Everybody it seems can make money online. The simplest way perhaps is to make money online through affiliate marketing. If you have a website, you can list other people’s websites on yours and become an affiliate, making money online through sales commissions every time someone goes to their site through yours and makes a purchase. You can make anywhere from 5% to 30% by just advertising their link.

Further, affiliate marketing allows you to make money online by earning commissions off sub-affiliates, people you have brought on to be affiliates of the parent company. These two-tiered affiliates may seem like a pyramid scheme, but the point is, it generates a tremendous amount of traffic to your site as well as to your partners’ sites, which helps everyone make money online.

The biggest key to making money online through an affiliate program is by generating traffic. You won’t make money online, though, by adding numerous links that have nothing to do with you or your product. For example, if you are a web developer, you won’t make money online by becoming an affiliate of websites selling fishing equipment. However, you can make money online by becoming an affiliate of web development software. Make money online by linking to bookstores that carry books your clients may be interested in or trade publications and e-zines. As with any business, it all depends on who you market to.

In order to make money online, you need diligence and perseverance. It won’t be made overnight, but through continual marketing efforts, you can make money online.

Copyright 2005 Marsh Uele

Marsh Uele is the editor of http://www.homebizsucces.com - everything you need to make money online from home including opportunities, tips, ideas, and resources. Visit http://www.homebizsucces.com

If you are like most work from home internet business owners you want your web site to be making you as much money as possible. The choice of affiliate programs that you choose to promote on your web site will determine how much money you actually make, and the options to you are endless. There are so many affiliate programs on the internet promoting almost everything imaginable its mind boggling.

Of course there is one major key to success. Stay relevant to your main web sites theme or subject matter. If for example you own a sports related web site and you add cosmetic and make up ads to it, chances are you are not going to do well. But if you put ads for health and fitness supplements on your sports oriented web site you may interest a few people into buying those products earning you a commission.

So if you have a work from home website were do you find good affiliate programs to join in order to earn commissions?

One of my top paying affiliate programs is Strong Future International. (SFI) Some of you no doubt have heard of SFI since thy have been around for quite a few years now And I have been an affiliate since November 1999. SFI products include everything from books magazines and business building tools to multivitamin supplements and all natural household cleaners. All can be promoted on your web site in order to earn commissions and make money online with your web site.

My next big commission generator is ClickBank. ClickBank is actually a directory of affiliate programs. People join ClickBank in order to promote their products online. Once they are in the ClickBank data base webmasters like you and me who are looking for good content and commissions from our web sites can join their affiliate programs and start earning money from sales generated. If you own a work from home site take a look at some of the products at the following web page CLICK HERE. OH and did I mention ClickBank sends out commission checks very 2 weeks!

Affiliate Fuel pays both for leads and products sold, meaning you can actually earn commissions simply by referring people to a specific site. All the person has to do is click on a link that you place on your website which is directed to a page with a form to fill out. The person fills out the form requesting more info and bingo you are credited with the referral and awarded a commission.

Websponsors is another affiliate program much the same as Affiliate Fuel. These cost per action affiliate programs are great for adding revenue to your bottom line through your web site.

Last but not least Google ad sense has become so popular among webmasters you can see their ads on every other web site that you visit. With google you put ads on your site and you are actually paid every time someone clicks on those ads. In one month last August I made over $500 from Google ad sense alone.

Of course none of the above mentioned affiliate programs will make you a single dime unless your site is generating significant targeted traffic. But if you are already generating good quality targeted traffic to your site give them a try. You will be surprised at just how easy it is to make money online with affiliate programs.

Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for SFI, Owner and Webmaster for http://www.kawarthapublishing.com.

This article may be re-published on your site or in your newsletter as long as this resource box is included.

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times…affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online.

What if I told you affiliate marketing was basically unethical or that the field is dominated by shady practices?

You disagree?

Well let’s explore affiliate marketing from the merchant, affiliate and customer viewpoints.

Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates, where the affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or, most often, sales to the merchant.

