing programs, you can end up having those huge affiliate paychecks everyone dreams about!

This article was authored by Jason Gazaway. This 22 year old, ‘regular’ college kid was able to quit his 7-4 "job" because of his affiliate programs. He now wants to help others and show you how he did it!