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Friday 31 July 2009

8 Reasons why Affiliate Programs are the better option

Many people are confused when they first become iterested in


internet businesses, they find themselves asking

what type of busisness is best for me?

Well I can't answer this for you but I can certainly give you
a few pointers in the right direction and my personal opinion.
So here they are:

1. No emplyees. There is no need to employ people to do the
work for you.

2. Low costs. Most affiliate programs are free to join, you
don't have to buy the product to sell it. Some programs have
a upgrade option to make which makes your earninig capacity
somewhat larger.

3. No storage. The merchant is responsible for the storage of
product so you don't need to worry about space or storage costs

4. No shipping and handling. The merchant is also responsible
for the product arrival, so there's also another cost you don't
need to worry about and running around you won't have to do.

5. You don't deal with customer service. Another problem you
don't need is customers who are not happy, if they are not
happy the merchant deals with it.

6. No account keeping. There is no need to store customer
information such as credit card details, addresses and phone
numbers, this is yet another merchant responsibility.

7. No trading time for a wage. You can spend as little or as
much time as you like selling your product. How much money you
want to make is entirely up to you.

8. There are literally thousands of options out there for you.
If you have a favourite niche market go for it, in my experience
if it is a product that you are really happy with then it will
be easy to sell.

If this doesn't clear things up for you, I don't know what will!
What better way to make money online then to watch the company do
all the hard work. All you have to do is promote, promote, promote,
and when it is something you are happy with it's easy!

7 Rules To Success Through Affiliate Programs

Thousands of people have quit their JOBS and started earning money exclusively online. There are a lot of ways you can do it on the Internet... such as creating your own products, offering a service, licensing products, etc.

Many people have done it without having ANY products of their own. This is done through affiliate income or selling other people's products for a commission.

Here's how it can be done.

1. Don't sell anything you don't own.

This rule is listed first for a good reason. You should never sell anything that you don't own yourself. If you don't have enough faith in it's results to buy it yourself, then you have no reason to sell it to others.

Think about this for a moment - if you don't own it and are unwilling to purchase it how can you endorse the product? How can you honestly answer questions about the product? The answer is you can't.

Too often people are willing to jump on the bandwagon and promote whatever the hyped product of the week is... without stopping to think of the value of the product itself. No matter how many other people are recommending it, you shouldn't if you haven't bought it yourself.

2. Only offer complementary products and services.

If your web site is about sports products, then you definitely shouldn't be offering cigarettes in another program. It doesn't make any sense at all, and these products defiantly do not compliment each other. You are unlikely to sell both products to the same customer.

A good example of selling complementary products would be, if you sell golf products, then you could sell golf vacations, golf clubs, golf subscriptions, golf training products, etc. All these products would entice the same consumer. Meaning once you get the person interested in golf to your site you increase your chances of selling them more than one item. This would not be the case if you sold golf clubs and gardening books.

Make sure everything you offer goes together. You should earn multiple streams of income, but they must all be related on the same subject.

3. Build an opt-in email list.

I can not stress enough how vital this is to your online success.

Ask any top business person what their most valuable asset. It isn't their products. It isn't their location. It isn't even their employees.

The most valuable asset to any business is their customer list. The most valuable asset to any Internet business is the opt-in email list. Your email list IS your Internet business.

If you don't have an email list, you don't have an Internet business.

Offer an affiliate product...and you earn money once. Offer a subscription to your opt-in email list and you earn money forever (from hundreds of offers you can make to that list).

4. Concentrate on your brand.

Use your opt-in email list to build a relationship with your subscribers. When they first subscribe, they may not know you from Peter. So tell them about yourself. Express your opinions.

On your first 2-3 contacts do not sell them anything. Tell them about yourself, your experiences, stick your neck out and tell them what you think. Let your customers get to know you. You have to give people a reason to know, like, and trust you.

You don't have to be the best writer on the planet. You don't have to be just like your favorite guru. Just write some things that are exclusively you in your emails.

Sure, some of them will get mad. Some will ask to be removed. Some will cuss you out. Deal with it. The way I see these people are by removing themselves from my list I do not have to waist time on trying to sell to them. I just move on to the people who are interested and I have a greater chance of making money off.

If you're just like everyone else, then why should anyone choose to buy from you?

5. Write your own endorsements and reviews.

Every affiliate program has solo ads, endorsement ads, and classified ads available. You can use them sometimes, but they should never become your only marketing pieces.

But on top of every ad you should have your OWN opinion of the product. You should tell your customers in your own words why they should buy this or that. Then use the ad copy you were given UNDER your own statements.

The same thing goes for online newsletters. You can use content and articles from other people, but every single email you ever send out should have something written from you...in your own words...at the top of it if nowhere else. It could be just a short 'what's going on' section or an editorial.

You don't have to be professional writer. You just have to have opinions and be willing to stick your neck out giving them.

6. Offer extra specials.

You don't have to do this every single time, but you should be making special offers for your list. Why should they buy a product from you instead of one of 1,000 other affiliates offering it?

Give them something extra they can't get from other affiliates!

You can tell them that if they buy affiliate product A from you...you'll give them this special report.

All they have to do is buy the product and then email you the receipt. You'll send them their extra bonus report right over.

It could also be an eBook, an email consultation, a phone consultation, an ad in your newsletter, a link on your special links page, etc. Give them something extra special with some of your offers and watch your checks soar. Make sure the items you give for free are related to your product.

7. Ask for the sale.

You have to ask for the sale. If you don't ask you will never get. The worst they can say is "no" and all that means is you are no worse off than you are right now. But if you ask and they say yes you are in a much better place.

You can't be wimpy or shy. You can't just give away a lot of content hoping someone will click on your little link somewhere and magically decide to buy your product. You have to tell your prospects and customers why they want and need your product. You have to tell them what they get when they buy.

If some subscribers get mad when you send them an offer, help them remove themselves from your list. It's funny, but most profitable promotions have also get the most complaints and removes.

I've had people email me saying, "If you're just trying to sell something online, then I don't even want your newsletter." Guess what? Remove them. That is the end purpose of your newsletter, any content you provide, or anything you do online.

Remember why you started on online business - to make money not to give out free gifts and content.

Promoting My Affiliate Programs. How?

Getting your website up, is really just the first phase of your journey to a career on the Internet. You must promote your website, your product or your service to the world. Well, how do you do it? Maybe this article might help you in getting started or give you additional ideas.

There are many different ways to promote your affiliate program, however, it depends upon what type of program it is, “Your Turnkey Program” or Affiliate Linked-Program for selling a product. Hmm-mm, interesting. What works, what doesn't?

GET OUT THE WORD

Bulk Emailing – Bulk emailing use to be the craze. Did you notice the word use to be the craze. That has changed with the stricter spam rules and penalties – all to protect us. But bulk emailing can be done, if you have an opt-in list – such as, through a newsletter. But don't overextend the use, you may lose subscribers.

Classified Ads – With free classified ads you can definitely get hits – and possibly some sales. But don't choose this as your only way of getting sales.

There are some drawbacks. You ask, “What drawbacks”. From my own experience, I've encountered individuals requesting information about my program – as a ploy to getting me to listen to their sales pitch. SPAM? Maybe. Annoying? Definitely. The height of annoyance is when they ask me to call them long distance, so that I can speak with them – only to have them give me a sales pitch on their program.

However, if you have a classified ad site on your website – you've got yourself a built-in opt-in list. You can gently sell to them, while verifying or thanking them for their ad.