The affiliate signs up to the affiliate program via an online application form, receives an affiliate link, and can then promote the products and services of the web merchant via his own website, ezine, pay per click search engines or other advertising means.

The affiliate’s role, then, is to introduce the potential buyer to the seller acting as a kind of middleman.

In return he is paid a commission of any sales resulting from referrals.

But haven’t we always been taught to cut out the middleman where possible?

Well, yes, but in affiliate marketing the customer pays the same price regardless of whether he arrives at the web merchant’s site directly or via the affiliate’s link.

Or at least that’s how it should be.

How does the web merchant benefit from running an affiliate program?

The main advantage to the web merchant is that via his affiliate program he can recruit a large sales team of affiliates at zero cost and make many more sales in a way that his website alone could never hope to do.

How does the affiliate benefit?

The advantages to the affiliate are that he can make money in a business where he doesn’t have the upfront costs of creating his own product, and doesn’t have to worry about ecommerce, bookkeeping, or customer support because that’s all handled by the merchant.

How does the customer benefit?

The customer gets a solution to his problem (provided the product or service does what it says it does) that he may not have found without the affiliate’s help and does not have to pay extra.

So it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Or at least it is in principle.

However in the real world both affiliates and affiliate program owners can be involved in some shady practices.

Shady Practice #1

Unscrupulous merchants close down programs without warning and without paying commissions or tempt new affiliates with high commissions then drop those commission rates dramatically a week later.

Affiliates - protect yourselves from this situation by selecting the affiliate program carefully.

Ask yourself these questions.

Has the site existed for more than a year? Is it clear what the site is providing and are the terms and conditions of the affiliate program explained clearly and comprehensively in simple language? Are there good online reviews of the program in websites or discussion forums? Does the program provide realtime commission stats online? Are ready-to-use affiliate marketing tools available?

Shady Practice #2

Affiliates are sometimes guilty of misleading or false advertising - making claims or promises about the product or services which are totally untrue or greatly exaggerated.

Shady Practice #3

Illegal use of logos, trademarks or other branding. This includes infringement of intellectual property rights and violation of copyrights.

Shady Practice #4

Spamming.

While legitimate affiliates are jumping through hoops to comply with the can-spam laws, the shady characters continue to find their way around it.

Shady Practice #5

Affiliate link hijacking is the replacement of your affiliate id with the hijacker’s in the affiliate link.

You don’t get your rightful commission - the hijacker gets it instead by buying through his own affiliate link.

It’s best if you can avoid displaying your affiliate link and affiliate ID in the browser address bar.

One technique uses a zero-frame or invisible frame to make it appear you are sending visitors to a page on your website when, in fact, you are really sending them to your affiliate link.

To prevent the hijacker from viewing the web page’s source code to see that you’ve loaded an affiliate link, use javascript encryption to scramble the page code or software to prevent the source code from being viewed.

Make no mistake about it…

In any area of human activity, particularly where there is money to be made, there will always be people who try to cheat, exploit the gullible and do harm.

The proper way to engage in affiliate marketing is to act ethically, build a relationship of trust with your prospects and customers then provide value by consistently exceeding your customers expectations.

And this applies to any business either online or offline.

Keith Rougvie is an ethical marketer. To get the free ebook "How To Pick And Promote Affiliate Programs" and other free resources, advice and recommendations visit http://www.make-money-online-website.com

You need to do a bit of research on which affiliate programs you choose to work with. Why work hard to make $10 when the same amount of work could have netted you $100? Choose your affiliate relationships wisely.

First of all make sure that you are targeting the right market. Don’t try to sell nursing shoes on a site that is all about hunting and fishing. Even if you were able to get someone to look at your product, the odds are pretty low that you are going to make a sale (stranger things have happened I suppose). Target your market correctly. If you are going to pursue pay per click advertising (which I highly recommend), then choose your affiliation according to the criteria outlined below.

How can I determine which affiliate programs are the most profitable?

Here are some points to consider when establishing an affiliate relationship:

Look for at least $30-$50 per sale or signup. If you consider that you may want to use pay per click advertising, you must have this type of return.

