Is There an Affiliate กFree Lunchก Program?

Is There an Affiliate กFree Lunchก Program?

by: Glenn Beach

กEverything worthwhile has a cost… Whenever you think you are getting something for nothing, look again—someone, somewhere, somehow is paying for it. Behind every free lunch there is a hidden cost to be accounted for.ก Edwin G. Dolan

If you, or any of your business prospects, believe that time is money, then yes, the ‘there Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunchก principle DOES apply to your internet business. What you can’t invest in money, you will have to invest in time. You will have to be able to put the axe to the grind for more hours per day or week, and you will have to wait for more weeks and months before your ship comes in. Those are the facts.

If you are able to think outside the box (and few internet entrepreneurs CAN’t!) then the principle can be stretched a little. Are you balking at spending a few pennies a day to boost your sales? Do some research comparing what your marketing program offers and what the same services cost on the open market. Compare what information your program offers and what you can learn elsewhere. For example:

find some online business forums and search these topics: free advertising, phone followup techniques, sample followup letters, sample phone scripts.

investigate your and other affiliate marketing programs for all the above plus services and tools such as: prospect notification, contact manager, online forum, billing and revenue collection, gateway website, company resource center, free sales and marketing tools, affiliate training courses, successful team support, commission or compensation schedule. In other words, look at EVERYTHING that the program will give you for free.

research what you would have to pay for any or all of the above tools, hints, and services.

How does your affiliate program measure up? What do you get for free and therefore, what do you save? How much can you afford to invest based on these savings?

If you absolutely HAVE NO MONEY to invest, thatกs one thing. If you have a kneejerk reaction to investing in something that กsays itกs freeก, think again. What other business in the WORLD besides one on the internet can you begin for NOTHING? How many pennies a day can you AFFORD to invest in your business, maybe not now but as soon as possible?

If you have nothing, you can start and run a business. You will have to pay for it, however, with time. Free ads need to be worked every day. Free ads drop out of sight as new ads follow. You need to study your product till you know it inside and out, so all prospective affiliates can be led, encouraged, taught how they too can succeed. Since the name of the game is visibility amongst the billions of offers on the internet, you can’t afford to waste a single hardwon prospect.

Without any money to invest in advertising, this will be a long slow process. You will have to determine how YOU can best achieve sales and attract affiliates, because each personกs skills, style and dislikes are different.

You need to be internet savvy because all the information you require to succeed is out there, you just have to know how to find it. Study, seek your own answers, and know where and how to ask questions. You will win the game with patience and persistence.

About The Author

Glenn Beach is a proud member of Work at Home Team.

He is a selfemployed subcontractor and home entrepreneur at:

http://www.workathomebusinessopportunitycanada.com

email: [email protected]

This article was posted on March 06, 2004

by Glenn Beach

How to Build a 1,000Page Content Site in Mere Sec

How to Build a 1,000Page Content Site in Mere Seconds!

by: Rosalind Gardner

Building an affiliate web site that sells between 5 and 20 products is relatively quick and easy to accomplish.

An experienced webmaster can put a site like http://101Date.com, which has only 11 services, together in a day. Someone else might spend a week signing up for the programs, designing a template, and adding product information and affiliate links.

Spending a week or even a month on a site that delivers big rewards over the years is a relatively minor investment.

But how much time and effort is invested by affiliates who sell items like magazines, garden products, posters, tshirts or lingerie? Or, how difficult would it be to place links to music CDกs, or movie DVDกs on your site? Merchants in those categories typically carry hundreds or even thousands of items.

Sure, a MoJoSounds.com affiliate might want to promote only adventure movies, but his state of mind might be a ?horrorก by the time heกs input more than 500 descriptions, links and graphics!

If the same affiliate planned to let his visitors know about the latest and greatest discounts by listing prices, would he ever get any sleep?

Sure he would!

By using the MoJoSounds.com product datafeed, that affiliate could build a 500+ item site in less than an hour. He could even build a 10,000 item site in less than an hour!