Traffic Generators – Traffic generators can work on a turnkey site that many others are also partaking in to generate money for themselves. What I found is traffic generators are better suited for turnkey businesses. It is basically a simple way for you to entice other people in business to look at your program. You know – it's the “I'm not really happy with what I'm doing. I wonder what else is out there” syndrome. Or it's the – “I really need another program so that I'm not a one-man Joe in business” syndrome. In either case, it's a safe place to see what's happening or new on the Internet.

Messageboards, Discussion Groups, Forums -- These are great ways to get your message out and be personal at the same time. But you have to follow the rules, and you should contribute constructive and/or helpful information that is relevant to the discussion at hand. This is a time-consuming way to build sales – but a great way to build credibility, business relationships, and sales. Note: Please don't blatantly advertising. This action could cause the following problems to occur: 1) you being banned from the forum; 2) your advertising being eliminated and noted by the administrator; 3) making the other members angry and thus, losing credibility. All in all, follow the rules.

I'm currently in a forum – they give you a webpage, and in the back office you are allowed to advertise your services/products of businesses. And trust me, they do read them – and as an added benefit – your links are being picked up by the search engines. Yeah, you got it – more traffic. If you want to join for free or just take a look at it, go to my home page at www.myaffiliateplace.biz and register.

Ezine and Safelist Advertising -- Ezine advertising and safelist advertising are good methods of advertising. In each case, you have to join their list and follow their rules to submit your ads.

If you want to try your hand at safelist advertising, I would suggest that you create a separate free email account on Yahoo. Why? A safelist allows all that have joined to submit their ads to you, as well as, you to them. Here, your subject line is your eye catcher – so choose wisely.

Ezine advertising is a very good way to advertise your turnkey site, website, product or service. You have the option for free (need to watch for their instructions), and various paid ads. What's great about ezines? It's an opportunity to sell to a more targeted market. The more targeted your market, the better the opportunity to get a sale.

Articles – Articles are a great way to get the word out about your website and your product or products. However, please make the article informative – or you'll lose your credibility and the reader.

Search Engine Optimization – If you have a website you should submit to the search engines.

Linking – Linking is the exchange of your link with that of another webmaster.
This can be very beneficial, however, make sure the websites that you link to compliment but does not compete with your site.

I've touched on only some of the methods of advertising that you can use to get the word out about your product/service or website. The most important thing to remember is to keep your mind and eyes open for new ways to promote your product or service – and do your research.

How Do Affiliate Programs Work

Affiliate programs are one of the web's most effective marketing techniques. They create a win-win situation by which site A refers a visitor to site B, and site B pays site A a commission if the visitor makes a purchase.
Affiliate programs are one of the web's most effective marketing techniques. They create a win-win situation by which site A refers a visitor to site B, and site B pays site A a commission if the visitor makes a purchase. The referrer site (affiliate), can make money with no overhead (no product, no warehouse, no collection risk). On the other hand, the destination site (vendor) receives a steady stream of qualified leads from hundreds, maybe thousands of affiliate sites, and doesn't have to spend a dime unless a visitor makes a purchase.

The way it works is like this: the vendor gives the affiliate specific HTML code that it must use on its site to create a link to the vendor's site. This code contains an embedded ID number that allows the vendor to know when an incoming visitor comes to them by clicking the link on the affiliate site.

The vendor's servers will then set a cookie (a time sensitive electronic identification mechanism) in the visitor's computer so that every time he comes back to the vendor's site, the vendor's servers will ‘remember' that he was originally referred to them by the affiliate, and will pay him a commission when the visitor makes a purchase.

This makes it possible for the affiliate to make a commission even if the visitor doesn't purchase anything the first time, but comes back and buys later. Also, it is not necessary that the visitor enter the vendor's site through the affiliate's link other than the first time, since the vendor's servers will identify the cookie and will know that the visitor was originally referred to them by the affiliate.

At the vendor's discretion, the cookies can be set up to expire that same day, remain active indefinitely, or anything in between (vendors usually call the duration of a cookie the “referral period”). For this reason, it is better to choose vendor partners that offer long referral periods (120 days is considered very good). This increases the affiliate's chances of success, since very few people will buy on their first visit, although exceptions do occur with vendors that enjoy superb brand recognition and feature user friendly interfaces, like Amazon.com (the pioneer of affiliate programs) who, in spite of keeping cookies alive for only 24 hours, is able to generate a significant portion of its sales in the first few minutes after a visitor has clicked into their site.

Bookmark and Share Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

If you are not creating articles for your website and your affiliate programs, you should. Why? Even though it may seem like a lot of work, and it may take you time to build -- articles add a valuable commodity to your site -- content. And my friend, the search engines and people alike are always on the lookout for good content.

If you are creating articles, you are always looking to find ways to get your article out to the masses – and the more exposure your article has the greater the opportunity that people will read your article and want to visit your website. Should you submit your articles manually or should you use an article marketer submission service that will choose for you -- where your article goes? Is an article submission service a good option for you when submitting articles? I hope to show you both the pros and cons of this service and let you be the judge.

Pro to Article Submission Service

Article Submission Service can be a great help when your time is limited and you want to get your articles to all the article sites and groups. However, when the service is tiered, based on what you pay and don't pay – you have to be aware of what you are getting..

All services give you a sampling with a free service – and I did find the free service to be on the, well, expected side. After submitting to the free service of an article submission service I received the following:

1. I received several emails that stated my article had been received by a site and would be looked at. This is usual, and a good sign.

2. I received emails from the yahoo groups, which is a good sign but I didn't partake because I knew that I would be receiving articles from other authors on a regular basis and did not want to overwhelm my private email address. Thus, be aware, use a yahoo email address and keep your private email address separate.

The article submission to the article sites such as Ezine Articles (Which, by the way, is one of my favorite sites) and Go Articles will require a small outlay of money for each article on a monthly basis. Thus, I would use a submission service if:

1. I had a separate email address to catch the other authors' articles that I would be receiving from the yahoo groups.

2. I wanted to part with my money to take advantage of the service.

3. Needed more time.

4. I have a desire for a wider exposure of my articles and thus, more traffic to my site.

Cons of Using an Article Admission Service

When looking at anything new, you must determine when it is to your advantage to use a service or to do it yourself. These are some of the issues I would have to overcome:

1. If I do the submission myself, I know that the article or articles have reached it expected destination or destinations – but the exposure my article gets will be limited by the sites that I know.

2. If I'm restricted by General Titles will the article sites kick my article out because of not possibly abiding by the rules.

3. If I do it myself, I can target my article to the specific, intended audience.

For me, I will use the paid submission service when I am low on time and I have the money in hand. However, I will not waste my time on the free service because the return is very limited and from what I have seen offers little benefit to my site.

To conclude, you need to try different methods of getting your articles out to the masses. And the success of these different methods is dependent on your own satisfaction or lack there of, of the results rendered by such services. My advise, experiment and determine for yourself what services will help your business, who knows, that one service may be the punch in the arm your business needs to grow.

To your success.

Get Started today with Affiliate Programs

If you could get paid $10 to $50 just for promoting a company's product, how many times would you do that in a day?
If you could earn $10 to $50 for helping companies sell more products just by a little advertising, would you say Where do I sign up for this? Of course you would!

Now, you can get the inside scoop with the Internet Cash System absolutely FREE! This system sold hundreds at $49 each, but now I am making it available for FREE.

How would you like to work from the comfort of your own home, set your own hours, and have no boss to answer to? Welcome to the

Internet Cash System
Sounds perfect, but too good to be true? NOT ANYMORE!! I DO IT EVERYDAY, AND SO CAN YOU WITH OUR INTERNET CASH SYSTEM!

