Monday, July 14, 2008

Affiliate Marketing Secrets They DonT Want You To Know About

By: Josh Green

Well, here it is folks, the three secrets every beginner must know before starting his or hers affiliate marketing home business: effort, time and money. Ok, I admit that despite the catchy title, I?m not really teaching you something you don?t already subconsciously know, but believe it or not, these simple rules of thumb are things that many novice webmasters often forget.

Let me elaborate. Despite what you may have heard, starting an affiliate marketing business takes a considerable amount of effort. If you?re not willing to keep up to date with the latest search engine optimization strategies, learn at the very least HTML and CSS basics or take some time and write quality content for your website, well I sincerely think you?re embarking in the wrong field.

Secondly, you will need to invest money if you wish to make money. Affiliate marketing is perhaps the easiest and cheapest home businesses to start, but you will inevitably have to invest in some books to refine your knowledge or pay for a good quality hosting company. Even though there are many free strategies you can use to maximize your site?s traffic, you will also have to invest money on good quality targeted advertising or paid inclusion in quality directories for example if you wish to increase your chances of success.

Finally, when investing your hard earned money in a project like this, you must be patient. The expression "patience is a virtue", is none more applicable then in the case of home internet businesses. Many claim to have made incredible amounts of money within a very short period of time. I don?t mean to sound pessimistic but these are either the luckiest people on the planet or what they are saying is simply not true.

The most important thing to understand about this type of business is that there is no magic recipe for success, because if there was, I wouldn?t be writing this article. I would be to busy rolling in all my money. You may find that some of the strategies you?ve read on the web or in books actually work in getting traffic to your website, but none of your visitors are actually buying anything. There are literally countless factors that come into play that will determine your level of success.

Without getting into the specifics and intricacies of affiliate marketing, I will try to point you in the right direction. First of all, an important aspect of affiliate marketing is the website itself. Like I said earlier, getting a hit on your website is one thing, but actually having that hit translate itself into a sale is a completely different thing. If your website doesn?t offer compelling content and simply relies on nice pictures, catchy slogans or cheesy testimonials, well I wouldn?t expect off the chart results. You might get the odd user to buy your product, but don?t expect him to come back. Just take a look at all the major corporate websites on the net: simple and easy to use design, fresh and informative content. That?s why most people go back to these websites. In layman?s terms, a professional looking website is a must, even if it only looks professional and you ended up designing and writing the content yourself. There are numerous templates or detailed tutorials available on the net that can help you design an efficient and professional looking website. There are also great article search engines where you can find free articles to use on your website.

The last thing I would like to elaborate on and probably the single best advice I can give any new webmaster willing to try his hand in such a competitive business is simply read. The more you learn, the better your chances are. You must study your competitors; understand your targeted audience, read any book that you can get your hands on; visit any website that can help you with your project, etc. Finally, apply the things you?ve learned even if it?s a relatively small venture. Unfortunately, there are many people out there who give up before they even get started, often because they realize that it takes a lot more work than they thought. But if you?re willing to push yourself and learn, you just might hit that home run.

Affiliate Marketing Can Earn You Huge Profits

By: Joel Dresse

Looking for a way to pad your bottom line? Affiliate marketing is a great resource for either web site developers or merchants. Web site developers can make extra income on their web sites and merchants can sell their products or services with the help of many marketers. If you are new to affiliate marketing, here are some great tips on using affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is super simple. Open an account on the many affiliate marketing sites such as Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction and Paydotcom. Within these sites you can easily find products from vendors that you want to sell. Most of these products pay extremely high commission. For instance, on Clickbank, you can find products that pay at least 50%. For products on Amazon, expect 5 to 10%.

Once you sign up and choose your products, you can easily copy and paste the affiliate vendor?s product code onto your web site. When a person visits your site and is interested in purchasing an affiliate product, they are passed onto the affiliate marketing site to make that purchase. You automatically get a good commission for finding the customer.

For merchants that have products to sell, you can easily reach thousands of customers each day by offering high commissions to affiliate marketers. The higher the commission or more popular the product the higher the chance web developers will place your product on their web sites to sell. So if you want to make a healthy profit either with a web site or a product, look into affiliate marketing.

More informations are available at http://www.affiliate-00.com .

Basics of Affiliate Marketing

By: Matt Bacak

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

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

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

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

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

Affiliate Marketing vs Google Adsense Let the Battle Begin

By: Ye7ia

Lately there has been a lot of discussion on how to make tons of money with Google Adsense. In fact, many people are making the claim that Adsense sites can earn a higher revenue then an affiliate-marketing site.

So that brings us to an important question: Which is a better online business - Affiliate-Marketing sites or Google Adsense sites?

Let's explore each one and then find out which online business is better option:

Google Adsense

How do you like the idea of earning m*ney without dealing with customers or answering emails. This is possible when you run a Google Adsense site. With Adsense sites, you can have a virtual passive-income that requires little maintaining. But is this the best option for an online business?

Here are the positives of Google Adsense sites:

? They are perfect for people who run information sites that have no related affiliate product

? You can set it and leave it. With Google Adsense, you can create a content page, and there is little need to update the content.

? Adsense sites are easy to scale. Since they require little upkeep, you can easily create multiple websites that each make a nice income.

Here are the negatives of Google Adsense sites:

? They are not a great long term solution. Instead of getting your visitors to subscribe to a mailing list, you are focusing on getting people to click on ads. Real online businesses concentrate on building assets that can use for long-term growth.

? These sites are dependent on search engines. Most Google Adsense sites make the mistake of depending on search engines for the majority of their traffic. If the SE algorithms change then your income might drop significantly.

Affiliate Marketing

Being an affiliate marketer is great for those who want build a theme site. With this type of business, you can easily create web pages around a topic and get people to buy products through your products. If done correctly, you can easily build a loyal following that will help you make money for years to come.

But can affiliate marketing make you more money then Google Adsense?

Here are the positives of affiliate marketing:

? A great advantage of affiliate-marketing is that you can build a long term business that will bring in a revenue stream for years.

? With affiliate-marketers you need to focus on building an email list. This list is a major asset of your business. Every time you have an offer, you can go to your list and increase your profits..

? Unlike Google Adsense sites, which only concentrates on high paying keywords, an affiliate marketing site can be centered on a topic that you have an interest in.

Here are the negatives of affiliate marketing:

? You have to learn how to write persuasively and get people to purchase the product that you are recommending. For many people this is a difficult skill to learn.

? Each affiliate marketing site requires a lot of effort. You must spend a lot of time writing product reviews, building your email list and creating web content.

So which is better: Affiliate marketing or Google Adsense?

The answer is that both are great solutions for an online business. Instead of choosing one over the other, you should create websites that can take advantage of both.

Here is how you can do this:

1) Create a content site on a topic that you are interest in, while paying a good amount per Adsense click.

2) Integrate your Adsense into the menu bars and the top of your web content.

3) Add web pages for affiliate-products and your opt-in email list. But, make sure that you leave out the Adsense blocks on these pages. This way you are ensuring that you are building your long-term assets.

4) Create optimized web page articles that focus on a specific keyword phrase. Place your Google Adsense in these blocks.

5) Provide your email list with good content and product recommendations. Once in awhile, email your list and provide a link to some of your web articles. That way, you can earn a little bit of m*ney from your subscribers while giving them good content.