So whatกs a product datafeed?

A product datafeed is a spreadsheet or text file which typically lists product names along with their categories and subcategories, descriptions, coded affiliate links, product graphic image URLกs, prices and even applicable keywords.

Affiliates can manipulate datafeeds in various ways to display content on their sites.

Those with programming knowledge may insert the feed into databases on their servers.

Other affiliates prefer to use dynamic website templates that some merchants offer. These templates are completely customizable and the resulting site automatically updates itself.

One company that offers a dynamic website template is ShareaSale merchant, Nature Hillกs Nursery. Shawn at Nature Hills sent me a zipped package containing their template files, and I discovered that setting up a dynamic template on my site was incredibly easy to do!

Using my HTML editor, Homesite 5.0, I simply added my affiliate I.D. to the config.pl file, and uploaded the files to the /NatureHills/ directory that I created at Rosalinds.com. The site then looked and worked exactly like it does at the URL below, but with my affiliate ID coded into the links for all 1295 products!

Nature Hillsก Template

http://www.naturehillsaffiliates.com/templatesite/index.php

After making a few design changes to the template, this is how it looks now at:

Rosalindกs Nature Hillกs site

http://rosalinds.com/NatureHills/

Unfortunately, dynamic templates generally work only on servers running PHP and MYSQL. However, affiliates whose hosts do not run PHP and MYSQL can still profit from product datafeeds by building static pages on their computer using Richard Gaskinกs WebMerge.

Here is a site that I built using a 593product datafeed from Candy Crate (another ShareaSale merchant), Webmerge, and the same template that I used for the Nature Hills site:

Rosalindกs Candy Crate Site

http://rosalinds.com/CandyCrate/

Iกm terrible at reading instructions, so Webmerge posed a bit of a challenge for me to use at first. However, after reading the tutorials, asking Richard a few questions, and spending some time on the Datafeeds forum at ABestWeb.com, the software was easy to figure out.

Now, with a site standard template and Webmerge files, I can build a 10, 20 or 30,000 product site in mere seconds with the push of a button.

An alternative to ?Webmergeกis Mark Hendricksก and Frank Sousaกs ?Secret Money Generatorก software. ?Secret Money Generatorก makes product datafeeds even easier to manipulate. SMG allows you to build thousands of content rich, search engine friendly, static web pages which come complete with graphics and order links with your affiliate IDs embedded in them all in just a few seconds!

So, to save time and make more sales, be on the lookout for merchants with product datafeeds. My daddy always said, ?Work smarter, not harderก, and affiliate marketing doesn’t get much smarter or easier than this.

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

New Google Adwords Policy Benefits Affiliates

New Google Adwords Policy Benefits Affiliates

by: Rosalind Gardner

Until recently, if you did a search on the term กsatellite dishก at Google, and then surveyed the URLกs in the Adwords listings, you were bound to see that most of the ads linked to just one company. Youกd also note that most listings ended with the กaffก (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?

กCause affiliates who link directly from Adwords to their merchant partnersก sites will have to get to work or go home.

Well, maybe.

There seems to be a loophole in the new policyกs wording.

Hereกs how the new affiliate policy reads:

กWith this new affiliate policy, weกll 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.ก

กAffiliates 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.ก

Did they mean to say กdomainก, not กURLก?

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

Hereกs an example.

These are URLกs for 3 affiliate marketers promoting the กFriendFinderก 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 Friendfinderกs site with their affiliate links.

However, if in fact Google meant กdomainก, thatกs quite a different kettle of fish.

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

Hereกs the official wording from within the policy.

กFor 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, weกll display the ad with the highest Ad Rank.ก

Ad Rank is determined by a combination of an adกs maximum costperclick 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 Googleกs new Adwords policy is that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. That means no more กaffก at the end of the ad… and 4 more spaces to add content to your listing.

I figure consumers had no idea what กaffก 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 กdomainก, this new policy is good news for affiliates… genuine affiliate marketers.

Iกve always taught that affiliates with content sites enjoy much higher conversion rates.