The Internet Cash System is GREAT for:

Stay at home parents
People who are retired or want to be retired
Anyone who needs extra money but does not want to "work"
Students who need income
Anyone who needs to stay home but also needs an income

Why would companies pay you just to promote their products? That's easy! Over 2.5 billion dollars are spent on advertising every year. These companies are spending a lot of money, and they are not guaranteed that the advertising will result in a sale. After all, you don't buy everything you see do you? No one does! So, these same companies also have a different advertising program that not many people know about. It is called an affiliate program. By promoting their products, you can collect a commission off of every sale. These commissions can range anywhere from a few dollars to thousands. Most of the programs pay between $10-$100. The companies are able to pay you more because they don't have to pay a red cent until the sale is already made, so for them it is GUARANTEED advertising.

Search Engines, Directories, Affiliate Programs, Paid Placement

The eagerly awaited conclusion to this interview with Mr John Cussen, Director, Small Business Services for LookSmart International Pty Ltd.
Search Engines, directories, affiliate programs, paid placement! Have you ever wondered where the value is for you? Vortex Media recently conducted an exclusive interview with Mr John Cussen, Director, Small Business Services for LookSmart International Pty Ltd. Part one can be viewed at"Vortex Media" Here is the eagerly awaited conclusion to this interview.

Vortex Media: Yahoo recently made a US$235 million bid to take over Inktomi search engines and in all probability it will be successful. What impact can you see this having on the services LookSmart will need to provide to maintain market share in Australia?

John Cussen: We're still not sure of the implications of Yahoo's decision, but it does highlight how important search is to the major portals. In particular, it emphasises a point that we've been making for some time: major portals are looking for alternatives to Google to supply search results, because Google is now so clearly a competitor to those sites, and is focused on building its own consumer brand. Because the LookSmart Australia brand doesn't compete with our partners Elike Yahoo! Australia & NZ, or ninemsn Efor consumer traffic, we're able to increase our market share in Australia, a trend that's been quite clear over the past 18 months.

Vortex Media: There has been great dispute in the past on the effectiveness of "Paid Placement" programs with reports of a vast majority of users avoiding the top 3 - 5 positions of results on search engines known to undertake "Paid Placement" advertising. Can you shed any light on this? And do you think it is the responsibility of search engines/directories to notify their users on which results are "Paid Placement"?

John Cussen: Our experience with the LookListings product doesn't indicate a change in behaviour at all. Our experience may be different because relevancy is a primary component of the LookListings search algorithm. I know that other “paid placementEservices use price as the only ranking attribute and I agree that that may not be a sustainable approach. Search engine users learn to avoid irrelevant content. Poorly targeted banner ads had a lot to do with the collapse of the banner advertising market in recent years. Users learned to avoid that part of the page. I'm surprised that some companies in our industry have not learned from that. Our LookListings partners certainly understand that relevance is important to the long-term future of their business, which is why they like our approach with the LookListings product. A high cost per click is of no use to anyone if no one clicks on the link, or if, once they've clicked, the page doesn't turn out to be what they were looking for. Relevancy really matters to both advertisers and the portals which is why we built LookListings the way we did.

Vortex Media: Under your "SmartListings" product it is stated that 'Up to 3 URLs per domain' may be included into the LookSmart directory. Are participating clients able to specify which 3 URL's are to be included?

John Cussen: Absolutely! Our submission forms include and facility to include titles, descriptions and URLs for each of the three submissions. It's important that the customer tells us which pages are most important to their business. A company may offer 8 different products or services but might specialize in two areas. If that's where they make their money or where they need to find more customers then they should submit links to the homepage plus links to both of those areas. It increases their profile in the directory and multiplies their chance of being found in the search results on our partner sites.

Vortex Media: With a large number of websites now being set-up solely for affiliate based Internet Marketing purposes and with this number seeming to increase by the thousands every week, does LookSmart deem these sites to contain relevant material and as such should they be included into the LookSmart directory? And where do affiliate centered sites stand with LookSmart?

John Cussen: We assess each submission on its merits. Our guidelines include three relevant requirements here. We require that:

a)Your site should contain original content.
b)Your site should contain sufficient pages and recognisable content
c)Your site cannot mirror or redirect to another website.

There are some sites that do not make any attempt to add value and merely have a random list of affiliate links on their site. We reserve the right to reject that submission because they are not offering any value to a search engine user. In the past people have merely submitted an affiliate link to the SmartListings service or set up a page that later redirects to the affiliate link. We reject those submissions as well.

However, some sites that gather together affiliate based links do a great job of organizing links and provide original content that helps users find products and services. I have no problem with the site owner making some money for their effort and we will accept those submissions.

Vortex Media: Are there any specifications or criteria a website must meet before being considered for inclusion into LookSmart?

John Cussen: The SmartListings product is designed for legitimate businesses that already have a functioning web site that is useful to Australian search engine users. Our submission guidelines are merely designed to exclude illegal, offensive, unusable, or irrelevant web sites from the LookSmart Australia Directory. The vast majority of SmartListings submissions are accepted without any problem.

The specifics of LookSmarts Eguidelines are available"here" and follow the guidelines tab.

Vortex Media: If a website has been turned down for inclusion, penalised or blacklisted for any reason, what recourse will the website owner have to get their site reassessed?

John Cussen: We provide a simple and fast way to discuss the situation if this does occur. If a site is rejected, we give the specific reason for the rejection and provide the customer with the opportunity to resubmit. The SmartListings service entitles you to resubmit once per URL, at no additional charge. You may request one reconsideration of your site via email to LookSmart within 30 days from the date you received your decline notification. Simply reply to the email you received notifying you that your site was declined, or send an appeal to the SmartListings team.

How to Tell If an Affiliate Program is Any Good

This article addresses what to look for an avoid in examining online money making opportunities.
The wide variety and flexibility of money making opportunities available on line means there is no concrete list of attributes a program should or should not have. This makes it extremely difficult for inexperienced entrepreneurs to make heads or tails of all the programs out there.

How can you be sure that you aren't spending months of your life building a downline in a program that will fold within the next year? Unfortunately, there are too many variables for anyone to be 100% certain that a company will stand the test of time, but there are certain clues that will increase your odds of being right.

Here are things to look for (and lookout for!) in some of the major categories of online opportunities to help you identify which businesses are most likely to succeed.

Product Resale/Referral
The first thing to examine is the product. Does this product fill a need that more than a few isolated people have? Is the price of the product reasonable (even to someone who isn't participating in the program)? Would you buy the product if you weren't in the program? If the answers to these questions aren't satisfactory, than the business won't be around long. Move on.

The second thing to examine is the compensation plan. How likely is it you will make money in this program? Is the program structured so that most people can make several hundred to several thousand dollars a month, or is it set up so a few heavy-hitters make absurd amounts of money that the company can use in its marketing literature while members with less than several thousand referrals in their downline struggle to break even? If it isn't possible to break even by filling the first level or two of the program, the majority of the people who join the program will lose money.

Traffic Generation
There are two successful approaches to traffic generation. The first is winning the numbers games. By that I mean if you get a ridiculously large number of random people to visit your site, odds are at least a few of them will be interested in what you have to offer. The visitors who are interested might be a tiny fraction of your total, but if you bringing enough traffic, a small percent can mean quite a few bites. Good examples of these programs will allow you unlimited downlines for multiple levels. The programs should be free (or it will take more effort than it is worth getting people to join). The website for the program should be very professional and convincing, as this site is going to be closing the deal for you when potential referrals click your link.