By focusing on both affiliate products and Google Adsense, you will be building both short-term and long-term profits.

Affiliate Marketing vs Google Adsense Let the Battle Begin

By: Ye7ia

Lately there has been a lot of discussion on how to make tons of money with Google Adsense. In fact, many people are making the claim that Adsense sites can earn a higher revenue then an affiliate-marketing site.

So that brings us to an important question: Which is a better online business - Affiliate-Marketing sites or Google Adsense sites?

Let's explore each one and then find out which online business is better option:

Google Adsense

How do you like the idea of earning m*ney without dealing with customers or answering emails. This is possible when you run a Google Adsense site. With Adsense sites, you can have a virtual passive-income that requires little maintaining. But is this the best option for an online business?

Here are the positives of Google Adsense sites:

? They are perfect for people who run information sites that have no related affiliate product

? You can set it and leave it. With Google Adsense, you can create a content page, and there is little need to update the content.

? Adsense sites are easy to scale. Since they require little upkeep, you can easily create multiple websites that each make a nice income.

Here are the negatives of Google Adsense sites:

? They are not a great long term solution. Instead of getting your visitors to subscribe to a mailing list, you are focusing on getting people to click on ads. Real online businesses concentrate on building assets that can use for long-term growth.

? These sites are dependent on search engines. Most Google Adsense sites make the mistake of depending on search engines for the majority of their traffic. If the SE algorithms change then your income might drop significantly.

Affiliate Marketing

Being an affiliate marketer is great for those who want build a theme site. With this type of business, you can easily create web pages around a topic and get people to buy products through your products. If done correctly, you can easily build a loyal following that will help you make money for years to come.

But can affiliate marketing make you more money then Google Adsense?

Here are the positives of affiliate marketing:

? A great advantage of affiliate-marketing is that you can build a long term business that will bring in a revenue stream for years.

? With affiliate-marketers you need to focus on building an email list. This list is a major asset of your business. Every time you have an offer, you can go to your list and increase your profits..

? Unlike Google Adsense sites, which only concentrates on high paying keywords, an affiliate marketing site can be centered on a topic that you have an interest in.

Here are the negatives of affiliate marketing:

? You have to learn how to write persuasively and get people to purchase the product that you are recommending. For many people this is a difficult skill to learn.

? Each affiliate marketing site requires a lot of effort. You must spend a lot of time writing product reviews, building your email list and creating web content.

So which is better: Affiliate marketing or Google Adsense?

The answer is that both are great solutions for an online business. Instead of choosing one over the other, you should create websites that can take advantage of both.

Here is how you can do this:

1) Create a content site on a topic that you are interest in, while paying a good amount per Adsense click.

2) Integrate your Adsense into the menu bars and the top of your web content.

3) Add web pages for affiliate-products and your opt-in email list. But, make sure that you leave out the Adsense blocks on these pages. This way you are ensuring that you are building your long-term assets.

4) Create optimized web page articles that focus on a specific keyword phrase. Place your Google Adsense in these blocks.

5) Provide your email list with good content and product recommendations. Once in awhile, email your list and provide a link to some of your web articles. That way, you can earn a little bit of m*ney from your subscribers while giving them good content.

By focusing on both affiliate products and Google Adsense, you will be building both short-term and long-term profits.

Important Selling Techniques For Affiliate Marketing

By: Ye7ia

This article focuses on the promotional tactics, free or paid, needed in selling affiliate products. If you?re an absolute beginner, here?s a short note on what?s affiliate marketing: it is the business where you are to sell someone else?s products on a commission-basis per sale. The process works in terms of percentages than in dollar amounts, which can vary even up to 75% for one sale.

Let?s be on to the main objective of the article now.

Making a landing page for the product on your own website is one good way to push and sell the product. You can always give a referral link in the end, directing your potential customers to the main site, where he/she may end up striking a deal. The site should also, of course, be well optimized in itself to get good ranks in search engines. This must be ensured at the beginning to lower advertising investments, because search engine ranking will eventually bring more traffic to your website. The progress may be slow, depending on the frequency of search engine spiders crawling on your page, but sure. The next technique not only fosters this progress, but is also a separate selling method in itself.

All you need to do is join a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program and create ads for the affiliate landing page. There are many sites which offer PPC programs, but Google and Yahoo are, by far, the best and most popular. It can cost you real high if you don?t know how to benefit from these programs. You can only profit if your ad perfectly caters to the needs of your targeted buyers. The key idea is to increase the amount of targeted viewers. There are many books available on mastering the PPC systems and learning how to earn more than you spend. Here?s just a brief overview:

The concept is quite simple. Suppose you get a sale in every 100 clicks and earn 20 cents per click. So for selling a product at $25 commission, you can bag $5. And to convert potential clicks to profitable sales, you need to keep testing your ads. If you want to achieve this without a site, just put the affiliate link in as the landing page. Not all PPC companies would allow this, so read the Terms of Service well before starting off. The success in using PPC programs with the landing page depends on several factors ranging from the power of the ad to the impact of the landing page.

You may also use Web blogs to sell your affiliate products. Just submit articles and reviews associated with your product and you can have your blog listed in the leading search engines. This will also help the potential customers know about your product in advance, thereby helping them in buying. When you don?t want to buy a domain, blogs are the closest you can get to your site, because updating blogs is easy and are in regular use in affiliate marketing too. Ping your blog posts after you?ve put it up with websites like Ping-O-Matic.

The ultimate objective is to bring as much as targeted viewers to visit your affiliate site or your ad. Increasing targeted traffic means more chances of a deal or a sale, and consequently, more chances of your getting a commission as a marketer. You can sell anything under the sun through affiliate marketing. So pick the product of your choice, one which you?re comfortable in, and get started.

Proceeds Mixed Through Affiliate Marketing and Google Adsense

By: Ye7ia

Do you happen to be a webmaster that needs money for your website? Well if you are a web publisher you're going to need cash, affiliate marketing may work for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash driving into your bank. Furthermore if your website is rich in great contents, why not get into the Google Adsense program?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Because affiliate marketing is most likely the best way to earn profits online. Even online retailers can gain from affiliate marketing programs, affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Simply said, is a liaison or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant's website and the other being the affiliate's site. The affiliate agrees to let the merchant promote his products on the affiliate's site, and the merchant, agree to pay the affiliate in whatever scheme they have agreed into. This would normally mean easy profits for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer's ad on his site. This would also be very favourable for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their goods would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a range of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy money. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most favoured by affiliates, for their site's visitor would only have to visit the advertiser's site for them to gain money. The other two methods are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting takings on affiliate marketing programs does not depend so much on the payment method it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can catch the attention of more visitors would usually have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

Google Adsense.

Google Adsense is in fact some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the agent between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which are in fact a link to the advertiser's website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be related to the content of your site. This would be helpful both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this sum to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you get from a certain ad.

Where do all of these lead us to?

To profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program plainly work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant's side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would certainly convert to a large amount of cash.

Master Affiliate Marketing 7 Ways To Take Your Earnings To The Next Level

By: Ye7ia

It's a fact that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest ways to get a web business up and running. After all, you don't need a website, you don't need a list and you can start advertising someone else's product just 5 minutes from now.