Look for products or services that pay you for the lifetime of the sale. Talk about residual income! Several products that require a monthly subscription will continue to pay you for the life of the sale.

Promote established, trusted brands. I promote companies like ING (through Commission Junction), and Buy.com (through Linkshare)

Selling reports and products that can be downloaded online can be very profitable as well. It’s not unusual to find commissions approaching nearly 50% for these types of products.

I understand the concepts, but what should I sell - Specifically?

Step ONE - You must join (OK, should join) the following programs:

Commission Junction – As far as I know, they offer the biggest affiliate network at this time. They also have very nice information about each company that tells you how much they pay out per 100 visitors to their affiliate sites. Target these companies products.

Linkshare – They’ve been paying me for years for the customers I send them. Highly recommended.

AdReporting – Big commissions, lots of clients. Join all three of these programs.

Step TWO - After joining Commission Junction, take a look at the best paying products and services. Use these products and services to target your companies on Linkshare and AdReporting.

You will quickly find that the best paying products/services are:

Mortgages
Credit Cards
Office Supplies
Web Hosting
Software Products

These are all competitive markets, but there are ways to reach these potential customers. Check out Google Cash to learn about how to bring visitors to your site for pennies.

Copyright 2005 Mark Cabaniss

This article has been authored by Mark Cabaniss. To learn more about online business and affiliate programs, please visit www.eProfitCentral.com

If you run AdSense on your site you know that some words pay more than others, much more in fact. More than likely you have also learned that terms like "structured settlements" and "mesothelioma" can produce incredibly high PPC revenue, if they show up on your site at all. Unfortunately hundreds of thousands of other webmasters are "on" to this practice judging by the number of sites created regularly to capitalize on the phenomenom. So, where does this leave you? Out in the cold? No, by going after "lateral" keywords and terms you can produce a site that is even more profitable than these other sites. I will show you how you can do just that.

What do I mean by "high paying lateral keywords?" Essentially, these are words, or terms, that webmasters dismiss as not being relevant or are unrelated to certain high paying keywords. For instance, you know that the term "free adware" has a nice payout. You gear your article or page accordingly to have AdSense produce the lucrative ads and, instead, you come up with ads that are relevant but not big payers. Should you give up? No, of course not. Instead, research similar terms that can also serve up high paying ads and go with them. In this case the following could be considered:

adware blocker

adware removal

lavasoft adware

free adware removal

adware spy removal tool

remove adware

get adware

adware search and destroy

As you can see, each term contains the keyword "adware" but other words are added. In a recent survey that I conducted some of these "lateral" keywords/terms paid even more than the "free adware" terms. In addition, some nice ads were served up too.

What about mesothelioma? Isn’t that a hot keyword? Yes, and an overworked one. Lateral keywords for your consideration here can include:

lawyers

attorneys

asbestos cancer

lung cancer

personal injury lawyer

personal injury attorney

The common thread with these keywords? Mesothelioma wasn’t even mentioned. Sure, when you think "attorney" or "lawyer" you think of ambulance chasing terms like: bextra, malpractice, and physician neglect. Heck, if other ads are served up instead of mesothelioma ads, do not despair. Chances are that the deep pocket lawyers give a nice payout per click for these keywords too!

Alright, one final example before I turn you loose to do your own research. The keywords: credit cards.

student credit card

airline credit card

business credit card

Visa credit cards

credit card consolidation

rewards credit cards

online credit cards

0% interest credit cards

cash back credit cards

credit card counseling

The options for some keywords are obviously greater than others. If you write your own articles and/or web content you may need to experiment in order to produce the highest paying keywords. Still, these "lateral" keywords will push up your profits almost as much as standard keywords. Now, go and do your own research!

Matt Keegan is The Article Writer who covers topics as diverse as: aviation, business, customer service, driving, ezines, first aid, global issues, high paying keywords, internet, and more.

While it can be quite easy to start an online business, not all people make a success. How then successful business man/woman could make it? Every successful business has its own story, however, there are some common factors that make a business hard to fell down.