The second approach to traffic generation is targeting. Targeting traffic is the practice of pursuing the people who are most likely to be interested in your offer. If you have a hardware site, you are trying to get contractors and handymen to visit. Instead of focusing on a large number of visitors, you pursue the select group who is most likely to be interested in your site. The value of these programs depends largely on their categories. These programs will segment traffic into different categories. The visitors you receive are directed to your site by the program because they are interested in whatever category you chose for your program. So if there is a category that very accurately describes your area, you will experience better results. If you run an investment banking web site, then you would want to find a program that will bring you traffic under the category Investment Banking. Not quite as good would be a category of Finance. If the traffic sent to you is under the category Business, then you're still getting better than untargeted traffic, but not by much.

Note: Many traffic generation programs will use a combination of both of the above approaches.

Paid Email/Surfing
A good paid email/surfing program is one that actually sends out payments. These companies make their money (some of which is passed onto you) from advertisers. Some programs have difficulty collecting payments from their advertisers. As a result they don't have money to pay the members who are spending their free time reading ads for vitamins and discount vacations.

The question then becomes how do you know a program can collect from the advertisers. The simplest indicator is often time. How long has the program been around? Another good indication is the quality of their offers. If the offers of their advertisers are at least moderately interesting, then it's more likely some of the people viewing these offers are signing up for them. Advertisers are sure to pay (and continue to pay) for marketing methods that get results.

Internet Marketing
If you want to create an Internet scam, masquerading as an Internet marketing program is one of the easiest ways to go about it. Even in legitimate marketing programs, the product being sold is information. Inherent to the sale of information is the fact no one can check out the product until they've paid for it, however, that does not mean that you can't check out the company.

Newsgroups are crawling with the tales of people who have been scammed. Do a search on the program name, and you will quickly discover how many people have been burned. Having said that, you should realize that even the best programs will have a few negative comments in the newsgroups. There are always people who signed up for a program and simply waited for the cash to start rolling in instead of putting effort into building an income. When these lazy folks didn't magically become wealthy, they decided to shout from the rooftops (or message boards) how their program was full of empty promises. Be sure to read through the messages and get a feel for how much effort the poster really put into trying to make the program work. You can get a better picture of the quality of the program by looking for posts in different places from different people.

Make Money Online With Multi Level Affiliate Programs(MLAPs)

Discover A Unique Way To Make Money Online That:

Costs absolutely NO MONEY take part in!

Does NOT require a website

Does NOT require any web marketing, promotion, or traffic generation

Requires only a one-time investment of 15 minutes and NOTHING more…EVER!

Produces a Leveraged, Continuous, and Ever Growing Income!

Produces Income From Multiple Sources!

Could change your life forever!

Note: At no point will you be required to spend any money at all.

The Basics: Multi Level Affiliate Programs(MLAPs) Explained

Affiliate Programs (or Associate Programs) are one of the foremost revenue generation models for websites, ezines, forums, and other online businesses today.

Multi-Level Marketing is one of the most effective sales and distribution concepts that has been revolutionizing the business world.

Now, a relatively small group of companies have combined these two powerful concepts and offer associate programs whereby not only do webmasters get paid for any sales they generate, they will also get rewarded for the subsequent sales made by their downlines or customers many levels down!

These multi level affiliate programs (MLAPs) have greatly multiplied the profit potential for webmasters, while removing the risks associated with spending money to join traditional MLM programs.

Four Simple Steps

Step 1

Visit Hugeaffiliates.com, and learn about Multi Level Affiliate Programs.

Step 2

Join some of the Multiple Level Affiliate Programs.

Step 3-Share this file

Share/distribute/email your version of this file to your family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember that every person you share this file with will potentially spread the file to many, many others!

If you have a website, ezine , or own a forum, freely share the file with your visitors, subscribers and members, and encourage them to in turn further distribute this file!

If you know any webmasters, ezine owners, forum moderators, share your file with them and persuade them to distribute it. For a little effort persuading them, you will gain access to their large visitor base, subscribers and members…a very good investment!

Step 4

Just Sit Back And Wait For Your Affiliate Checks To Come In!

WHY IT WORKS:

As all the affiliate links in this article are replaced by your own affiliate links, when you share the article with others, they will visit the sites as people referred by you.

Some of these people will buy the products on the MLAPs, thereby earning you a commission on the sale.

Others will sign up as your sub-affiliates and when they in turn spread the article to other people, and make sales, again you will earn a commission on the sale…many levels down! Just imagine that even though only a few sales will be made at each level, with each subsequent level, the number of sales will be greatly multiplied, resulting in a very large, leveraged profit at NO COST to you!

How to Make Real Money from Affiliate Programs

It is an often quoted statistic that about
90% of affiliates make no money from affiliate
programs.

The top 10% of affiliates make all the money.
Some of these are super affiliates who make
very large sums of money indeed.

What is the reason for the big difference
between those who succeed and those who fail?

The following rules should be followed when
choosing affilite programs:

1) Only promote products/sevices in a niche
that is in demand and profitable.

2) Join programs where you earn at least 20%
commissions on sales.

3) Only promote products that tie in with the
theme of your web site. Unrelated products
make a site look bad and sell poorly.

4) Concentrate on promoting programs that pay
recurring or lifetime commissions. In other
words, make a sale once and get paid
indefinitely for any repeat sales to the
same customer.

This is the big secret of the super affiliates.
They put most of their efforts into promoting
residual/lifetime affiliate programs.
Gradually, like compound interest their profits
mount up.

If you are not in a residual affiliate program
and you get paid only once per sale, you will
never get rich. You are wasting your time
chasing one sale per customer and getting only
one commission. Whereas the big affiliate
earners put their effort into recruiting
customers who will give them lifetime commissions
on all the sales they make at any time in
the future.

Develop An Income From Affiliate Programs

Whenyou're trying to develop an income from affiliate programs, don't fall into the trap of only promoting information products or
tools aimed at Internet marketers.

Many people, even those who have been in the game a long time, get stuck in this niche and never leave it. They forget that there's a whole wide world of buyers out there just waiting to be sold to.

I guess it's natural for many people to start off selling marketing ebooks, member only sites, and related products. After all, it's what they're interested in so they tend to think everyone else is. But really they're playing in a very small arena.

Another reason is that these products are pushed into their faces all the time...in newsletters like mine :-)

People also tend to promote products in the very narrow Internet marketing niche because they generally pay a much higher affiliate percentage, often 50%.

All well and good, but we're all selling to each other and competition is fierce.

I hate using that clichéd expression "think outside the box" so I won't.

But what you need to do is take a good look around the net. Study what people are buying.

Remember how in last weeks newsletter, and in the week before's I talked about building 2 mini sites a week... saying that if they all only made $50 a week after a year you'd end up with a weekly income of over $5000?


Well the health related mini site I built just over 2 weeks ago has really taken off, and last week it grossed $5695 paying me $348 in commissions. See screenshot.

It's doing well because:

Competition for sales is fairly low in this niche. (you'll find that nearly EVERY niche has lower competition that the overcrowded marketing niche.)

It's a tangible product that people spend big sums on.

Health is a huge industry...most of us want to live to old age. I'm nearly there :-) We're an aging society so demand in this field will keep growing.

Now $348 is nothing startling, and I expect this to grow as the site does better in the search engines. But my total costs have been under nine dollars for the domain name, and around $25 on Google
Adwords.

I can't really take hosting costs into consideration because I pay just $29 a month to host up to 200 sites

The money spent on Google Adwords will not be ongoing. The way I currently work is to list a site with one or two of the pay-per-clicks until they take off in the no fee search engines. See Allan Gardyne's Pay Per Click Search Engines site for advice on using them

The downside, if it can be called a downside, is that commissions are usually much lower in this and other niches.

But that's got to be balanced against the fact that there are a lot more potential buyers in this (and numerous other) fields, and that people often spend bigger sums.