And the great thing is you really can make money by doing it. But the truth is, if you are making money from a particular product you're promoting in this fashion, you?re almost certainly leaving money on the table.

To explain why, we need to look at your average affiliate marketing strategy:

-- Pick a product to promote with a high affiliate payout ($50 or more)

-- Set up a pay-per-click campaign to promote your affiliate link

That's it! Those two steps are what the vast majority of affiliate marketers do. And that's why 95% of all affiliate payouts are made to just 5% of the people doing the marketing? because those top 5% are doing far more to earn their commissions than just a simple PPC campaign.

You need to understand that if you're fortunate enough to be making money from the product you're promoting just by doing those 2 basic steps, then it's almost a racing certainty that you're missing out on a mass of additional income.

Let's look at how you could increase your commissions and future related sales on just one product you're already making money from:

1. Build a 'name squeeze' page to capture your prospect's name and email address. It's a fact that virtually all product sales are made after the customer's fifth visit to the website.

If you're not capturing your prospect's details, how are you going to make sure they go back to the sales page using your affiliate link? To greatly improve the chances of this you can set up a 7-series autoresponder to automatically send your lead additional information and reminders about the product they're interested in. This approach will keep the product fresh in their mind.

2. Build a website reviewing the product you're promoting, including a newsletter to catch your prospect's details. You can give full details about how the product will solve your prospect's problems, giving an impartial review of the features and benefits with some real-life results.

The newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your prospects in the same way as the name squeeze page method.

3. Offer additional bonuses for buying through your affiliate link. This gives your prospect a reason to buy from you, especially if they know you're going to make a commission from the sale.

The important thing here is that your bonus products are related to the product you're selling. I mean, there's no point advertising a bonus book on 'how to make your parrot talk' if your initial product is about training dogs to perform tricks.

4. Create video tutorials on how to use the product you're promoting. This works especially well when you're promoting a software product. You can show people how to get started as quickly as possible without them having to read the manual.

The vast majority of people learn visually, so they're much more likely to use your videos than read the manual supplied with the software. You can even tie this in with option 3; give your prospect free training videos if they buy through your affiliate link.

5. Make your own product to cross-promote. It can be an add-on to the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Again, you could easily offer it for free or at a discounted price if they buy through your affiliate link.

6. Promote related products via email. This works by creating an 'A ' Grade list out of your newsletter and squeeze page sign-ups, i.e. the people who have actually gone on to buy the product you're promoting.

It's a known fact that people who have a proven track record of buying online are more likely to buy from you again. You can easily recommend to them a related product that will further enhance their original purchase, resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.

7. Tie all of the above together. You don't have to use just one of the methods above. Use all of them.

Create a name squeeze page, build a review website with newsletter, add some bonuses to your affiliate link, make some video tutorials, develop your own related product and promote other affiliate products via email to the lists you've built with your name squeeze page and newsletter.

But before you do any of this, make sure you're promoting a product that sells. After all, spending your time doing all of the above for a product that is poorly supported, doesn't work properly or has a high refund rate is going to be time wasted.

Affiliate Marketing and Niche Websites A Match Made In Heaven

By: Ye7ia

In my previous article: Affiliate Marketing 101 - Understanding The Basic Concept Of Affiliate Marketing, I pointed out that Niche websites are far more likely to generate increase affiliate income, than more generic type sites. The reason for this is simple; niche markets create targeted visitors, and these targeted visitors are far more likely to be interested in related products and services, as part of the reason for their visit to you.

Niche marketing is not hard. Niche marketing involves concentrating your website on one particular area of knowledge or expertise, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. By developing these types of niche websites you are far more likely to succeed, and even go on to successfully win the affiliate marketing game.

So How Do You Create A Niche Website?

1. Focus On A Specific Subject. The more knowledgeable you are about the subject yourself, the more confident your visitors will be when visiting you in search of information. I have often found through my own personal experience that those who have a passion about a subject are far more likely to reflect it in their subject matter, than those who do not. For example, I have 2 passions in life: sports betting, and internet marketing. I have been fortunate enough to have profited considerably from both, but by placing my passion on the net, I now have the capacity to share my knowledge and experience with others who have an interest in the same things - subsequently turning my passions into cash.

2. Relate Your Content to Complimentary Products and Services. Once your niche has been established you can begin to apply the principles of effective affiliate marketing with great success. Content is king, so by relating affiliate programs directly to your content you are then in an ideal position to capitalise. As an example: my website at http://www.laytheodds.com is focused on the realm of sports betting and betting exchange trading. Everytime I discover a new article that relates directly to the site I publish it. Take a look for yourself at any article on http://www.laytheodds.com and you will see how I apply the very principle of relating content to affiliate software, betting systems, etc that I promote with maximum effect. The result, lots of targeted traffic, who are directly interested in any or all of the products or services I promote through affiliate links. The affiliate cheques at the end of the month directly reflect the success of this method.

3. Build a Niche Directory. Everytime I come across a website that I think would be of interest to my visitors I place a link to it in my links directory without even asking for a link back. Now this goes against the grain of so call SEO experts, but it is a strategy that works well. Here's why: webmasters almost always look at their logs to see who has visited them and where they have come from. When they see a link to them from me they are more often than not curious as to what my site is all about, and subsequently click through to discover for themselves - gotcha! Another highly targeted visitor just came through the door - and my own stats reveal that these webmasters themselves are highly receptive to buying online, and they do!

An additional benefit of niche directories is that search engines love them. In the recent update Google is said to have placed higher significance to these directory structures. This has proven to be the case as far as I am concerned anyway.

4. Use Free Articles to Boost Your Content. I always scour the article directories for new articles that relate directly to my subject matter. These articles are a valuable source of content, and keywords; and used effectively they act as magnets that draw new visitors in and expose them to all the additional affiliate offerings provided in order to entice them to click-thru and buy.

One trick I have used with great success is to link articles on the same subject matter together to form a chain. This keeps visitor interest high and again exposes them to more opportunities to click-thru an affiliate link.

5. Effectively Use Google Adsense. Alot has been written on Google Adsense, and the great incomes that can be produced through strategic placement of ads in and around content. And I just want to say this: THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! By placing google ads in and around your content you are often turning visitors into cash, regardless of whether they buy anything from you or not. I remember when I struggled each month initially to produce the minimum amount required to generate a payout from Google simply because I was not making effective use of the system itself. By changing the placement and emphasis my income from Google has increased fiftyfold across all my sites. Incorporate google ads in and around your articles - let google take care of the relevancy, and serve alternative ads (you can state the alternative ads to display in the Google Adsense control panel) in the event that google does not serve up ads.

So in a nutshell: we now have our niche website, serving up content in the form of articles and news specifically related to our subject of interest (which of course we are highly passionate about!). We have also directly related our content to complimentary products and services through strategic placement of affiliate links - and implemented Adsense ads, as well as our own ads in the event that Google fails to deliver. We have also setup our niche directory, and placed relevant links (emphasis on 'relevant'), again directly related to our subject matter.

What Have We Done? We have created a niche website that will prove to be a money-spinner in time. I say 'time' because this is not a recipe for overnight success - rather, a plan for medium to long term financial security. Viewed in this manner you are sure to succeed.

Next Task? Develop another niche website and replicate the whole process again!