Itกs 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.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

Home Business Itกs for Free?

Home Business Itกs for Free?

by: Gert Ljungqvist

Most people realize that when you start a business offline it will cost money. But, when it comes to online business most people don’t want to pay anything to get started. The bottom line is you can’t start any business with out some costs. The difference between online and offline business are that online business can be done with a tight budget.
When you first start your online business there are some tools you must have. You must have an autoresponder, now you might wonder what is a autoresponder? This is a form of email where you store prewritten follow up sales letter, newsletter or articles depending of what your business are. These messages are sent out to your customer at time you decide.
There are free autoresponders and there are autoresponders that will charge you a monthly fee. The free autoresponder have less features. And some of the autoresponder will put ads in your follow up letters, and that is not an good idea for you. You don’t want others to promote there products or services in your letters where you are promoting your own product or service. Therefore a paid autoresponder is much better, there will only be your own promoting in it.
You have to build an optin list with customer, itกs here the autoresponder show its greatness. To get interested customer to your list you have to place an ad and from that ad you will have your customer to visit your web site. When the customer subscribed they end up in your autoresponder and will be send your prewritten follow up letters at time you set up.
There are lots of places where you can put your ad in.
Here are some examples:
Google Adword
Overture
There are more, just search the Internet.
There are also company where you can buy leads for your list. Some examples:
Cutting Edge Media
Lead Factory
For more just search the Internet.
When you buy leads this will go directly to your autoresponder they will not be directed to your web site, but thats okey you will have your link to your web site in your follow up letters.
Itกs also important to have a website, you use the web site to promote your business. Itกs in the web site you place your sales letter to convince your customer of your product or services greatness so they will subscribe to your list.
If you are involved in affiliate programs they will some times provide you with a web site, often you will have several web sites depending of there products. The problem with these web sites are that you can’t build your optin list.
You have probably heard that the success is in the list, and I have to agree. Itกs much easier to promote products or services whit customer in a list then try to get new customer all the time.
Optin list are a database where all of your customer are gathered when they subscribe to your list. Itกs from these list your autoresponder gets the email address to your customer.
So what I suggest you to do is to build your own web site and from this you promote your affiliate programs and let people subscribe for your prewritten follow up letters in your autoresponder.
If you don’t know how to build your own web site there are several on line that will help you with this, of course they will charge you but if you don’t know how, these will be well spent money.
There are also some business partners who will build your web site for free with ready to go affiliate programs as long as you join them with these affiliate programs. This is a good idea if you have none or little knowledge in Internet business, you will get started in a easy way, and some of them will also have stepbystep guides how to run your business.
How about affiliate programs are they free of charge? It depends on what product or service they are offering. For example if they offer a software product that can be used on web sites, they will almost certain charge you with a monthly fee, and that is understandable, if they don’t you could use it on your web site and promoting some one Elseกs product and get to use the software for free. There are also other reasons for a monthly fee, there are administrative costs, they may provide you with a web site and follow up letters and they have to track your sales so you get paid properly, won’t you agree that this is important.
So now you will understand that running an Home Business is not totally free of charge. But itกs much More affordable than an offline business. You don’t have to spend that much money to be successful.
I spend about 100 to 150 $ a month on advertising, autoresponder and affiliate fees. But thats me you can spend more or less it depends on your budget.
To your success.
Gert Ljungqvist

About The Author

Gert Ljungqvist publishes Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people like YOU! If you’re looking for home business opportunities then grab your own Free subscription today at: http://www.marketingbusinessteam.com/biztipspop.html
Get your Free stepbystep how to run your business ebook here: http://www.marketingbusinessteam.com/30daystosuccess.exe

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 09, 2004

by Gert Ljungqvist

Affiliate Program Basics

Affiliate Program Basics

by: Albert Hallado

Affiliate Program is a ground floor opportunity. All you have to do is send visitors to your affiliate web site by placing a textlink or banner on your website and receive a commission on each sale, without the complication and expense of selling anything yourself.