So even if you only make 3 to 8 percent on sales of big item products it can soon add up.

The aforementioned Allan Gardyne, who does VERY well marketing to marketers, is someone who really understands the importance of targeting other areas.

Take a look, for instance, at this site his assistant Rupert built using Site Build It.

It's making around $1000 a month in affiliate income but the affiliate program the site is linked to, Tiger Direct, only pays 3 percent.

So as usual I've taken a long time to get around to the point of all this, which is you've GOT TO look at expanding into other niches.

Tip 1:

Look at using Nichefinder to help you locate profitable niches to build sites around.

Tip 2:

Wordtracker is another very useful tool. I've got an annual account I use several times a week

Tip 3:

Read my book Mini Site Profits to see how I'm doing it.

Tip 5:

If you want to build a text based site like Allan's, which ranks very high in the search engines, and you're not comfortable doing it all on your own use Site Build It.






2. Value Exchange.

And while we're talking of Ken Evoy's Site Build It, he's just released a new free service which helps you find exchange links for your sites.

By entering your site details it registers your site (which doesn't have to be a Site Build It one) as a site that is willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content (the engines weight a link less heavily if the linking site is not of a similar nature to yours)

It also searches for similar sites, ones with topical content that relates to yours.

Like I said, it's a free service, so make use of it.

Common Sense Ideas For a More Profitable Affiliate Program

Before you create your affiliate program, or in
the early stages, you need to make it is as easy
as possible for your affiliates to make a sale.
You should have your site tweaked to the point
that the only work your affiliates have to
do is bring visitors to your site.

How do you do this? You have to keep testing your
site, sales copy and so on till you get the best
visitor to sale ratio you can.

Some of the things to test are the headline
(extremely important), which benefits of your
product you emphasize, price, your ad copy, and
whatever you think may make a difference.

You also want to test to see which ads bring in
the most visitors. The same is true for banners.
Then you want to share all of these with your
affiliates.

If you find that a particular text link works
well, share the wording with your affiliates.
Don't assume that your affiliates can write
winning ads or create great banners, because
they probably can't. Plus, by doing a little
more work you'll be making a lot more money
in the long run.

In my article, "Joining the Right Affiliate
Program," I stress that it is important to
realize that most of your success when you
join an affiliate program depends on the
amount of visitors you attract to your site.
Simply put, you can't sell a product if you
don't have a buyer.

You may want to make this clear to potential
affiliates. A lot of people with affiliate
programs complain about someone who builds
their first web-site, joined their affiliate
program, put a banner on his/her site, and a
month later e-mail them to find out why they
didn't make $1000 last month.

So what am I rambling about? You should decide
whether you're going to let anyone sign up,
only sites with good traffic, or maybe even
warn of the difficulties sites with low
traffic might have making sales.

The reason is that usually 10% of your
affiliates make 90% of your sales. So it is
a lot easier only having that 10%. They know
what they are doing so you don't have to answer
simple questions. It's easier sending out the
checks. Basically you have more free time and
less problems.

If you accept anyone who wants to join, you'll
make some more money but you'll spend a lot
more time on paper work, you'll have a lot
more e-mail to answer and in general you'll
just have more tedious work.

Only you can decide which is best for you.
Some things to think about are how much money
you want to make, how much free time you want
to have, what kind of lifestyle you want to
live and so on.

Choosing the Right Affiliate Program

Affiliate Programs can be a great source of extra cash.
Depending on the program, you either set up an affiliate website,
or place an affiliate link on your already existing website, then
you just sit back and watch the cash roll in, right? Well,
in a perfect world, yes. But we all know this world isn't
perfect. If you sign up with the wrong program, you may find
yourself disappointed or even frustrated, and certainly no
richer.

As affiliate programs are becoming more and more popular it seems
that just about every business out there is starting to offer
one. With so many options, you want to make sure that you're
going with the best program, so how do you know which to join?
Here are a few simple checks you can use to make sure you're
going with a potentially successful program.

First of all, really think about the product being offered. Is
it something that a lot of people want or need? Is it something
you would buy? Ask a friend or three if the product in question
is something they might go for. If the consensus seems to be
that it is a stale or tapped out market, then don't do it.

Second. Do a web search. Go on to several search engines and do
a few searches using various keywords describing the product in
question. How many sites come up? Does the amount of sites
coming up seem proportionate to the demand for the product, or
does the market seem to be flooded? If there are hundreds of
sites coming up offering the same thing, you'll probably end up
lost in the shuffle. You might want to reconsider.

Third. Look closely at the program's webpage. Is it attractive,
clear and professional looking? Is the writing clear and direct?
Does it answer all your questions? Remember, if you think the
webpage is clunky looking or that it's hard to follow, so will a
lot of potential customers. Only go with a program that has a
flawless homepage.

Fourth. Look at the payment and sales update schedules. Will
you be paid once a month? Once a quarter? How will you be
notified of your sales? Really go over all the payment
information. After all, this is the reason you're joining,
right? Before you join you must make sure that everything about
the payment process is clear and to your liking. If anything
about the system seems unusual or unclear, walk away.

Now, there's no way of guaranteeing that a program will work, but
if you follow these simple steps, you'll have a much better
chance of success. There's a lot of money zinging around on the
net, and if you just do a little homework, you can do quite well
in the booming affiliate world.

Affiliate Programs - How to Pick the Solid Ones

If you've surfed the internet long enough, you must've found so many merchants offering Affiliate Programs. But the tricky thing is to choose the solid ones for your niche.

This is very important, because your reputation is on stake here! Joining the wrong affiliate programs will only hurt your online business.

First of all, it is almost impossible for you to collect adequate informations on those merchant companies. You certainly can't investigate them thoroughly. Hence, you will never be able to predict their successes or failures.

That's why you must not stress on one single merchant only within your niche.

Pick a couple of the best quality products to promote. Still, you can do some critical researches to reduce risk.

OK, now let's see how we can pick the goods from the bads. Here are some factors that influences the dependability of an affiliate program. The more of these factors are present in a certain program, the more reasons you get to sign up to the program.

Let's see...

1. Great quality products. This is a must. How could you promote something you are not proud of?

2. Good affiliate sites.

3. Good comissions. Normally, solid merchants offer more than 25% of comissions.

4. Free to join.

5. Great Supports. Solid merchants usually train their affiliates through training calls, newsletters and other mediums. They also shows your real-time stats and earnings, send you an email whenever a sale is made.

6. Long-term cookie to lock on the visitors to your site. This way you still can make sales if your visitors return to your site months later.

7. Monthly payment with realistic minimum.

8. Two-tier comissions. Some merchants give you comissions on your referrals' sales. Meaning..if you refer someone to become an affiiate, you can earn comission everytime he makes a sale.

So do some researches before you sign up!

Affiliate Program Mastery: Learning How To Build Internet Capital Goods for Free

As I mention in almost all of my articles, 97% of Internet marketers never make a cent online. I mention
this simple fact because it has a lot of power--it has the power to completely discourage people who are not succeeding, and it also has the power to encourage those same people who are failing to learn, so that they can
succeed.

In this article, I will teach you exactly what it means to build Internet capital goods--and how it relates to
entering that top 3%. When you finish reading this, you will have complete faith that you can succeed and you will
understand exactly what it will take to do so.

So what are capital goods? You know that regular businesses purchase capital goods to increase production. You know
that industrial businesses operate some of these capital goods to produce goods that they can then resell for profit. You know that capital goods can be land. They can be factories. They can be machinery. They can be people. . .

So how does this relate to marketing your affiliate program? It's quite simple--in order to succeed, you
must build a large pile of Internet capital goods and then use them to pull in customers and retain them.