4 Steps to eBay Affiliate Success

By: Anthony Samuel

Getting started with the eBay affiliate program is as simple as 4 easy steps. eBay knows you have a business to run, so they have created a step-by-step guide to see you down the road of success. With the eBay Affiliate Program, you could bring in an extra $25,000 a month, as well as gain access to many tools and strategies that will optimize the working of your website, its effectiveness with search engines and on the Web in general. Getting started in a successful venture has never been so easy.

Step# 1

To register for the eBay Affiliate Program simply to go http://affiliates.ebay.com/ and do a little research. When you have seen the unlimited opportunities for success that the eBay Affiliate program affords its members, you will next want to click on the ?API Program Join Now? button. At this point you will be prompted to select the platform you would like to join with. The platform you choose will influence the tier and type of business your eBay Affiliate Status becomes. Each platform offers unique advantages, and should be considered carefully. Once you have selected your program platform, simply click the Join Now button for that particular platform.

Step# 2

After you have completed your application, the eBay Affiliate network you choose will send you an email with your login details and instructions on getting started. The application process itself is easy, and simply requires some information about your business. This information helps eBay optimize the tools and guidelines they provide you for your success. The application takes only a few minutes, and is not sold to competitors. The Affiliate network you chose will be in touch with your personal information and you can get started with your successful new venture.

Step# 3

Once you have received your password and login information, you can proceed to the affiliate network site http://affiliates.ebay.com/tools/ to find eBay banners, text links, and search boxes. This website offers detailed tracking statistics. The tracking statistics will help you see which products and companies are performing best. This information will help guide you as you develop your affiliation with eBay, and will enable you to make the best decisions for your website?s performance.

Step# 4

The last step to success with the eBay Affiliate Program is to further grow your eBay strategy using the affiliate website and all of its many features.

The affiliate website will not only get you started down your road to success with eBay, but they will provide you with invaluable tools to maximize your strategy. These tools and kits will help you transition into the affiliate member you want to be, and will continue to keep you updated so you stay current with trends and technology.

These 4 easy steps take you from learning about the eBay Affiliate Program, to being a super successful eBay affiliate.

10 Tips To Help You Create Your Own Money Making Affiliate Program

By: Ye7ia

1. View your affiliate program as a partnership between you and your affiliates, and make it your priority to develop good relationships between you and your affiliate sales force.

2. Answer any questions your visitors or affiliates have about your affiliate program in a fast and friendly manner.

Remember that nothing will turn your affiliates or visitors off of your affiliate program faster than an unanswered email. Your affiliates must know that you take them and the effort they make to promote your business seriously.

3. Track all of your affiliates' sales accurately and fairly.

Your affiliates should be able to earn commissions on their referrals even if their referral comes back months, or even a year later and makes a purchase.

4. Save time and money by making your affiliate program, like your business, as automated as possible.

Your affiliate program software should allow you to automatically notify your affiliates by email whenever they've made a sale, referred a new affiliate if your affiliate program is two-tier, as well as show your affiliates how many hits, sales, and commissions they've generated in real time.

5. Attract more affiliates by paying a high commission, offering a two-tier commission structure, paying commissions on repeat customers, or by giving your affiliates the opportunity to earn residual commissions if you provide a service that is paid for on a subscription basis.

6. Give your affiliates plenty of resources that they can use to promote your products.

This could include your own marketing courses that your affiliates can give away to their visitors or subscribers, ad copy that you've found has produced sales for you, ebooks that they can rebrand with their affiliate URL, or sample recommendations of your products.

7. Publish a newsletter for your affiliates that gives them tips on how to best promote your products, tells them of any sales or promotions you have running, and that reminds them of the resources you've provided for them to promote your products.

8. Increase your top affiliates productivity by paying them a higher commission for their referrals based on their performance, and by giving them special recognition on your site or in your affiliate newsletter.

Giving your affiliates special recognition in your newsletter can also serve to teach your newer affiliates how to successfully promote your products, as well as show them by example that the tools you've given them do work effectively.

9. If you write articles, let your affiliates publish them in their ezines or on their websites with their affiliate URL in your resource box.

This can be an excellent way for your affiliates to earn commissions promoting your products through your resource box while also further building up credibility for you and your business.

10. To increase the number of affiliates that consistently use your articles to promote your products, create a mailing list (in addition to your affiliate newsletter) that your affiliates can subscribe to that tells them when you've written new articles that they can use to promote your services.

Niche Blogs And Why They Make Such An Excellent Affiliate Marketing Tool

By: Ye7ia

Blogs or more specifically... Niche Blogs are simply blogs that are topic focused and target a specific market and/or niche.

More importantly though, these blogs contain targeted information that their target market is searching for.

This is KEY.

As an affiliate marketer we are always told that information, whether its an article, review, ebook, ecourse, report, mp3 or pod cast, is a key Pre-Selling tool before your potential customer decides to buy what it is that your offering.

This is where Niche Blogs come into play because of there many capabilities and functions.

The biggest advantage Blogs have is they give you the ability to syndicate your content and/or information through a technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication).

The types of content you are able to syndicate are as follows:

- Articles
- Product Reviews
- eBooks
- eCourses
- Special Reports
- Mp3 Files
- Steaming Video(A.K.A Pod Casting)

Are you starting to see the advantages to blogs or more importantly, having a network of affiliate Niche Blogs?

I hope so.

Also, with your blog comes an RSS Feed that your potential visitors can subscribe to.

Whats this mean for you?

Simple. When ever you post to your affiliate Niche Blog or network of Niche Blogs guess who will INSTANTLY receives that post?

That's right, who ever subscribes to your RSS Feed.

Are you starting to see the many benefits of having a Niche Blog and incorporating it into your affiliate marketing mix?

Only you can answer that.

Another great thing about Blogs in general is that search engines love them and everytime you post to your Niche Blog it "Pings" the search engines and other RSS Directories you've submitted to letting them know that there's new fresh content for them to come and index.

The more you post, the more pages that will be produced, which means... more for the search engines to index, which means... more traffic to your Niche Blog.

The best way to take advantage of your new source of traffic and maximize your Niche Blog profits is to modify your blog template and add Google Adsense and your affiliate programs marketing materials to it.

By doing this, everytime you post to your Niche Blog your marketing message will always be there and Google Adsense will display targeted ads related to your content.

Now, I can't go into alot of detail on how to modify blog templates in this article simply because that's an article within itself and then some.

What I can do is show you one that I just put together as an example.

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/internet-joint-venture/

All I really wanted to get across to you is the advantages to having your own Niche Blog as part of your affiliate marketing mix to help market your affiliate programs to your target audience.

Blogs are here to stay so we might as well take advantage of them in any way that we can.

Affiliate Marketing: 3 Steps to Free Targeted Traffic!

by: Robin Araoz


Have you ever tried to promote a website without traffic?

Sure, is sound like stupid question, but reality is that

Without traffic, you will not get visitors. And without visitors, you will not make money, sales, get subscribers, etc.

So, What good is a website without any traffic? And if the site is getting traffic, what good is it if it is not targeted traffic?

There are many ways to drive traffic to your site, both free and paid. But we are going to talk about the one you probably love the most: Free Targeted Traffic.

