Friday, December 12, 2008

4 Mistakes That You Should Avoid in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a proven profitable online business that enables many affiliates live in wealthy lifestyle. If you are not making any money or money that is good enough to replace your day job, then there must be somewhere wrong in the way you do affiliate marketing. Check out whether you have made any of these 4 mistakes which you should avoid if you want to success in an affiliate business:

Mistake #1: Not selecting the right product

Not all affiliate products will make you money, you need to select the right product that demand by the consumers and generate enough commission to make profit out of each sale makes through your affiliate link. In selecting a product to sell in affiliate marketing, you need to take into a few considerations:
Merchant's landing page. It must be able to convert the visitors into buying customers. Commission must be high enough to cover your marketing or advertising cost based on an accurate estimation of traffic-to-sale conversion rate. The product should have good market demand. This can be estimated by analyzing the related keywords search volume.

Mistake #2: Lazy to test the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns

You have setup a number of marketing campaigns through Google Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising media, but you never keep track on how your campaigns are performing. Hence, you don't know which campaigns make money and which are not. When you encounter losses in affiliate marketing due to the cost of marketing is more than the revenue generated, you quit. If you have tracked your campaigns performance, most of time, you can turn the loss into profit just by removing ineffective campaigns.

Mistake #3: Do not own a website

Most affiliates use direct-linking method to channel the traffic generated from their pay-per-click ads to merchant's website. Direct-linking may work well in the past, but not in today's competitive affiliate marketing environment. Moreover, people hate to be hard-sell, which is done by most merchant websites. Instead, the customers prefer to be soft-sell or pre-sell where they get more details information about the product or service they are interested in, and then they will follow the recommendation or refer link to the merchant website if they are interest to buy it. Therefore, you should have a website to pre-sell your visitors before you direct them to the merchant website.

Mistake #4: Sign up too many affiliate programs

Many affiliates especially those who are new tend to sign up with many affiliate programs and try to promote every of them. This action most like do more harm then good. When you try to promote too many affiliate products from too many affiliate programs, you tend to lose focus and direction, making you unable to apply effective marketing strategies that make you profit from affiliate marketing. Sign up with too many affiliate programs and promoting too many affiliate products will lead you to nowhere.

Summary

Affiliate marketing is a proven business model and you should be able to success making money from it unless you have made the common mistakes done by most affiliates who have failed in their affiliate marketing efforts.

By : Scott Bamboo

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

An Effective Website!

Affiliate marketing is making it possible for virtually anyone to come online and make money with little or no money You do not need to create your own product or service so it simply comes down to being able to generate sales. Learning how to sell online can be a great challenge for many people.

Unfortunately most affiliate marketers try one or two approaches to sell and they usually fail and then quit. Do not be part of this group. You must learn from your mistakes because people that are making big money online do things very similarly and people that do not make much money also do things very similarly. Sometimes it can take a bit of time and a few failures before you figure out the game of internet marketing. For more details go to www.writing-fast-cash.com most people want to make money online and they want to do it overnight without any effort. The problem is that this lure of trying to make quick money causes you to use strategies that are simply not effective. An example of this is throwing up a Google ad words ad with a direct link to an affiliate page and then targeting any general related keywords. This strategy rarely works and can cost you a lot of money very quickly.
Remember that most people look at the internet as a free information resource and not a shopping mall. They do not make searches on their computer with the intent to buy something. Certainly there are a few searchers that do have clear intentions to buy so if you do want to target these then make sure to only bid on keywords that have the term 'buy' in it. However this is a small percentage, it appears that most people buy things online by being referred from sites they trust.
The kinds of sites people like and trust are simply those that help them and offer them either free information or a free service. For instance article directories can be great for selling products because people will read an article, feel like they have done some research and then maybe they may switch into buying mode when they encounter your links at the bottom of the article which means your conversion rates will be much higher.
This is why creating content rich sites is very important because you must be able to keep the visitor on your site long enough for them to potentially switch into buying mode before they click on your affiliate links. People buy based on emotion and not logic and most people will not purchase something unless they feel that they have done some research on the subject. If your site can offer the research information then people will be much more likely to buy after they click on your links.
Make sure you create a content rich site related to your niche and add your affiliate links either to the side or the bottom of your articles. Also try to make sure your articles are unique and written by you as search engines are becoming stricter with duplicate content. You can use ad words to promote your site but also be sure to use article marketing too as it can be very effective at driving free traffic
From both the article directories and also the search engines as your sites ranking increases due to increased link popularity. For more information logon to www.article-submitters.com also make it a point to learn about search engine optimization. The biggest key to getting high rankings with the search engines is to create good quality unique sites that offer free useful content for its visitors. Ask yourself whether or not you would find your site useful if you were a visitor. Always try to give your visitors the best possible experience as this is also the goal of the major search engines too. You can do reciprocal linking or article marketing to help increase the visibility of your site on the internet as this is also important to better rankings. Build a site and do it well and in time you are sure to find affiliate marketing success.