Instead, you earn a commission for producing a ransaction. Affiliate programs, also known as Referral Programs, Associate Programs, Profit Sharing Programs or Reseller programs, give affiliates the ability to create an online business selling thousands products and services.

One of the first affiliate programs was run by the mega bookstore, Amazon.com. They still have the largest base of affiliates on the net although they may not be the best affiliate program for many! with over 600,000 web sites being affiliated.

Affiliate programs are generally offered by sites selling goods or services, although some affiliate programs reward other types of transaction such as getting a visitor to sign up for a free newsletter, or a download.

Some affiliate programs pay per lead rather than per sale, in other words, you bring them a prospective customer and they pay a fixed กfinderกs feeก for the chance to market to that customer.

This is a typical arrangement for affiliate programs in the insurance, real estate and credit card industries, for example:

Types of Affiliate Programs

Pay per sale: If you refer a visitor to the online merchantกs site and if visitor makes a purchase you get a percentage of the sale as commission.

Pay per lead: You get paid a onetime fee for generating a lead for the merchant. Usually you get paid $2$5 if the visitor you referred fills out an application.

Pay per click: You get paid for every visitor you send to the online merchant regardless of any sale or purchase. Usually companies pay $0.05 $0.15 per click.

TwoTier: You get commission on direct sales you generate and also you get commission on sales generated by affiliates you recruited. Usually companies pay 25% commission for direct sales and 5% for sales generated by your affiliates.

Bounty: You get a onetime finderกs fee payment for the visitor you referred. You will not get commission on any future purchases that customer makes.

When you join an affiliate program, you will be given a specially formatted URL (Links) that you should use to link to the affiliate providerกs site.

This will enable the affiliate provider to monitor traffic to your site and pay according to the type of affiliate program.

The Benefit of an Affiliate Program

Is that you just need to drive traffic to your affiliate site. Write a few articles and provide a few links.

You don’t need to find or deal with brokers, wholesalers, inventory, process orders, shipping & handling, customer service, tech support, handle returns, warranties, employees, etc

An affiliate doesn’t even have to be present, your site will keep earning money while you’re sick, on vacation, or just doing something else.

Another advantage of being an affiliate, is that you do it from almost anywhere in the world..

How The System Works?

Many affiliate programs pay a commission based on a percentage of the revenue generated by purchases made by visitors coming from your website.

For example; if you’re participating in an affiliate program that offers a 25% commission and you

send a visitor who purchases US$100 worth of products, youกve just earned US$25 in commissions.

The commission rate itself can vary from 20% up to 50%+ in the case of intangible products such as eBooks or website subscriptions.

Affiliate programs vary widely in terms of overall quality, reliability, commission , statistics, the amount of help that the merchant site offers in marketing the products or services it sells, and so on.

By thoroughly understanding an affiliate program, youกll minimize the risk of not getting paid and maximize your potential earnings.

About The Author

Albert Hallado

Owner of netbizreview.com (Guide To Internet Based Business)Albert is known for interviewing online business experts and Helping Entrepreneurs Doing Business On The Internet

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 04, 2004

by Albert Hallado

How To Reverse Engineer Your Success

How To Reverse Engineer Your Success

by: Michael Southon

The best and fastest way to learn how to make money on the Internet is to buy the marketing books of successful web marketers. You can find a selection of marketing books at these sites:

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com

http://www.freezineweb.com/mktgbooks.html

http://www.freeebooks.net/

http://www.ebookdirectory.com/

But thereกs also another way: study their web sites and reverse engineer their success.

The great thing about the Internet is that everything is visible nothing is hidden. If itกs working for them, you can find out exactly how they’re doing it by studying their site.

Subscribe to their Newsletter and examine their Welcome Message.

Analyze their Newsletter and see exactly how they use it to generate income.

Sign up for their free autoresponder course and find out why it produces sales.

Check out which affiliate programs they promote.

Read their free eBooks and discover how they bring in new customers.