So, let us go back to 3 different free traffic systems available:

1) Search Engine Optimization
2) Surfing for traffic
3) Getting it passively

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

SEO takes time and a lot of work. It works really great when you know how to do it, but if you go after this one, I recommend you to learn from 3 guys online, and believe me, they know what they are talking about, just go to google and search for:

Brad Fallon

Andy Jenkins

or, Brad Callen

I recommend you take a look for Brad Callen´s free seo guide, you will find it somewhere out there in cyberspace and it is called: "Search engine made easy".

2) Surfing for traffic

When you join sites that are surf for traffic sites, you have to look at other members' sites in order to earn advertising credits for your site to be displayed when another member is surfing.

The only problem with this is that although the traffic is free, it is not targeted.

Everyone who is a member only surfs for the credit and very rarely and y mean rarely even looks at the site, they just minimize their window on their PC and multi-task. So, the traffic in most cases is crap and worthless.

3) Getting it passively

Now, let us talk about the best way to get free targeted traffic. It is called Instant Buzz. Instant Buzz is a service that gives you advertising credits as you surf the web like you normally would.

What you do is download the toolbar for free, it only takes a minute. Then, you set up your ads in the members area. And bam, you ads are being displayed on other members' tool bars as they surf.

You can also put Instant Buzz ads in emails that you send to your friends. These are called mail space ads.

And your ad will get displayed in other members' emails. The last thing you can do is put a hyperspace ad on your website which will help you refer other members.

When you refer other members, you will also get a percentage of the credits they earn which will go towards your ad credits.

If someone likes your ad and is interested in what it says, then they click on it and end up on whatever site it was that you were promoting. Now that's targeted traffic! And it was free.

You decide what to use, and remember if it is free, well, why not?...

Master Affiliate Marketing 7 Ways To Take Your Earnings To The Next Level

By: Ye7ia

It's a fact that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest ways to get a web business up and running. After all, you don't need a website, you don't need a list and you can start advertising someone else's product just 5 minutes from now.

And the great thing is you really can make money by doing it. But the truth is, if you are making money from a particular product you're promoting in this fashion, you?re almost certainly leaving money on the table.

To explain why, we need to look at your average affiliate marketing strategy:

-- Pick a product to promote with a high affiliate payout ($50 or more)

-- Set up a pay-per-click campaign to promote your affiliate link

That's it! Those two steps are what the vast majority of affiliate marketers do. And that's why 95% of all affiliate payouts are made to just 5% of the people doing the marketing? because those top 5% are doing far more to earn their commissions than just a simple PPC campaign.

You need to understand that if you're fortunate enough to be making money from the product you're promoting just by doing those 2 basic steps, then it's almost a racing certainty that you're missing out on a mass of additional income.

Let's look at how you could increase your commissions and future related sales on just one product you're already making money from:

1. Build a 'name squeeze' page to capture your prospect's name and email address. It's a fact that virtually all product sales are made after the customer's fifth visit to the website.

If you're not capturing your prospect's details, how are you going to make sure they go back to the sales page using your affiliate link? To greatly improve the chances of this you can set up a 7-series autoresponder to automatically send your lead additional information and reminders about the product they're interested in. This approach will keep the product fresh in their mind.

2. Build a website reviewing the product you're promoting, including a newsletter to catch your prospect's details. You can give full details about how the product will solve your prospect's problems, giving an impartial review of the features and benefits with some real-life results.

The newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your prospects in the same way as the name squeeze page method.

3. Offer additional bonuses for buying through your affiliate link. This gives your prospect a reason to buy from you, especially if they know you're going to make a commission from the sale.

The important thing here is that your bonus products are related to the product you're selling. I mean, there's no point advertising a bonus book on 'how to make your parrot talk' if your initial product is about training dogs to perform tricks.

4. Create video tutorials on how to use the product you're promoting. This works especially well when you're promoting a software product. You can show people how to get started as quickly as possible without them having to read the manual.

The vast majority of people learn visually, so they're much more likely to use your videos than read the manual supplied with the software. You can even tie this in with option 3; give your prospect free training videos if they buy through your affiliate link.

5. Make your own product to cross-promote. It can be an add-on to the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Again, you could easily offer it for free or at a discounted price if they buy through your affiliate link.

6. Promote related products via email. This works by creating an 'A ' Grade list out of your newsletter and squeeze page sign-ups, i.e. the people who have actually gone on to buy the product you're promoting.

It's a known fact that people who have a proven track record of buying online are more likely to buy from you again. You can easily recommend to them a related product that will further enhance their original purchase, resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.

7. Tie all of the above together. You don't have to use just one of the methods above. Use all of them.

Create a name squeeze page, build a review website with newsletter, add some bonuses to your affiliate link, make some video tutorials, develop your own related product and promote other affiliate products via email to the lists you've built with your name squeeze page and newsletter.

But before you do any of this, make sure you're promoting a product that sells. After all, spending your time doing all of the above for a product that is poorly supported, doesn't work properly or has a high refund rate is going to be time wasted.

9 Steps to Success in Affiliate Marketing

By: Ye7ia

1. Join an Affiliate Program: Join programs that interest you personally. There are affiliate programs for almost any product or service you can think of so do some research and find one that is right for you. If you have a passion for your product niche it will be a whole lot easier to stay motivated and be successful.

2. Build your own website to promote your product: You will need to build a website with your own domain name (ie. homeworksolutions.biz ) and pay a monthly fee for hosting as opposed to going the free route and sharing a domain (ie. yourname.homeworksolutions.biz ) If you don't know much about web design that's quite ok. You will find there are lots of companies out there who offer very affordable website design.

3. Start a reciprocal linking campaign: Start exchanging links with other websites in your niche. You will find lots of webmasters willing to add a link to your website as long as you return the favor. The more websites that link to you, the higher page rank you will have in the search engines, therefore leading to more traffic to your website.

4. Start your own newsletter: The newsletter can simply consist of articles related to your products and website. Always add a signature containing a link to your website at the bottom of each newsletter entry. That way when people read your articles they can continue on to your website. If you don't want to write your own articles, there are many webmasters who will let you use theirs for free. Submit your newsletter to as many websites as you can.

5. Build an Email List: Owning your own email list is one of the most important tools you can have as an affiliate marketer. The best way to build your list is to buy leads, that way you don't have to worry about getting in trouble for spamming. Lots of companies sell quality leads (email addresses) consisting of people who have requested information about your products. With every lead you buy you can in turn sign them up for your newsletter.

6. Get an Auto Responder: With an auto responder program you can make the process of buying leads and adding them to your newsletter completely automated. You can save hours of time with this approach.

7. Write your own Articles: To be successful with affiliate marketing you will eventually have to write an article or two. This may sound a bit overwhelming in the beginning, but after you have been building your business for awhile you will get into it. Always include a signature at the bottom of the article containing your website link. Then post your article on as many websites as you can. A search for 'article directories' in any search engine will give you lots of places to start.

8. Add an Article page to your website: Post all of your articles on this page and any others you find related to your niche. Having an article page will add content to your website and will help with your page rank. Search engines like Google and Yahoo love websites with lots of relevant content.

9. Join an Online Forum: Becoming a member in a forum is a great way to stay current with the products in your niche. Talking with fellow entrepreneurs will keep you motivated and help generate new ideas as well as answer all your questions.

What You Need To Know About Googles new AdWords Affiliate Policy

By: Ye7ia

A lot of affiliates are selling other people's products with AdWords. This has been known as easy money, since no website is required. All you need is a ClickBank ID and you have over 10.000 products to offer your visitors.