By : Anu G Khurana

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Affiliate E-book Marketing

Getting an affiliate Ebook is an excellent way to increase your affiliate sales. You can actually take benefit of this trend in affiliate marketing, but you still have to have a good quality marketing approach.

Online the largest tool a business has is their website. A website is the equivalent of a store. The website is the sales platform. It not only acts like the store front, but also the sales force. That is why using a website for affiliate ebook marketing is an ideal idea.
Affiliate ebook marketing on a website can be tied in with the marketing efforts for the website. This will also help cut down on time spent marketing. Instead of having to market both the website and Ebook a personality will only be doing marketing once. The key to marketing an affiliate ebook on a website is good placement. In order to truly market the ebook it has to be a prominent feature on the website. It has to be seen and be obvious.
To do this it should be on the home page and for maximum advantage it should be on every other page. It can also help to add it to the checkout as a suggested item with each purchase or as a additional benefit gift. This can catch people's eye very good since they are likely to pay closer attention to their order details then anything else on the website.
If the ebook is being given away for free this makes it even easier to 'sell' to people. It should be obvious that it is free. If a person sees something for free then they are really likely to give it a second look and even sign up for it. Affiliate ebook marketing through a website is something that everybody can do. A person probably already has a website if they are into internet business and so it is natural to add the affiliate ebook to the website. It is also a free technique of marketing. Free marketing options should not be passed up.
It is simple to add the ebook to a website. All it takes is a little time to put it up on the website and then there is really nothing more to do. The whole process can be automated just as other aspects of the website. It is a free and speedy marketing way.
In the search for ways to market an affiliate ebook a person may easily overlook the obvious - their website. While it may not seem to be the place to catch a lot of fresh customers, it will still help to bring in some business. Depending on the popularity and traffic of the website, it could turn out to be the best marketing option.
By : Smita

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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Seven Tips to Success You Own Affilate Programs

Joining an affiliate program is a neat way to make money from your users. However, create your own affiliate program is in fact one of most important strategies for an Internet marketer to achieve his/her success of earning money online.


Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes. As you can join someone else’s affiliate program, so you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to sign up.
Here are some tips to succeed with your own affiliate program.

1. Think carefully about the process of affiliating your product, do some planning and you should begin such before you launch the actual site for the product. The planning for such a program includes: determining the price point for your product, determining where you are going affiliate, and determining commission rates for those affiliates. .

2. involve relationships, such as affiliate marketing, because one of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates.. You should always make friends who could potentially be your affiliates before you even consider launching a product or service.

3. Provide useful marketing materials. If your affiliates do not have good pre-made advertisements, including solo ads, classified ads, and pay per click advertisements, they may not be able to effectively market your product, especially if they haven't purchased it.

4. Make it extremely easy for your biggest partners to participate. If a potential partner will have to spend 10 hours in order to make money with your offer and only 30 minutes with another there is a good chance he will simply go with that other product. You would more than likely do the same exact thing.

5. Find related content sites. There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

6. Find complimentary sites to your product. “Complementary” sites are sites that sell products or services that compliment your offers. If you sell“gardening tools”, a site that sells books on “gardening tips” would be a perfect affiliate.

7. Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

As a conclusion, it is important to know that even earning online money you are still working with real people here. Treat them well and you are on your way to victory.

By : Alien

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Monday, December 8, 2008

5 Things You Must Have to Succeed in Internet Based Affiliate Marketing

The idea of being mere passengers on a ship meant to sail to the farthest points does not appeal to people who like to put their destiny into their own hands. They have the desire of maneuvering the ships themselves, of being able to be the ones to take it anywhere they want to. Being aboard a ship on its way to a particularly great destination is something each and every one of them dreams of, and the knowledge that they have the capacity to steer it themselves is what makes them actually want to.

Perhaps this is the reason why more and more people are succumbing to one of the most popular businesses around – internet based affiliate marketing. It is because in this business, there are no bosses to order the employees around. There are no deadlines to meet and no clutter of work do to. One only needs to be equipped with the tools needed to succeed in a business such as this, and he is bound to get what his heart ultimately desires.
Just what are the things needed to be able to succeed in internet based affiliate marketing? What must one have within himself to be able to do well in this industry? There is a lot of competition involved in internet based affiliate marketing, and to be able to rise above the norm, one must be equipped with just the right stuff necessary to propel him forward. There are five things one must ultimately possess if he wants to achieve the glory he is yearning for in this business, and these five things are a must for him to possess to be able to stand out among the rest.
The very first quality one must possess if he wants to try his hand in internet based affiliate marketing is the willingness to learn and be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory is scary stuff if one is not properly equipped, and he might get lost amidst a jungle of the unknown. Learning the tricks of the trade is also an important aspect of the game, and one’s willingness to know it all will give him far better advantages in the business than he could ever imagine.
The second quality one must possess is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem at all apparent. Although several months may pass without good news, it is important for one who has his foot in the industry to hold on and wait. It is this quality which would save him from giving up after investing a lot of himself in the business.
The third quality one must possess is self-determination. If one wants to conquer the internet based affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. Never having to say die is a quality each and every internet based affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an internet based affiliate marketer there.
The fourth quality one must possess is discipline. If one knows how to teach himself to work everyday with all the energy he can muster, then he is close to achieving what he has set his heart to having in the first place.
The fifth and last quality one must possess is optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsays should not discourage an internet based affiliate marketer from pursuing what he has to in order to make life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Neither should anyone influence his attitude toward the business, because once in it, it is a must for him to be the captain of his ship and the master of his soul.
The ingredients to success in a business such as internet based affiliate marketing are diverse and manifold, but the most important thing one needs to be able to make it big lies in himself alone. It is he who has the capacity to do everything to be able to realize his prospects, and the desire which fuels his heart in doing so is the gasoline which should keep the engine going.
Internet based affiliate marketing is all about putting one’s fate into his own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able to steer one’s ship into that part of the ocean where a certain kind of serenity can be found, one that permeates the atmosphere as the ship sails calmly on.