Here are some examples:

Recently I signed up for the Newsletter of someone who makes $130,000 a year just from affiliate programs. I wanted to see how he was doing it. What I noticed was that he doesn’t even try to sell the affiliate products he tells his readers how much he makes from those programs. Naturally, they join (through his link). The result? He has an army of subaffiliates who do the selling for him.

In another Ezine I recently saw a 40 word ad that interested me. I clicked on the link, and instead of taking me to the home page of the product, it took me straight to the order form. Very clever, and very effective.

A few weeks ago I subscribed to a free autoresponder course 12 daily web marketing lessons. Many people never finish these free courses. They unsubscribe half way through.

But this marketer made sure that people finished his course he announced in the first lesson that the 12th lesson contained the download link for a very useful free eBook that I wanted. Naturally, I stayed with it till the last lesson.

Last week I signed up for a marketing guruกs 15day free autoresponder course and I was amazed to see how easily it had been put together. Each module was simply a freelyavailable article by a recognized web marketing expert, with a sprinkling of affiliate links.

To sum up, when you visit the website of a marketing expert, pay close attention to everything you see. Ask yourself กWhy is s/he doing that?ก. Everything is there for a reason.

If you make this a habit youกll quickly learn the art of making money on the Internet.

© 2001 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezinewriter.com

This article was posted on August 30, 2002

by Michael Southon

Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Basics of Affiliate Marketing

by: Matt Bacak

Whether you realize it or not, if youกve been on the Internet today, you have encountered affiliate marketing. If you have ever ขclicked thruข 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 Powellกs. 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, itกs 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 ขclick thruข 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. Itกs popular because it makes tracking affiliatereferred sales so convenient, without negatively impacting your site. This system writes a small text file, called a ขcookie,ข to a userกs browser when they click on an affiliate link. When you are the referring affiliate, the cookie holds your ID, so that at the merchantกs 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 winwin scenario. Itกs an easy way to offer your customers more of what they want, while you benefit, both in terms of building goodwill and making money.

About The Author

Matt Bacak became ก#1 Best Selling Authorก in just a few short hours.

Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBiz radio show host is

turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.

Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com

This article was posted on September 06

by Matt Bacak

Earn Money From Your WebSite With Affiliate Links

Earn Money From Your WebSite With Affiliate Links

by: Knut Holt

If you have a website with some traffic, you can make money by having links to merchantsก online shops on your site.If someone goes through your links into the shop of the merchant, and buys something, you earn commission from the sale, between 5% and 40% depending on type of merchant. Some merchants also pay for each click or each lead. A lead is a new visitor to the shop that asks for more information or prize offers.

People or companies having these links on their websites, are called affiliates, and the links are called affiliate links. The administrative infrastructure by the merchant that the affiliate register into, in order to get the linking code, is called an affiliate program.

To register into an affiliate program is usually free, and through the program you get freely all you need to make the linking code, to monitor the traffic through your links, and to see what commission you have earned.

An affiliate program is not a MLM program, since the affiliates only earn from sales, leads or clicks.

However, in many programs you can recruit other affiliates and earn some commission from the sales made by the recruited affiliates too.

There are also common networks operated by thirdpart companies where several merchants use a common software and administrative infrastructure to recruit affiliates and monitor the traffic from affiliates. These are called affiliate networks. Both the merchants and potetial affilliates register into the network, and the affiliates can find links to the online shops of hundreds of merchants to use at their website. Examples of affiliate networks are Commission Junction and Clixgalore.

From my experience, the best affiliate programs are for merchants selling althernative health items or items for erotic improvements. I also have good experience with programs in the fields skincare, cosmetics and hobby.

What will work best for you, will however depend upon the kind of traffic you have, and the interests of people visiting your site.

About The Author

Submitted by Knut Holt

http://www.panteraconsulting.com/salg2.htm

http://www.abicana.com/affiliatenetworks.htm

Knut Holt is an international internet marketer with a focus on health items.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 07

by Knut Holt

Color Me Blue

Color Me Blue

by: Rosalind Gardner

Chris, a new consulting client, asked me to help him increase sales on his affiliate marketing site.