When Google changed the affiliate policy in January, many affiliates saw their future AdWords income vanish up in smoke. Simply because they didn't know how to build a web page, or a Landing page.

Webmasters and others with HTML skills said this was a great thing, because now they "got rid of" a lot of competition.

And this is correct.

Since Google now accept only one ad from a top domain, you really have only 2 options:
Start creating your own landing pages
Hope your ads have the best CTR, so Google choose your ad instead of all the others selling the same product.

What about those landing pages?

Tests I have been doing shows that in some cases only 50% of the visitors click on to the sales page. This actually means that you have to send twice as much visitors as before to make the same amount of sales!

What should a good landing page look like?

At least it has to list all the benefits for the product you are promoting. You should consider collecting the email-address from the visitor before he or she moves on. In that case you can send them follow-up emails.

But, the most effective technique I have found is to offer your visitors a bonus if they buy the product through your link. Simply tell them to send you an email after they have made the purchase and that you will send them the download-link as soon as you have confirmed the purchase.

For best results, your bonus should be something related to your product.

Since you probably are not able to have a 100% CTR from your Landing page to your sales page, here are a couple of things you should consider:
Don't sell products that pay less than $20 commission.
Turn off "Content Network" in your campaign settings.

When you have to send more visitors to your landing page, you cannot afford to buy low-targeted traffic.

Happy AdWording!

Successful Affiliate Marketing

By: Rodney Brooks

?Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.? -- Albert Einstein

Allow me to emphasize again that in any business endeavor, it is of the utmost importance that you take the time necessary to prepare yourself first. Then, take action. Success in business is achievable through preparation, action and persistence in offering real value to your customer. By preparing and educating yourself first, you will already be well on your way to becoming successful in affiliate marketing.

The Desire to become the best at what you do in your chosen business endeavor, is but one of the keys to real success. There are many. But, you should know that achieving true success in any business, requires that you consistently bring something of value to your customer.

Mr. Einstein summed it up very well when he commented on becoming a man of success. Success in affiliate marketing, equals consistent value. Period, paragraph, end of story.

In one of my previous articles, I discussed the importance of building a powerful brand name. Powerful brand name recognition is dependent upon the amount of value you consistently bring to the most people.

Think again for a moment about the people you value most in life. Aren?t they people who deliver something you value? They have skills, knowledge, or personal characteristics that add to the quality of your life. Their ?brands? or reputations carry a promise.

As was mentioned before, the individuals who are most successful in the world today, are those who offer the greatest value to the most people ? just as those products and services with the strongest brands are the ones that offer us the greatest value.

To be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to bring something of value to the lives of others. The best way to bring real value to others, is by standing for or promoting something that you are passionate about. One of the biggest mistakes that almost all affiliates make when they are first starting out, is that they try to promote too many things at once. You should choose one or two products or services that are most exiting to you. Things that you are passionate about. Things that youhave some knowledge of. You?d be surprised at how many people would pay you for knowledge you have on a particular subject or service or skill.

As you promote your product or service, you should always try to interject and incorporate into your advertising, as much of your own knowledge and wit as possible. Remember, you are unique. Like afingerprint. No one can say it quite like you can.

Think about this. If you market something you are passionate about, then basically, you are no longer marketing. You?re just giving valuable advice on a subject you know and love. If a person fails or refuses to take your advice at the time, then there really is no loss. All you?ve done, was to give some quality advice. You should move on and continue advising /marketing your product(s) to others. But understand this, because of the quality and value of the advice you gave them in the first place, they will more than likely, return to you, for more.

One up and coming internet marketer by the name of Anik Singal,has created very powerful brand-name recognition in a relatively short period of time. If you don?t know about him yet, you should get to know him soon, as he is an excellent person to model after in terms of offering something of great value to the most people. Anik recently launched a training program called Affiliate Classroom that was already highly anticipated in the internet marketing community before it even launched, and has since grown to over 28,000 loyal followers. In fact, Top Internet Marketers are saying about the Affiliate Classroom that, ?There?s so much valuable information in here that?s absolutely gold!?

Anik, and his pet project, Affiliate Classroom, have built a powerfulbrand-name. It was done by simply offering something of great value, in this case, affiliate marketing training and guidance of extremely high quality, and by consistently delivering on that ?promise? of giving others what they want and need.

This is what is meant by becoming a man or person of value. By giving valuable, sound, usable advice, you quickly become a personthat others will return to. You begin to build brand name recognition.People will notice the effect your quality advice has on their lives. Your knowledge, your passion, has now become valuable to them.

?He who does not know how to serve, cannot know how to command.? --Unknown

Until next time, I wish you much success.

Promote Affiliate Programs Through Your Own Google Adwords Campaign

By: Maxine Hough

Did you know that Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least an astounding $8 billion by the year 2008? Pay per click though still unfamiliar to many, will be around for a very long time. One of the search engine giants to capture a lion's share of this market is Google through its Google Adwords service. A few ebooks like Google Cash and The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords provide basic and advance knowledge on releasing the incredible power of pay per click campaigns especially as this applies to businesses and affiliates around the world. Big businesses are still the largest group to benefit from incorporating pay per click in their advertising budgets but, home-based businesses and affiliate program promoters can benefit too if they understand how to use this tool.

Pay per click search engines provide a way for you to basically buy your way to the top of search results for any keyword you wish. Pay per click advertising works thru a bidding process, and your ads appear in the results pages of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves. With Google Adwords you bid on the keywords you want to focus your ad on. For example if someone were searching on "gourmet coffee", if you're the highest bidder for "gourmet coffee" you receive top placement for that phrase and depending on the search engine, the top 3-5 bidders for that phrase also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.

With Google Adwords the "ad campaign" is everything. When you sign up with Google Adwords you have unlimited campaigns at your disposal. I enjoy promoting affiliate programs and in the past I spent a lot of time deciding which keywords I would bid on to attract buyers to my affiliate programs. The only tool I use right now is Ad Word Analyzer which saves tremendously on time and gives me an overview of my keyword and/or keyword phrase as it was searched on the top two pay per click search engines Google and Overture ( now called Yahoo Search Marketing ).

Now that you've done your research and you've collected your keywords and/or keyword phrases, you'll need to open an Adwords account.

1. To do this go to https://adwords.google.com/ . There is a one time sign up fee of $5 and your username and password are emailed to you.

2. Now you can log into the system and select "create a new campaign". Give your campaign a name that will also allow you to create multiple campaigns.

3. Before creating your first ad, I recommend that you print out Google's set of guidelines, ebooks such as Google Cash cover this area as well. Since most of you are probably promoting affiliate programs, it's important that you notify Google of this by simply adding "aff" at the end of your ad text.

A few tips to keep in mind:

a. To keep your ad targeted, make sure your keyword or keyword phrase is in the headline.

b. Put your keyword or keyword phrase in the text of your ad.

c. In promoting your affiliate program, make sure you're linked directly to the owner's website thru your affiliate link so that you'll get the credit and the cash!

Now you can submit your ad and start tracking your campaign over the next few days. If you're not happy with your ad's performance you can make changes such as targeting other keywords or increasing your bid a little at a time. Adwords is flexible in allowing you to make changes within Google guidelines of course, to make your ad campaigns successful.