Here is ten checklist that help you to be successful.

1. Set a goal

Without a goal, a success is driven just by chance and it’s very low. Your ultimate goal is generating substantial income from your site. But how much? If you’re an affiliate business starter, don’t set too much: otherwise you’ll be depressed. For each site I built and going to build, my firs goal is to earn about $500 a month. For some people, this may sound too small or may not. But in reality to reach $500 within 2 month is a success.

Build more than one content site. This is what most of affiliates do. Let’s say you build 10 niche web sites. This will make you $5,000 a month.

2. Make a plan

A plan makes your work be organized. Building an affiliate site within two month is a descent plan. Within the first month, do a research to find profitable keywords, affiliate programs, and some resources to which you can refer when you write content pages. And within the second month write one article every day. At the end of second month you will have keyword rich contents armored with affiliate program. And publish it by obtaining domain name and web hosting company.

3. Set a budget

While you can start an affiliate business even without investing any penny, it is recommended to make a descent investment. We all know that something for nothing mentality eventually doesn’t work.
Inevitable investment is for the domain name and web hosting.

If you are a starter, purchase Ken Evoy’s "Site Build It!" package. It includes everything you need so that it will shorten your learning time and help you earn income through online. The more details can you find at www.mikino.com

If you have a choice other than the "Site Build It!", it is ok but consider that you still need invest at least $300 for registering domain name, contract with hosting company, etc.. If you want to earn money, you have got to use your money first.

4. Check your lifeblood

What is lifeblood for affiliate, by the way? Many affiliates agree on the following things.

• profitable keyword,
• good affiliate programs and
• informative contents

Your web page should be focused on keywords, which bring you traffic. And then you want convert it to the affiliate program link or to sale your own products. What the good informative contents is doing is to keep the traffic flowing to your site (even to increase it) and to make the conversion rate high.

————————————————–
Side note: If you are not familiar with the words, profitable keyword and contents, and don’t know how to choose a good affiliate program, please download Affiliate Masters Course" (Free Ebook) and read it through.

5. Prepare what to say befor you write content page

If you don’t know what you’re going to tell, how about your reader? You know the content should be informative because people look for information. But what kind of information are you providing? Eventually, all the information boils down to ask an action, to buy your product or to go to your merchant site, right? So, organize your information to conclude the action. Here again the keyword and affiliate program comes into significant role. Determine what keyword you’re going to use and what affiliate program you’re going to suggest and then start writing.

6. Don’t forget PREselling

One of most frequent mistakes is to write a content to sell something. This is so to speak ‘Buy me!’ slogan. But what you have to do is to use ‘Love me!’ slogan. People tend to skeptical when they see ‘Buy me!’ slogan. Give them the information what they were looking for, and guide them by providing suggestions and recommendations to the affiliated product. This so called PREselling strategy and it will make your visitors love your site, maybe you as well. : )

7. Build targeted traffic

After 2 months hard working, finally you published an affiliate site. Do the people know about your site? Afraid not! Though you made a step to the online world, you actually are in isolated island. Let your potential visitors come to your site by promoting your site.

You can promote your site either paying money or without paying any dime. I prefer and suggest not to pay any penny for this matter except buying an ebook to learn how to increase targeted traffic. The foremetioned free ebook "Affiliate Masters Course" can be a good starting point for you.

8. Make yourself determined

Let’s say, for 2 months you had built an affiliate site and submitted to the open directory and major search engines. You hoped a substantial traffic. But sadly, just tens of visitors a day. What are you going to do? Announce a failure and depress yourself? You know successful people won’t do that.

Most of affiliates say it takes at least 4 months to build a substantial targeted traffic. So be patient. And instead being frustrated, check your site whether something can be improved.

9. Time management

As an affiliate, you’re a web master, content writer, copywriter, and top manager. Moreover, you’ll own several sites. Thus you’re a web master of several sites, etc.. Sounds good? There is a problem, though.

How can you manage your time?