Most affiliates do not understand this concept. They start out with a boilerplate gateway webpage--that
everyone else who sells the same product also uses--and then they use that page in conjunction with paid advertisement and hope for success. In almost every
single case, they never make more than a couple sales, give up after 3 months at the absolute most, and then move on to the next opportunity.

If you do a simple analysis of successful affiliate program marketers (which, for practical reasons, will
be easiest if you do it through websites), you will find that they either a) have purchased Internet capital goods and advertisement with a lot of money or b) have an enormous amount of Internet capital goods. (You can test this yourself by checking the top listings in search engines for any keyword combination).

What does this mean for you? It means that you either a) are already rich and can purchase that land, factory, machinery, and workers immediately (website, product rights, advertisement, etc) or b) you need to start building these Internet capital goods or you are definitely going to fail within 3 months.

So how do you know what is and isn't an Internet capital good? An Internet capital good is an item that, once you build or purchase it, will constantly add or create value for your business. This includes links, content, dynamic scripts, free tools that your targeted
audience can use, and mailing lists that you can consistently offer your products to.

If you are not making an effort to build these Internet capital goods, you are the Internet equivalent of real life business that purchases frozen pizzas from the supermarket next door, heats them up in a microwave, and then tries to sell them. On top of that, your
store has no napkins or condiments or tables or chairs or pizza boxes. Everyone must sit on and eat off of
the floor.

Would you want to purchase pizza there? No, you would get it at the supermarket frozen at a cheaper price, or you would go next door, where they make it and then bake it in an oven, where you could sit down at a table in a chair.

Take the time to understand this point: If you want to succeed, you absolutely must either have money to buy your land, store, table, chairs, and oven--or you must build them yourself.

Fortunately for Internet marketers, you have a huge advantage over regular businesses--you can build all of these Internet capital goods; you do not need to pay for any of them.

You can build every Internet capital good I have mentioned above for no cost at all. And you will if you want to
succeed on a limited budget. So setup your links. Make quotas; reach those quotas every week. Build content. Find
legally reusable expert articles and add them to your website. Build pages that offer free tools to your customers. Use free advertising methods advertise this
page as a useful stand-alone (which happens to be linked to your related website). Setup a free content ezine or
marketing list that is related to your website. Register with free directories to get customers.

All of these Internet capital goods will not only draw customers to your business through a multitude of sources,
but they will also retain customers that come to your website through free or paid advertisement by giving them the option to get free information or use free products.

As every marketing study has indicated, multiple impressions of a product increase a person's chance of buying it--and multiple contacts with a
salesperson increases the conversion rate. By retaining customers you will both increase the impression of your
product and expose them to your sale copy, which will dramatically increase your conversion rates.

If you get nothing else out of this article, please remember this fact: the only way to successfully build and expand an Internet business is by building Internet capital goods and staying around until you have enough
to constantly draw and retain customers. If you do not have the money to purchase these capital goods, start building them today for free or you will probably be
ready to give up in about 3 months.

$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs

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 pay-per-click 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, “I know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.”

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, down-to-earth, 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 20-30 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, I'll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 fine-tuning 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!

How To Use Articles To Build Your Affiliate Program

Articles are the perfect promotional tool for your affiliates - they bring in more sales than banners, book covers, and ezine ads. Your affiliates can post them on their website, use them in their newsletter, or turn them into a free eBook.

One the easiest ways to build your affiliate program is to offer your articles as a zip file and allow people to replace the link in the resource box with their affiliate link.

Here is how to do it:

1. Copy all your articles as text files, formatted to 60 characters-per-line, to a single folder on your hard disk.

2. Create another text file in the same folder called 'index of articles' which lists each article by title and file name.

3. In the 'index of articles' write a brief message explaining how to join your affiliate program and how to customize the affiliate link in the resource box.

You can see an example of this at:


http://www.ezine-writer.com/michael-southon-articles.zip

Then just zip your 'articles' folder using WinZip. WinZip is free and can be downloaded from: http://www.winzip.com/download.htm

To create a zip file using WinZip, just follow these steps:

1. Open WinZip and click on 'File' and 'New Archive'.

2. In the 'New Archive' box, choose a folder where you want to save your zip file

3. Choose a name for your zip file and press OK

4. In the 'Add' window, browse until you find your 'articles' folder and double-click

5. Click on 'Add with wildcards'

That's it! Your articles zip file has been created.

Offer your articles zip file for free download in as many places as possible:


  • on the index page of your website

  • on your affiliates tool kit page

  • in the welcome message for your newsletter

  • in your email mini course

  • as a bonus gift to your customers

  • in your sig file

This technique will not only increase sales of your existing affiliates - it will quickly bring you dozens of new affiliates.

Good luck with your articles!

Affiliate Programs: Can I REALLY Make Money?

As an Internet marketing consultant, I often hear the
question, "Can I REALLY make money online with affiliate
programs?"

To me, that question speaks of the asker's skepticism, so
let's put aside any question of whether money is REALLY
being made online before we look any further.

Thousands of merchants have put resources into developing
affiliate programs so that others can promote their products
in exchange for a commission, which is usually a percentage
of the product's price. If there wasn't money to be made,
Sony, Dell and those thousands of other merchants wouldn't
waste their time and money building affiliate programs.

I personally know at least a hundred people who make
marketing on the Internet their full-time occupation. If
there wasn't money to be made, that wouldn't be possible.

I am one of those people. The secondary title of my ebook
about affiliate marketing is 'How I Made $436,797 Last Year
Selling Other People's Stuff Online'. Although I dislike
that subtitleand its crass approach, it IS the truth, and
it IS effective proof that money can be made online. The
statement is backed up on the Super Affiliate Handbook
homepage with a picture of part of my income tax statement
from 2002 which shows my earnings.

See it for yourself at: http://SuperAffiliateHandbook.com

So, having dispelled any question about whether there is
money to be made online, let's proceed to the REAL question.
Let's take the emphasis off the word 'REALLY' and place it
where it belongs - on YOU.

Can YOU really make money online?

Sure you can! IF you REALLY want to.

Desire is the first key to success. But here's where it gets
a little tricky. If your desire is for money, as opposed to
what money can buy, your work will be made much harder, if
not impossible.

'Huh? Why is that?' you may wonder.

Money is a concept. In and of itself it does nothing for
you, unless you are very fond of small rectangular pieces of
colored paper.

If you focus instead on the good that money will bring to
your life, such as free time and all the fun ways to spend
it, then you'll give positive direction to your efforts.

Think about it.. what can that money buy you? The kids'
education, a new car, a new house, a second honeymooon...
how about a sailboat?

Dream a little - dream a LOT, but create some desire, and a
REASON to work hard for what you want to achieve.

And that's the second key to making money online - Work.

Too many people still hold onto the notion of 'get rick
quick'. I've got news for them - there's no such thing. You
can get rich a little quicker on the 'net, but the truth is
that nothing worth having comes without a price. You must
invest some time and money.

Not much money, but some. Compared to starting any other
business, the amount of financial investment required to
start an affiliate marketing business on the Internet is
negligible.

If you don't have one or two hundred bucks - or can't beg,
borrow or steal that amount - then maybe you can get a
part-time job and save up to start your online business.

No matter how you slice it, you won't find another
opportunity anywhere that has the potential for this much
reward for so little outlay. This IS one of the least
expensive businesses you can start.

Last but not least - can you stick with it over the long
haul?

Persistence is perhaps the MOST important quality shared by
all entrepeneurs. That's why you hear about those who make a
million, lose a million and then make another million. They
go up, then down, then up again, but they never gave up.