Pay per click is here to stay and it offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching your targeted audience. With the proper management and a clear vision, pay per click specifically Google Adwords, can provide you with well targeted and economical advertising on the internet.

As mentioned earlier pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008, with Google Adwords, the right resources and a little effort on your part, you can also benefit from this increase and find yourself with a significant supplemental income each month or a fulltime "leave my 9-5 job" income. The sky is truly the limit with pay per click.

New Google Adwords Policy Benefits Affiliates

By: Rosalind Gardner

Until recently, if you did a search on the term 'satellite dish' at Google, and then surveyed the URL's in the Adwords listings, you were bound to see that most of the ads linked to just one company. You'd also note that most listings ended with the 'aff' (affiliate site) designation.

Eight ads all linking to the same site. How useless and frustrating was that?

Well, Google has just introduced a new affiliates Adwords policy that finally addresses that problem.

However, the new policy has been met with much whining on various affiliate and Internet marketing forums.

Why?

'Cause affiliates who link directly from Adwords to their merchant partners' sites will have to get to work or go home.

Well, maybe.

There seems to be a loophole in the new policy's wording.

Here's how the new affiliate policy reads:

"With this new affiliate policy, we'll only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL. This way, users will have a more diverse sampling of advertisements to choose from."

"Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site."

Did they mean to say 'domain', not 'URL'?

If Google did indeed intend 'URL', then there is no problem for those who engage in the 'Google Cash' method of affiliate marketing, as each affiliate URL is unique.

Here's an example.

These are URL's for 3 affiliate marketers promoting the 'FriendFinder' dating service.
http://friendfinder.com/go/p1234
http://friendfinder.com/go/p5869
http://friendfinder.com/go/p3468

Each URL is unique, ergo it should be no problem to for affiliates to link directly to Friendfinder's site with their affiliate links.

However, if in fact Google meant 'domain', that's quite a different kettle of fish.

Because each URL above points to the ' friendfinder.com ' domain, only one listing will be displayed, and chosen on the basis of Ad Rank.

Here's the official wording from within the policy.

"For instance, if a user searches for books on Google.com or anywhere on the Google search and content networks, Google will take an inventory of ads running for the keyword books. If we find that two or more ads compete under the same URL, we'll display the ad with the highest Ad Rank."

Ad Rank is determined by a combination of an ad's maximum cost-per-click and clickthrough rate.

Less competition is great news for affiliates who have always linked back to their own sites... as Super Affiliates always do.

One more benefit to affiliate marketers in Google's new Adwords policy is that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. That means no more 'aff' at the end of the ad... and 4 more spaces to add content to your listing.

I figure consumers had no idea what 'aff' meant anyway, so Google just wanted to get rid of what looked like garble in the listings.

However, your current ad text will continue to display your affiliate status until you change it.

Assuming Google DID mean 'domain', this new policy is good news for affiliates... genuine affiliate marketers.

I've always taught that affiliates with content sites enjoy much higher conversion rates.

It's simple. Spend an hour writing an endorsement, upload it to your web site, then advertise that link on Google Adwords.

Why waste advertising dollars on a .5 percent conversion, when it only takes an hour to double or even quadruple that rate?

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

5 Things You Must Have to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

By: Steven Gautreaux

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 ? 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 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 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 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 affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. Never having to say die is a quality each and every affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an 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 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 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.

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.

Affiliate Marketers Will Never Make a Dime Using Google Adwords

By: Ye7ia

Most people start off their affiliate marketing business by getting traffic from google adwords. I know, because that?s how I started. If your anything like me, you purchased Google Cash or another pay per click ebook and you set up your first campaign. Latter on after many campaigns you found out that it was a lot harder than you originally thought.

Here?s why! Pay per click advertising works well for businesses that can count on repeat business. As an affiliate you usually don?t have that luxury. Your relying on one purchase per customer and then you?ll probably never see that customer again. A good E-business on the other hand knows that with every person that becomes a customer they can rely on x number of purchases from that customer. This also allows them to bid significantly higher than affiliates because they can make their profits from the back-end.. A business that can rely on a minimum of four purchases per customer for example, can burn up their profits on the first and second purchases and still make profits on the third and fourth purchase.

The last reason affiliates have a hard time is because conversion rates for a typical pay per click campaign average less than 1%. Its hard to make a profit with that kind of conversion rate. I?m not saying its impossible, but affiliate marketers utilizing pay per click advertising for their traffic are definitely fighting an uphill battle.

Affiliate Marketing How To Smash The Glass Ceiling

By: Ye7ia

Most affiliate marketers unconsciously create an invisible ?glass ceiling? that curtails the growth of their own affiliate business. They do this by failing to create a substantial, positive profile on the Internet.

Are you reluctant to ?stand out from the crowd?? Do you feel more comfortable being invisible on the Internet?

Most people experience a natural reticence to be ?out there?, to ?stand up and be counted?. How often are the front rows of a course or meeting left vacant because most people would rather be invisible up the back!

The same is true on the Internet, particularly with affiliate marketers. The noun ?affiliate? means ?connected as a part or an associate of??, and the verb ?affiliate? means ?to connect to? or ?join oneself to?. It does not, however, mean ?lose oneself in??

When you join an affiliate program, there is a tendency to lose your own personality in the ?personality? of the program and its owner. Yet the really successful affiliate marketers are those who are able to place their own unique identity on what they do. They stand out by being themselves, showing who they are and what they have to offer.

Think about your last visit to an affiliate program forum. The people who most likely left an impression on you were those who showed a strong sense of humour, an uncanny insight or a way of viewing the world positively and energetically. These people leave their mark and their impression. Their forum postings are like ?footprints in the sand? ? they are not afraid to be different, to let their personalities shine through.

If you are going to develop a distinctive profile, you need to understand your own strengths and capacities. Your distinctiveness as an affiliate marketer derives from your unique life history and skill set. You need to find an affiliate program that will build on these strengths and enable you to realize your potential.

The real challenge for you as an affiliate marketer is to find an affiliate offering that draws on your unique knowledge, skills and competencies. You need an affiliate program that enables YOU to ?shine?!

What ?image? or ?Internet profile? are you trying to create? Are you able to be yourself through your affiliate program? Or are you being an extension of someone else?

You need to find an affiliate offering that aligns with your desired profile and your unique competencies. This is the way to create an affiliate business, not just affiliate cheques.

To achieve this, you have to develop yourself. You will need to progressively develop self-awareness, the capacity to overcome fear of visibility and a willingness to continuously review what you are doing. A real synergy will emerge as you learn to integrate your affiliate offering, your profile and your competencies.

You will find that you will break through the glass ceiling as you make a real statement about who you are, what you value and what you have to offer. You will make a real difference because you can ?add value? to your affiliate offering in a unique way. This is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing With The New Adwords Rules

By: Ye7ia

Are you an affiliate marketer who is concerned about the recent Adwords changes that have threatened to pull the rug from under you? Here is a short note about life of an affiliate marketer under the new Adwords regime.

Before the new rules were announced, many affiliate marketers were posting ads on Adwords which took the prospect directly to the merchant?s site. They completely depended on the merchant to get the sale. Now the prospect would become the customer of the merchant, if he bought something from him. However the advertiser has completely lost contact with this person except for getting the credit for the 1 sale that he referred.