It would be nice for you to set aside tedious job and to focus on managing your sites. One way to do that is hiring your assistant. The other way is to purchase Ken Evoy’s "Site Build It!" It helps you spend your precious time efficiently.

10. Stay yourself up to date

The most important aspect of online marketing is that it is ever changing. Search engine listing policy is changing, new affiliate program is emerging, etc….

To make yourself up to date:

• Subscribe to some of newsletter to obtain news, tips, strategy and ideas.
• Read search engine optimization news. I recommend Search Engine Watch site.
• Participate affiliate forum. Read thread, ask questions and publish your opinion.
  This helps you not only be up to date but be listed in search engine.
• Buy some e-books and read them whenever you have time.

————————————–
To publishers,
In the section, 3.set a budget and 9.time management, "SBI" is introduced, feel free to add your affiliate link if you have one, as long as the other content and resource box are intact. You can omit this part when you use this artile. ————————————————–

Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is the Internet affiliate marketing as a work-at-home scheme. For that matter he’s runninng Home Based Affiliate Business and Internet Marketing Blog.

Have you ever tried to launch an affiliate program? If you have, then you know that one of the challenges you face is to get people to be your affiliate marketers. After all, if you are new on the block, people who have never heard of you may be reluctant to encourage their list or web traffic to come to your website.

Logical, right? After all, if someone asked you to recommend their product to your customers, you would want to know about it up front. More importantly, you would want to know who they were and if they were going to be a trustworthy and long term marketer.

First, let me tell you about how NOT to do it. I just heard about a would-be marketer who sent a big dog an email with an offer to market his $700 program to his list and he would get an incredible $70 from each sale. Incredible is right! Can you imagine someone pushing that program to his list? There are several things against him. First, there are many $700 programs out there that offer 40 - 50 - even 65% of the sale price to the referer. Second, this was someone new on the block who was not even on the big dog’s ezine list. Third, nobody else had heard of him either.

Now, lets find out how to do it right.

First, analyze what you want out of your affiliate program. Do you need money from the product you are selling? Do you want to make a name for yourself that people recognize? Do you just want lots of subscribers to your ezine? The way you market your program will depend on what you want out of it.

Second, go to your favorite search engine and discover who is linking to your competition. A good way to do this is to search for a keyword related to the product you wish to sell. Look at the websites of the first page that pops up. Now go to a search engine like google and see who is linking to that website. You can do this with a special form of search. For instance for my website http://www.affiliatetreasurehunt.com you would type in link:www.affiliatetreasurehunt.com.

Check out some of those who are linking to that site. You will find that most of these are affiliates. Check out more of the websites from your initial search with the links to them. You will start to see a pattern. Many of the sites that link to those affiliate products are coming from the same websites. These are likely what are known as super affiliates. In other words, they are the ones that are most successful at refering traffic to those affiliate programs.

Once you have identified the super affiliates in your niche, get to know them. This may be a slow process, but will be well worth it. Start by subscribing to their ezines and reading them. Buy some of their products and review them. Give them honest feedback - either positive or constructive criticism. If you have a legitimate reason, call them up and chat with them.

Now you have a working relationship, you are in a position to make a joint venture proposal. I highly recommend that you give your super affiliates a free copy of your product and ask them for a review. If you want to get their attention and have the best chance at the kind of response you want, mail them a hard copy. Even send it FedEx!

Depending on your ititial analysis, you may want to offer them 70 - 80 - even 100% of the sale price! Consider this - if they have a list of 100,000 highly responsive buyers, and you have a product that is a downloaded information product, it won’t cost you anything to product even 100,000 copies of that product! However, look at the possible benefit. You will be able to present your product to a good percentage of his list. You can possibly get them to opt in to your ezine. Furthermore, gather the emails of the buyers. You will have a very exclusive list. After all, customers of a $700 product can become repeat customers - if you over deliver. That is the name of the game on the internet. Make sure that when people plop down $700 that they feel like they are getting at least $1000 worth of value. And if possible keep them coming back for more.

Get to know the big dogs and throw them some good bones and soon you will find that you are barking with the best of them.