You can't let the ups and downs get to you. Not everything
will go your way all of the time. You'll have to make
some effort and it won't always be easy.

But, if you keep your goals foremost in your mind, learn
what you need to know and invest your resources wisely and
with persistence, you virtually can't help but succeed.

That's how you REALLY make money online!

Affiliate Program Mastery: Learn How To Build Internet Capital

As I mention in almost all of my articles, 97% of Internet marketers never make a cent online. I mention this simple fact because it has a lot of power--it has the power to completely discourage people who are not succeeding, and it also has the power to encourage those same people who are failing to learn, so that they can succeed.

In this article, I will teach you exactly what it means to build Internet capital goods--and how it relates to entering that top 3%. When you finish reading this, you will have complete faith that you can succeed and you will understand exactly what it will take to do so.

So what are capital goods? You know that regular businesses purchase capital goods to increase production. You know that industrial businesses operate some of these capital goods to produce goods that they can then resell for profit. You know that capital goods can be land. They can be factories. They can be machinery. They can be people. . .

So how does this relate to marketing your affiliate program? It's quite simple--in order to succeed, you must build a large pile of Internet capital goods and then use them to pull in customers and retain them.

Most affiliates do not understand this concept. They start out with a boilerplate gateway webpage--that everyone else who sells the same product also uses--and then they use that page in conjunction with paid advertisement and hope for success. In almost every single case, they never make more than a couple sales, give up after 3 months at the absolute most, and then move on to the next opportunity.

If you do a simple analysis of successful affiliate program marketers (which, for practical reasons, will be easiest if you do it through websites), you will find that they either a) have purchased Internet capital goods and advertisement with a lot of money or b) have an enormous amount of Internet capital goods. (You can test this yourself by checking the top listings in search engines for any keyword combination).

What does this mean for you? It means that you either a) are already rich and can purchase that land, factory, machinery, and workers immediately (website, product rights, advertisement, etc) or b) you need to start building these Internet capital goods or you are definitely going to fail within 3 months.

So how do you know what is and isn't an Internet capital good? An Internet capital good is an item that, once you build or purchase it, will constantly add or create value for your business. This includes links, content, dynamic scripts, free tools that your targeted audience can use, and mailing lists that you can consistently offer your products to.

If you are not making an effort to build these Internet capital goods, you are the Internet equivalent of real life business that purchases frozen pizzas from the supermarket next door, heats them up in a microwave, and then tries to sell them. On top of that, your store has no napkins or condiments or tables or chairs or pizza boxes. Everyone must sit on and eat off of the floor.

Would you want to purchase pizza there? No, you would get it at the supermarket frozen at a cheaper price, or you would go next door, where they make it and then bake it in an oven, where you could sit down at a table in a chair.

Take the time to understand this point: If you want to succeed, you absolutely must either have money to buy your land, store, table, chairs, and oven--or you must build them yourself.

Fortunately for Internet marketers, you have a huge advantage over regular businesses--you can build all of these Internet capital goods; you do not need to pay for any of them.

You can build every Internet capital good I have mentioned above for no cost at all. And you will if you want to succeed on a limited budget. So setup your links. Make quotas; reach those quotas every week. Build content. Find legally reusable expert articles and add them to your website. Build pages that offer free tools to your customers. Use free advertising methods advertise this page as a useful stand-alone (which happens to be linked to your related website). Setup a free content ezine or marketing list that is related to your website. Register with free directories to get customers.

All of these Internet capital goods will not only draw customers to your business through a multitude of sources, but they will also retain customers that come to your website through free or paid advertisement by giving them the option to get free information or use free products.

As every marketing study has indicated, multiple impressions of a product increase a person's chance of buying it--and multiple contacts with a salesperson increases the conversion rate. By retaining customers you will both increase the impression of your product and expose them to your sale copy, which will dramatically increase your conversion rates.

If you get nothing else out of this article, please remember this fact: the only way to successfully build and expand an Internet business is by building Internet capital goods and staying around until you have enough to constantly draw and retain customers. If you do not have the money to purchase these capital goods, start building them today for free or you will probably be ready to give up in about 3 months.

Affiliate Programs: You CAN Make a Difference

Negotiate with your affiliate managers for win-win solutions.
One of the rules of affiliate marketing, is to partner with merchants that don't have too many external links on their sites. This is especially true if you pay to advertise your site. You might just as well burn your money as send it to sites that steal your traffic.

If the site does have links out, then those links should be coded with your affiliate ID. You should be credited for sales made through those links.

As I learn and grow in this business, I get pickier and pickier about such things.

For specifically that reason, I recently stemmed the flow of traffic to one of the dating networks I've been affiliated with for years. Soon after doing so, I received a call from the president of the company, who wanted to know what it would take for me to start sending traffic back to their sites.

I asked that each of the links out to their other dating sites either be removed, or coded with my ID. Although he discounted my request as being irrelevant in terms of lost commissions, he agreed to have the links removed from my affiliate sites.

Ask and ye shall receive, right?

Not quite. I checked back a couple of weeks later, and saw that the changes hadn't been made.

Easy enough. No changes made, no traffic sent.

Shortly after that I got another call from the company, this time from the affiliate program manager. I told her about my

How To Make $10,500 Promoting Affiliate Programs

I've heard some people say that no one is making money online anymore. Ever heard something like that?

Well it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm making plenty. So let's put that myth aside right now!

You see, not so long ago I was struggling to pay my bills, relying on a tiny income from a few web sites that I manage. The money would trickle in. $20 here. $5 there.

Then I discovered a technique that's made me as much as $10,500 in a single month!

While trying to find ways to make more money with my web sites, I was exploring affiliate programs. And I came across the concept of advertising affiliate products through Pay-Per-Click search engines.

The amazing thing was I didn't even need a web site to do it!

But paying for clicks? It sounded more like a way to spend money than to make it! Anyway, I decided that at the very least it was worth checking out.

The concept is simple.

1. Choose a product – one that has an affiliate program.

2. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click.

3. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link.

4. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

I started by conducting several test campaigns and quickly had one or two showing some early promise. Over the next two weeks I tested around 25 campaigns for a whole range of affiliate products.

Three weeks after starting I had several profitable campaigns. So I boosted these campaigns using some techniques which I discovered and discuss in my book Affiliate Adventure.

In my second month my net profit was a little more than $10,500.

That's around £6,000.

Or $14,000 Australian dollars.

Not a bad paycheck. And I've been earning similar amounts every month since then.

Does it sound easy? Well, if it was too easy then everyone from your granny to the mailman would be doing it.

In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably takes some expertise.

That's where my book, Affiliate Adventure, will really help you. It will breathe life into your affiliate marketing campaigns by telling you exactly how to get started in this business and which mistakes to avoid from the very beginning.

I'm finally making the kind of money online that I always dreamed about.

By promoting affiliate programs at Pay Per Click Search engines, you can too.

Give Your Affiliate Program A Lift With A New Or Improved Product

If an affiliate program is an important part of your business,
your profits are only as good as your affiliate members. Sales
drop like a rock when they get discouraged or lose interest.

You will see the dreaded signs if you frequently visit your
affiliates' sites. The banner or enthusiastic endorsement they
once had on their opening page is now relegated to a link on the
second or third tier of their site. Something as simple as that
can cut the number of hits you get by a factor of ten or twenty.

Two things usually account for members giving you the back burner
treatment: Your product or service isn't selling as well as it
once did for them. Or members are simply losing interest because
newer, more exciting affiliate programs are grabbing their
attention.

You can immediately solve both problems by offering a new or
improved product or service. Spend time to make sure your new
product is a big improvement over what has come before. The more
you can insure your product is a big deal, the more excited your
affiliates will get.