By : Alexander Gorbachev

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Sunday, December 7, 2008

Affiliate Commissions

Your affiliate commissions are your earnings. Each sale you make for your sponsor will earn a percentage of the sale. This will be your commission. In order to make your affiliate business grow you will need to be sure you earn a decent commission from every affiliate program you join.
Safeguarding your commission: it is important to know how to safeguard your commission. You can do this in several ways.

Checking out the companies:
It is critical to your success that you check out the company that you are proposing to join. Be sure they are reliable and are an established business. You do not want the company to fold before you can get paid your commissions. Also you do not want to work for unreliable unscrupulous companies.
• Decent sales page: Your sponsor should always have a great sales page. It is no good if you send lots of warm ready to buy visitors to your sponsor’s website only to find that the sales page does not convert well.
• How much percentage: the percentage of any purchases made by the visitors you send to your sponsor’s site will be your commission. Be sure it is a reasonable percentage, at least 30 to 50 per cent so that it will be worth your while.
• Reliability in payment: make sure that you are paid monthly or bi monthly and on time. You want to be quite sure that the company will not delay your payments. You do not want to work for free.
• Tracking system: Be sure that your sponsor has a reliable tracking system. This will make a record of all the traffic you send to your sponsor’s site and all the sales. You can then see how your visitors are converting and how much you should be paid that month.

Cloaking your affiliate link: There are many people who wil literally steal your sales commission from you. They will either cut out your code from the link and buy direct from the company or replace your code with theirs. Either way you lose your commission. In order to prevent this you will need to use software to disguise the link or have a link that redirects your visitor to the sponsor’s sales page.

Checking that your links work: This is something that many affiliates forget to do. It is no good sending traffic to a broken link. There can be a number of reasons for broken links. Sometimes it is temporary other times it is permanent. If you find your link to your sponsor’s site is not working it is very likely one of 2 things. Your sponsor may be having some web site issues, which will be temporary, or if you are using a redirect service for that link, it may have broken and you will have to remake it or use another company.

By : Michael John Arnold

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Saturday, December 6, 2008

Affiliate Profits

Affiliate profits for your business will depend entirely on you. There are two common ways that you can use affiliate programs to increase your overall business profits. You can be selling your own products and then supplement your earnings with affiliate programs. Another way to do this is to sell only affiliate products.
Supplementing your income with affiliate programs:

Adding affiliate programs are a good way to increase profits. It is simple to implement and can be very profitable if done right. Here are the easy steps:

Find a niche market: This will be a market that is popular and in great demand but has very few websites servicing the market. This means that you can sell more in demand products with less competition. In this way you will get maximum profits.

Understand the needs and wants of that market: Find out their greatest problems. Do your market research properly so that you know exactly what your market is looking for.

Sell a product that solves this problem. This will be your in demand product and should sell well.

Join affiliate programs that provide products that will also help your visitors solve problems.

Build a theme content website: This is a website built around a certain theme. Your product and affiliate programs will be part of this theme. You will pre sell your visitors with all sorts of articles to make them curious about the products.

Add a newsletter: build your list and sell a couple of affiliate products with an informative newsletter.

Drive quality targeted traffic to your website. It is very important to drive as much traffic as you can to your website.

Google Adsense: this is a great way to generate passive income. All you have to do is all of the above and simply put the Google Adsense code on your site. Google will target the ads for your content and you will earn money every time somebody clicks on the ads.

Selling only affiliate products:

You can do this in 2 ways; firstly you can sell multiple affiliate products that all point to one market through a theme content website as described above. Write different articles like reviews and info articles for each product to pre sell your visitors and warm them to the sale. Make sure that all these programs are related so that one promotion will work for all and reach the same market. This will save you a lot of money. Remember to do multiple promotions for maximum traffic.

Secondly you can make mini sites. These little sites will only promote one product at a time. You can join any high demand affiliate program for this and then drive traffic to these sites. Rather than spending a lot of money on promotions for traffic you can easily and cost effectively use Google Adwords , article distribution and blogging.


By : Michael John Arnold

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