Ron McCluskey has been marketing online since the early eighties.
Now he has a growing internet empire and is willing to share his knowledge at Monthly Affiliate Income

Pick up some great free products while you check out some extremely profitable affiliates at Affiliate Treasure Hunt

Affiliate business internet marketing program success is extremely lucrative for the few super affiliates who have mastered the game.

Ever wonder why the super affiliates are raking it in and you’re still struggling with affiliate programs?

Okay, it is an advantage to have a web site with good traffic and a program related to the theme of the web site. It is also important to have a large list to which you can recommend your program.

However, super affiliates do not get rich for these reasons alone.

The main reason super affiliates succeed so well is that they choose to promote programs that have residual or lifetime commissions and NOT commissions for single sales only.

What happens in most affiliate programs is that the company which owns the product pays the affiliate for a single sale only. Sometimes, these programs are 2-tier. However, the principle remains the same - one sale, one commission.

Therefore, super affiliates choose to promote programs with residual or lifetime commissions. That is, they make a sale of a product which requires constant renewal - such as web hosting every month or a health product for a specific remedy.

That way, the affiliate does the work once and gets paid over and over in the future on the basis of that one sale.

The best programs are the small number that offer lifetime commissions. These programs allow you to keep the customer for life after you make one sale to that person. So you may sell an ebook in the first instance and the customer comes back in perhaps a year or two and buys something else from the same company. As the customer is "yours", you will get the commisssion.

In this way, the residual and lifetime commissions mount up and continue to grow for the same amount of work. Definitely, a case of "work smarter, not harder".

Many of these super affiliates could stop work now and continue to earn an income similar to what they are making today on the basis of these residual/lifetime programs.

Super affiliates know that to struggle to make one commisssion for one sale is hard work. Shouldn’t you join them by promoting programs with residual or lifetime commissions? Affiliate business internet marketing program success is within the reach of everyone.

(c) John Lynch

For high-earning affiliate business internet marketing programs with lifetime and residual commissions go to: http://www.merchant-account-service.com/affiliate_programs.html

You must have been exposed to the online hype, and the fact is starting an online business is a great way to make an extra income. There are many ways to make money online, one of them, is joining online affiliate programs…

Here are six great reasons (only) why this could be exactly what you are looking for. I respect your time, so I’ll keep each point brief. Here we go…

1. Your Products

Many people don’t have their own products to market online, and even if they do, they would have to handle the shipment of the products to every corner of the world, or they would narrow their market to specific areas only.

Online affiliate programs provide a wide variety of quality products, which meet every customer’s needs, and you can market those products world wide without worrying about their shipment. All you need is to refer people to your affiliate websites. Any orders taken from that website are automatically handled by the company on your behalf.

2. Your Income Potential

Besides the commission you can earn from direct products selling, there’s another powerful way to make a great income online - residual income, and this is by referring other people to join the opportunity. This way you can build a network of people where you make a commission for each sale they make…

Some companies limit you to one level of sponsored affiliates, which mean, you only get commission for the sales of the first level of people you refer, however, MANY other great companies do NOT limit your income potential, actually, it’s infinite deep network where you can enjoy passive income.

3. Your Investment

The great news is – you are NOT required to put any money down in order to join an online affiliate opportunity, you can join for FREE! Some of them might claim that you must buy their products (you should avoid those…), even though I believe in the concept of buying from your own store, real opportunities should not force you to perform nor limit your potential, so it is all up to you.

Of course, any kind of business requires some kind of investment, generally speaking it’s a trade off between time and money, the more you are willing to invest, the less time you need to build a solid business, and vise-versa. So it is all up to you.

4. Your Business Training

Some of the great online business will train you for FREE. Do NOT take this lightly, if you are serious about making real income, you will need proper training to build your business effectively, this will save you time AND money!

The information I have learned is priceless! I learned how to master the science of marketing, and it was easy for people like me (I’m a computer software engineer who knew NOTHING about marketing!) to build a successful business. As I already mentioned, this training is available to you for FREE even before they see a penny from you!