As he was describing his site and the problem, I thought, ‘this is going to be a quick fix.ก

How wrong I was!

His site was excellent. Other than a few minor points, it followed all my basic rules for a successful affiliate marketing site.

The site was focused around a single theme in a profitable niche, with an excellent selection of highpriced, highcommission products.

Chris had gone the extra mile to have his site professionally designed, and it was simple, elegant and userfriendly, employing consistent navigation and a nifty databasedriven search results system.

He was working directly with his merchant partners to create ad copy that offered his visitors the best possible deals.

And he was advertising in the payperclick search engines to drive tons of targeted traffic, and using hundreds of keyword listings with brilliantly worded titles and descriptions.

So, why on earth were his sales so low?

I knew I was picking at straws, but during our first session, I made a host of recommendations for improvement, which included:

a domain name change

a background color change

reformatting the page table size

rephrasing offers more positively

adding relevant graphics and photos

dropping poor performing merchants

adding a newsletter

adding new products

redirecting nonbuyers to additional offers

Chris implemented all my suggestions as well as a few of his own. After giving the new version a few weeks to prove itself, we scheduled our second teleconsulting session. I was anxious to hear how well the site was now performing.

You can appreciate my dismay when Chris told me that his sales had actually dropped!

Aargh!

I reviewed his site again, and it suddenly struck me… he should try blue links!

Why?

Because web design convention suggests that links should be blue, visited links purple and active links red. Although nothing written in stone about link color, I believe that those conventional colors should used whenever they compliment site design.

Iกd changed my own site links, SageHearts.com, from maroon to blue sometime before and noticed a nice conversion rate increase.

Sure enough, that WAS the answer to Chrisก site problems…

His conversions increased 1100% almost overnight JUST by changing his link color to blue.

In addition to being underlined, people expect links to be blue, and in some cases visitors may have problems with sites that don’t conform to their expectations.

With the average site visit lasting only about 8 seconds, we don’t have time to waste confusing our visitors with basic site navigation. Use blue links if possible to keep your navigation instantly recognizable, unambiguous and consistent.

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

by: John McLaren

I still remember thinking that promoting Affiliate Programs was a waste of time. Until I started making a small fortune.

At the end of 2004, I started some time exploring the concept of promoting affiliate programs through payperclick search engines. I knew of some Internet Marketing gurus who were claiming you could make thousands of dollars every month. But I was skeptical. I remember thinking, ขI know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.ข

But I decided that at least it was worth a look. The concept is quite simple. Choose a product – and one that has an affiliate program, of course. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

So I looked. And thought about it. And looked some more. I was still very uncertain about the whole concept, but I finally decided to test for myself whether it could really work. And since I knew I’d be spending quite a bit of money on advertising clicks, I felt it was well worth investing in a book so I could learn from more experienced marketers how to maximize the profitability of my campaigns.

As my business grew over several weeks I purchased and read several ebooks. By far the best I read was Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash ( http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq ). His approach is genuine, downtoearth, and he explains very clearly how to build your own affiliate marketing business. And importantly, he makes a fortune doing what he explains in the book.

I started by testing 2030 campaigns on various products. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I expected that from what I had been reading. I would test a product, and if it didn’t work, I would drop it quickly. The key with this business is identifying the affiliate products and campaigns that are successful. Once you find one that works, the money starts rolling in.

By February of 2005 I had identified several campaigns that were turning a profit. With one of these I was spending $0.08 per click to promote an affiliate product that pays me $18 commission on each sale. Approximately 1 visitor in 100 buys the product, so I make around $10 profit for every 100 visitors that I send.

What a formula! For every 1,000 visitors, that’s $180 in commissions. That might not seem like all that much, but remember once you have a successful campaign it keeps going all day, every day. If you send just 1,000 visitors to a program like this every day, then by the end of the month you will have earned $5,400 in commissions, of which $3,000 is profit.