The super affiliate did not operate this way. He would advertise on Adwords for sure but send the prospect to a landing page on his own site where he will pre-sell the prospect. This means that he will provide relevant information about the product, an honest review, even mention some shortcomings (if he knows about something), offer tutorials or screen-shots and like. Then he will offer some free gift in return for the prospect?s email address for further follow up. From the thank you page here, he will refer the prospect to the merchant?s sales page.

This way even if the prospect will not buy anything from the merchant, the affiliate does not lose him completely. He can regularly follow up with relevant information and send solicitations for other products for long term profits.

This is the way of the masters and if you are following this path, you will end up doing much more work. However there are rich rewards for reaping. The excellent Make Your Content Pre-sell guide ( http://www.ebizindia.com/mycps.php ) discusses this concept in great details and is a must-have for any serious affiliate marketer.

This type of affiliates will be absolutely untouched by the new Adwords guidelines. However if you have been sending your prospects directly to the merchant, it is high time you made a move. Shift all your campaigns to a landing page on your site and you have no worries.

As a bonus, you even get to eliminate the Aff. or affiliate identification you had to put on every ad, which was a big stumbling block in the sale process.

Best of success for your Adwords campaign in the new era!

Explode Your Google Adsense and Affiliate Commissions Through Niche Blog Content Sites

By: Cory Threlfall

Content as we know it is the Life-Blood or FUEL, if you will, of the Internet.

That was and still is the Internets sole purpose, except only now it's commercialized, giving the online entrepreneur the world at their fingers tips.

And the facts are that usually when people first come online it's not to go purchase something, it's to look for Information that will answer a question they might have about a particular product they're interested in and/or to a problem they are dealing with and are searching for a solution.

Ask yourself this, "Why do I go online?"

Does it resemble anything like what I just stated?

Only you can answer that.

These are simply the facts with out a doubt... Period!

Now that you have an idea of WHY people come online, I'm now going to explain to you how you can...

"Explode Your Google Adsense and Affiliate Commissions Through Niche Blog Content Sites"

Did you notice the last two words within the quotations?

That's right, Content Sites.

What are Content Sites?

I think it's pretty self explanatory but the basic definition of a Content Site is this - it's a site that contains targeted content that targets a particular niche or many niches.(niche examples: cars, fitness, hobbies, etc.)

Not quite up to speed on what a blog is, here's a quick definition of a blog - a blog(A.K.A. Web-Log) is simply a place to go and post your personal thoughts that you can share with your subscribers and/or readership and receive feedback.

Now that you know the basic definitions of a Content Site and a Blog lets continue.

Content Sites can contain Hundreds-to-Thousands of pages of keyword rich content, which by the way is exactly what the Search Engines love and will come back for if New content is added on a frequent basis giving the owner of that site lots of opportunity to benefit from the Free traffic inwhich the content pages, or what I like to call Feeder Pages, generate.

So, now that you have an idea of what a Content Site and a Blog is it's now time to tell you how you can build your own Niche Blog Content Site Empire, no matter what your niche is, using Blogs, Google Adsense and ClickBank affiliate products.

Bare in mind that the steps outlined below are only going to be a summarization of the actual process involved.

So, with that said, here it is.

Step #1. Set up a Blog.

The first step is quite simple. All you have to do is set up a Blog either through...

Blogger.com - http://www.blogger.com

or...

Wordpress.org - http://www.wordpress.org

This blog your setting up is going to be the foundation of your Niche Blog Content Site and is where the rest of the pieces of the puzzle are going to be added to once you've set it up.

(Quick Tip: Make sure you use your Target Keywords within your URL of your niche blog and in the Title and Description. VERY Important!)

Once you have your niche blog set up move on to Step #2.

Step #2. Adding your Google Adsense code.

Depending on your experience with scripting and html, it's now time to add your Google Adsense code to your new niche blog in 3 strategic places.

Google allows you to add 3 Google Adsense blocks only to one page, no more than that, so I recommend one at the Top, one in the Right or Left sidebar depending on the template you choose and one at the Bottom of your blog.

By doing this your almost forcing your reader to click on a link within the Google Adsense block, which is of course, is exactly what you want and where your going to make the money.

The other great thing about Google Adsense is the ads are targeted to the content that you post, giving the reader even more reason to click through.

Here's a few resources for you that will show you how to add the Google Adsense code to your blog using the services I mentioned above if your not sure how to yourself.

Blogger.com: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=964

Wordpress.org: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

Simply follow the instructions and you'll have Google Adsense installed on your niche blog in no time.

Step #3. Find a related ClickBank product.

Now it's time to go shopping at ClickBank.com - http://www.clickbank.com - for a related information product that targets your niche.

Once there click on the link Earn Commissions at the bottom.

This will bring to to their directory where you'll find many products to choose from that will target any niche your blog is about.

(Quick Tip: The first 10 listed under each category are the TOP converting programs, meaning... their the ones making the most money.)

If you don't have a ClickBank.com nickname you'll have to sign up for one. It'll only take you a few minutes.

From there, once you've chosen a program to join your going to want to collect all the affiliate materials available, like Articles, Banners, Text Links, etc., because your going to place these on your NEW niche blog site with your affiliate link linked to them so when your reader clicks on them and decides to buy the related information, you get the commission.

Well... there you have it, 3 steps to "Explode Your Google Adsense and Affiliate Commissions Through Niche Blog Content Sites".

Now the only thing left for you to do is to start building an audience by promoting your Blog.

Here's a few resources for you to get started with.

Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com

RSS Top 55 - http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Remember this is just a summarized version and is only going to give you the basic steps, so good luck to you and your Niche Blog Content Site Empire.

Copyright 2006 The IWE, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Ten Tips for Affiliate Marketers Using Google AdWords

By: Ye7ia

One of the hottest ways to sell affiliate products is using Google AdWords. Follow these tips and strategies to maximize your earning potential.

1. Seek out affiliate products that generate fifteen dollars or more in commission. Anything in the twenty-dollar range works well. Paying for clicks can add up quickly and when you do make a sell, it should be profitable.

2. The vendor must present a high quality website with first-rate graphics. If the site appears to be unprofessional, any potential buyer will loose confidence and leave before the sell is made.

3. Make it a requirement that the vendor website only displays one product or service on the referral page. Nothing kills a sell faster than having to many sells messages.

4. The vendor needs to include outstanding sales copy. It's easy to realize the importance of this principle; words are what turn shoppers into buyers on the Internet.

5. When evaluating a potential affiliate program ask yourself if this product or service is something you would feel comfortable buying. Put yourself in the place of the buyer. If you wouldn't buy it, why would they?

6. It's preferable if the vendor site does not obviously advertise for the recruitment of more affiliates. An affiliate link is fine as long as it is low key.

7. The best affiliate programs will attempt to secure the email address of your referrals. Some prospects need to see a sales message at least seven times before they will buy. Make sure you still get credit for sales made during the follow up.

8. The vendor should provide testimonials. Testimonials create confidence and trust leading your prospects to make a purchase.

9. You will recognize a profitable affiliate program because at least one in fifty clicks creates a sell. Constantly monitor your expense versus profit for each set of keywords.

10. Track your keywords and delete any that do not get clicked on after two hundred impressions. The higher your click through rate, the higher position you receive in relation to your competitors.