5. Your Business Needs

This is extremely important. To have a successful online business, you must have the proper tools like tracking software, websites, follow-up manager and more. Without those tools, you are shooting in the dark and you’ll waste your time and money.

The serious online affiliate opportunities will provide you with those must have tools, and will guide you exactly how to use them in your favor. Again, FREE of charge!

6. Your Bottom Line

I’m well aware to the fact that the bottom line of any business, including online business, is making money. However, there are issues beyond that, those are the issues behind your desire to make money, either to spend more time with your family, get out of debt, own your own home or you name it…

Affiliate programs can be a great way to achieve whatever reasons you might have that triggered you to search for ways to make an extra income. Just make sure you join a great opportunity that is willing to invest in your success, because your success means also theirs!

Allow me to close with a quote by Robert Kiosaki, the author of the book titled "Rich Dad Poor Dad". Mr. Kiosaki, a self made millionaire who also works in network marketing and who opened my eyes through his astonishing books, said the following:

"Is your business or the company you work for going to do well in a depression? If not, start a part time business. Our businesses are designed to do well in a good economy and do even better in a depression. A part-time business that will do well in a down economy is a network marketing business. During a depression, many more people will be very receptive to joining a network marketing company".

Online affiliate companies are the new cutting edge network marketing companies, which makes the whole process much easier.

Hamad Kadmany helps real people succeed online with his free newsletter and his website. His business provides you with a real online business opportunity and the proper tools, training and support for a successful online business. Discover why so many have found their ideal business with Hamad today at Online Business Know How

The ad tracker was originally developed to provide a record of all hits to a site resulting from ad placements. This article shows a host of different ways to utilise an ad tracker.

FOR AFFILIATES

#1. The Long Url Problem

Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this

http://www/anysite.com/cgi-bin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=123RT&type=102 35&subid=89715

Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?

Probably not.

And that’s probably one lost sale.

And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.

The solution: use a short tracking URL.

#2. Losing Your Affiliate Code

As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:

http://www.abc.com/123

Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agent’s commission)

The solution: use a tracking URL - so that your affiliate code number is never seen.

#3. Make Your Ad Stand Out

You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.

Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.

#4. How Effective Are The Links

You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.

#5. Changing Links

If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless. But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.

#6. Affiliate Program Discontinued

Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.

#7. Better Affiliate Stats

Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors. And if they do are they adequate ?

Compare a basic monthly figure say

- Jan: 39 hits

with a detailed analysis such as

- Jan 12: 10 hits

- Jan 13: 2 hits

- Jan 20: 21 hits

- Jan 21: 6 hits

where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.

Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.

#8. Checking Affiliate Stats

Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that you can compare your figures with theirs.

A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or (hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.

An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start, indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is taking too long to load.

FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS

#9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports

If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking URLs and Email them the results.

Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your advertising guidelines

- They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for better performance

- If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more inclined to click

- They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their ads until they are happy, before launching with other publishers

#10. Use Tracking Report Results

The tracking reports above will provide you with information on your subscribers’ interests, influencing your editorial content and helping you select which potential advertisers to approach

Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a program and promote it to them.

#11. Measure Your Readership

You may know how many subscribers you have but how many actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it attract most attention ?

Here’s how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a tracking URL.

For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but there’s a huge problem. You have given out the URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. There’s no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same but they will redirect to your new page.

#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on the most ?

Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are the most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

#14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the same way as for ezine publishers (above).

#15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links it’s very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy - because the ad tracking program will record the referring URL.

At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of the directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

#16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with the engine’s and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

#18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

- newspapers

- magazines

- flyers

- billboards

- press releases

- shop notice boards

- and so on

#19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check the progress of your ads, for example

- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?

- has your billboard notice been removed ?

- how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study the response and switch the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

#20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.

#21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect the reader to other pages of your site by changing the tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

#23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and - for reasons of your own - not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name is used in the tracking URL.

For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use an ad tracker see Harvey’s free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html

Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL to point to their own rebranded version.