Does it seem too simple? Well, if it was so easy everyone from your Aunt Mabel to the mailman would be doing it. In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably does take some work. Since I can’t possibly teach you all you need to know in one article, Iกll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

Choose Your Product Wisely. The program should pay a commission of $15 or more, otherwise it won’t be worth paying for your clicks. And if the commission is very high, be careful. Some products like web hosting and satellite dish installations may pay commissions of $100, but you face intense competition from other affiliates, so the price you need to pay to get ad exposure and clicks will probably also be very high. Sometimes it is better to identify a niche product with less competition from other affiliates.

Track Your Campaigns Carefully. If you’re paying around 7 or 8 cents per click for a program that pays close to $20 commission, you need to make at least one sale for every 250 visitors. If you send 300 to 400 visitors with no sale, consider dropping it.

Days Of The Week Do Matter. When testing campaigns keep in mind the day of the week and even the time of day. Some products sell better on Mondays through Fridays, during business hours. Others, like entertainment products, sell better in the evenings and on weekends.

Getting back to my own experience, after identifying several campaigns that ‘worked’, I spent some time finetuning them using techniques I read about in Google Cash. By the end of February I had earned $27,817 in commissions for the month, all on products I had never even heard of at the end of 2004. My profit was a neat $10,795.

It’s incredible really. I made this money without a web site. From home. Working an average of just an hour or two a day.

I’m finally making the amount of money online that I dreamed about.

How about you? Would you also like to build an affiliate marketing business? Could you use some additional income? I encourage you to proceed, but be smart about it. There are risks involved and you should be aware of them. You should read Chris Carpenter’s book. That way you’ll be on a fast track to more profitable campaigns. And his book will save you hundreds of dollars, easily, as you avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls.

Good Marketing!

About The Author

John McLaren has worked for many years selling IT consulting services. Now he works from home, just a few hours each day, building his highly successful affiliate marketing business. For more professional advice, he recommends the book, Google Cash, available at: http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq.

This article was posted on March 26

by John McLaren

Affiliate Income Optimization

Affiliate Income Optimization

by: Sean Burns

In my time researching the search engines, Iกve noticed something rather strange. Literally millions of searches are made each month for กbrand namesก and actual site names. For example, on Overture alone, last month, there were millions of queries made for the term กinternet explorerก. Having been on the internet for around seven years (running sites for over five), Iกve naturally assumed that people use it the same way I do. So, I know that internet explorer is a Microsoft product so I just type http://www.microsoft.com into my browser.

Apparently, thatกs not what everyone does. Here are some other examples from Overture: eBay over 7 million searches, Google over 9 million searches, Amazon Over 800 thousand searches (OK, lots will be for the river or the forest but still …), PayPal over 340 thousand searches and so on. Considering that Overture has only about 5% of the search engine market, you can see that there are millions and millions of people who actually use search engines to find sites when they could just type the name in their browser and slap a .com on the end.

Now, on to the good stuff. Of those companies that I mentioned, all but Google have an affiliate program. For example, PayPal pays $5.00 for every person who signs up. 340 000 x $5.00= $1 700 000. Interesting!

So, what can we do to make the most of this opportunity? Well, itกs easier than you would think. Obviously, trying to get traffic from people searching for eBay or PayPal would be very difficult but there are literally thousands of other companies that people search for. For example, I just checked the three best known British sports betting companies about 20 000 searches are made each month on Overture for these companies.

I have noticed that without any effort whatsoever, I am actually getting a lot of traffic from people searching for company names and script names. This is because they are listed in my Affiliate and Script directories. An example of the process is people search for a particular merchant, come to my affiliate directory and click on the link to get to the merchant. Therefore, even though they have no interest in the affiliate program, Iกm making money just by linking to merchants whoกs content is completely unrelated to mine.

Remember, this is without even trying. When I do try, Iกm getting even more traffic. For example, I have a review of the FastClick ad network on my site. I get 10+ visitors each day from people searching for phrases that include the word fastclick. Thatกs 300+ visitors per month, 15 000 per year. As you could imagine, due to the fact that FastClick pay a lifetime 5% commission on referred earnings, this is quite lucrative.

So, what do you need to do? Well, you probably already use affiliate programs in some form on your site either as a major source of revenue or to make กbackendก sales. I went for years just linking to them with banners, buttons and text links. The odd short recommendation here and there proved to be the best way to get the most out of them.

The problem, from a search engine perspective, is that just linking to them from your site will generally not get your page up high in the search engine rankings. A link to merchant กAcme Corp.ก just blends in to the text on your page and is assigned no real relevance. Therefore, you should put up an individual page on your site for each merchant that you are an affiliate of. This page could just be a review of the products or services that they offer.

Just the fact that you have a content rich page about a specific merchant will almost automatically get you traffic from the search engines (once you are listed). The main point is กcontent richก. Also, write it yourself, do not copy content from the merchants site. Why? Well, even if they let you copy their content (lots do), Google has ways of finding duplicate content. In fact, they will usually ban the page that they believe is less important if two have the same information on them. So, write it yourself.

Remember that if the merchant sells products that have gained recognition from the public, make sure you list their products.

If you already have a successful site, the search engines will actually view your ‘reviewก of a merchant as being important and it is no harder to get that page in to the top 10 listings than it is for any other page on your site.

Often, the difference between doing well and being truly successful online is just the ability to grab opportunities when they appear. You could find that spending just 10 minutes to set up a couple of new pages on your site could actually result in thousands of dollars in extra income each year.

Remember, there are close to 600 million queries made on search engines each day this is an opportunity! Don’t let it pass you by.

About The Author

Sean Burns is the author of the eBook Rankings Revealed which gives you a step by step guide to obtaining top 10 rankings on the major search engines http://www.webmastersreference.com/rankings_revealed

This article was posted on April 12, 2003

by Sean Burns

Become An Affiliate Champion: 10 Tips

Become An Affiliate Champion: 10 Tips

by: Henry Ochoa

Affiliates programs are one of the easiest ways to make money in the internet. Small fortunes have been made for smart people who have taken advantage of this powerful marketing technique.

This tips intend to help you on your way to become a highearning affiliate champion, use it as a guideline to your success. Feel free to contact me if you need further information.

First thing first: Target your market. If you try to sell everything to everyone, you will sell nothing.

Choose the right program. Everyday you would find hundreds of new กgetrichquickก programs on the net. Avoid them! Before joining any program, do some research. Trust only programs that have been consistently paying their affiliates

Join one program at a time, stick to it. Avoid distractions joining several programs at the same time. Stay focused on the best program chosen.

Promote, promote, promote!. I cant empathize enough. Promotion is the lifeblood of your programกs success. Focus on marketing and nothing else. One easy way to promote is by joining a traffic exchange program, like traffic swarm.

Write your own classifieds ads, headlines, text links. BE CREATIVE. How many times have you seen the same old add given for an affiliate program! Stay away from the crowd.

Create a content website with a review of your affiliate program. Don’t try to sell the program, instead, give your visitors the best review you can write of the program. Make a bulleted list of benefits YOU have found on that program.

Refer to your programกs web site with a TEXT LINK. Avoid using banners. People tend to look banners as a sales pitch and doesn’t like it. People in your site are looking for information, not to buy. So give them some information. Make them want more information, then give them your text link.

Compile your own mailing list. Offer your visitor a freebie, a newsletter, a free ebook, a report… In exchange, ask for their contact info. The key here is to get their address.

Follow up with this list. Contact them at least once a week. Build trust. Make them know you and trust you.

Track your advertising results and make corrections as necessary. If the program is good, you can profit from it. Do whatever it needs to be done to achieve you goals.

About The Author

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Henry Ochoa is the owner of Super Affiliate Master Pages. The website devoted to give you Free ebooks, articles and expert advice to make YOU profit from your online business. Click here to gain advantage now http://www.freewebs.com/1dream

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This article was posted on July 08, 2003

by Henry Ochoa