Make your roll-out a big production. Give your new creation a
whole new area with a fresh new look on your web site.

Two weeks before you unveil your new product, start sending
announcements to your affiliates. Let them know something
important is about to happen and they will be the first to hear
about it.

After you bring out your product, do a quick follow-up with
members. Get comments on how they expect the new product to
sell. Harvest early accounts of how some members are doing well
with the product. Include these comments in your weekly email
updates to members.

A word of warning--try not to veer completely away from what has
worked for you before. If you have always sold software, don't
bring in a new line of office furniture as your new product for
affiliates. An exciting new software application will work
better and will not dilute the brand identity your business has
enjoyed.

Got a major product you don't want to ignore? Good! It's
almost always easier to get affiliates and customers excited
about an improvement to an old favorite than it is to make a
favorite out of a completely new product.

Keep a file of customer complaints and ideas about your product.
Over time you can use these as ideas starters for ways to build
improvements that customers and affiliates will appreciate and
value.

When interest in your product or service starts to diminish, pull
our your file and make requested improvements. Add in enough
improvements and you have a new issue, a next generation, or a
fresh edition you can sell as a replacement or upgrade to your
long list of previous customers.

Affiliate programs are still the number one way to market on the
Web. It pays to keep your program exiting and top-of-mind. For
many companies, it is unlikely that a better way to boost profits
will come along any time soon.

Affiliate programs - Who's really making the money?

There will be a million and one affiliates out there who will tell you that the affiliate program they promote is going to be the best one for you.

But have you considered who is really making the money and who gains the most out of affiliate programs.

Let's take a step back and look at the AFFILIATE.

What exactly is the role of the affilate?

* The sole purpose of the affiliate is to PROMOTE the product and/or service

What are the benefits of being an affiliate?

* Get paid a minimal commission that is regulated by the owner of the product/service

In short, As an affiliate it is your responsibility to make someone else rich whilst doing all the hard work. You take on the expenses of advertising, you are the one who usually misses out on subscribers if you haven't first made them your client before they buy the product/service you are promoting.

And all this for what??? Maybe $20 per sale if you are really, really lucky.

You also need to remember that when you are an affiliate, YOU are not the only person promoting that very same product/service.

So what will make your offer any different to someone else who is promoting the exact same product, usually using the same sales technique, offering it at the same price.

To be in the top 5%, which is the amount of affiliates who make more than $100.00 per month, you need to first have a really good, clean, targeted subscribers list of more than 50,000 subscribers, know exactly how to gain targeted traffic, and have a huge advertising budget.

For the other 95%, the only way you are going to make alot of money from and affiliate program is to OWN YOUR OWN.

It really isn't as hard as you might think to set up.

So in conclusion, the best AFFILIATE PROGRAM, obviously is the one you OWN.

Affiliate Programs - 7 Red Hot Tips For Affiliates

We often get asked by affiliates about how to successfully deal with affiliate programs. There are many ways - and different Internet "gurus" will give you different answers.

Here are the top seven tips that our top consulting editors normally give:

1. Make no mistake about it - merchants and Internet marketers are in business to make money for themselves. They are not interested in helping you to take cash away from them. Their mission is to make as much money as they can - and to give away the minimum they have to. Many merchants and marketers use "tricks" and "tactics" to ensure that they always get the best out of the deal.

2. You must be alert and awake - what tactics are merchants and marketers using to grab your traffic? Many of them will "steal" your traffic and you will not get as much as a simple "thank you" - let alone the bags of cash they all promise.

3. Do you carefully follow what the merchants and marketers tell you? They often give you "helpful advice" so that you may maximize your affiliate income. Here's the sad truth - if you follow them like "blind sheep" - you will increase their profits, not yours.

4. Do you monitor the level of traffic you generate for merchants and marketers? Does this convert to sales and cash? If not, what is happening to your traffic? You need to look into that.

5. Even when you get commissions, don't be too happy. The merchants and marketers will proceed to make 10 to 100 times more out of your traffic than they will ever share with you.

6. You are in business for yourself - when you market and promote affiliate programs, they must generate money and cash flow for your business. If you don't get reasonable returns on your time and cash investment, dump the merchant or marketer. The program is either not worth promoting or the merchant or marketer is abusing your efforts.

7. Promote affiliate programs under your own domain and branding - don't give free advertising to merchants and marketers who may not be interested in rewarding you for your efforts.

Working With Affiliate Programs

Everywhere you look you see affiliate program offers for
every product or service that you can think of. Some have
fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard
products all over the world. In case you don't know, "hard"
products are those that you can touch...unlike an ebook or
downloadable web template. Many affiliate programs have
several thousand affiliates and one or two of the bigger
companies have over one million affiliates.

What are the advantages of joining an affiliate program?

They provide a ready-made business. This is a very big plus
for those people who want to earn some kind of living off
the Internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to set up
a business by themselves.

Commissions and rewards are generally good, and the more
established programs offer a real chance of advancement to
higher and better-paid levels.

Other affiliates are usually on hand to offer practical
support.

What are the limitations?

You are restricted in your promotional activities due to the
fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site they
give you. You won't be able to put such things as banners,
images, links, meta tags, etc. onto your page.
The URL of your affiliate page is often either too long or
contains such awkward things as question marks, which many
Search Engines will not index.

Any promotional ads or articles have probably already been
used by thousands of other people and consequently may have
lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve sales
or referrals.

If the program you have joined has not yet established
itself (or in some cases even if it has), then you may
encounter problems with payments owed to you not being
honored. You also run the risk of low quality products or
sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record how
many referrals or sales you have made.

You may be required to purchase a minimum quantity of the
product on a regular basis before you start to qualify for
commissions or even before you can become an affiliate.
You may not get the technical or affiliate support you might
expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate
staffing, or the company's negligence.

Other people in your downline do nothing to promote the
program.

At least four of the above limitations can be overcome with
a little time and effort. You could, for example, come up
with fresher ads to promote the program (provided this is
allowed).

If the company supplies the email addresses of people in
your downline, then you could offer to help the less active
members. Very often these people are passive not because
they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they don't
know HOW to promote effectively! your guidance could mean
the difference between no sales or referrals and healthy
downlines and residual incomes.

As regards promoting your actual page, here are a couple of
little tricks that should overcome a number of
restrictions:

Cloak your Affiliate URL to stop hijackers Affiliate Masker
While this will not help you to get listed on the major
Search Engines, it will make your web page easier for
prospects to remember and type into their browser's address
bar.

Go to your affiliate page. Place your mouse pointer anywhere
on the page and right click once. In the drop-down box
choose "View Source". This will display the HTML for the
page. Save this to your hard drive as a HTML document using
the "Save As" function. Upload the page to your web site.
If you don't have a web site then get some free web space
from one of these:

http://www.tripod.com/
http://www.fortunecity.com/
http://www.hypermart.net/index.gsp
http://www.crosswinds.net/
http://www.htmlpublishing.com/
http://www.freehomepages.com/
http://www.pageproducer.com/

Submit your 'new' page to the Search Engines. You are also
now able to place banner codes, links, images, testimonials,
in fact anything you want onto these pages, because you are
in control of the HTML. A word of caution, though. Don't
change the actual HTML of your original affiliate page. Just
put the other stuff, like banners etc, around it.

Making this "mirror page" of your affiliate page will
dramatically improve your advertising options.

Affiliate Programs - What Are They

In recent years Affiliate Program marketing has taken the Internet by storm. Many surveys have demonstrated that Affiliate Marketing can be the most cost effective method to promote your website and quickly generate additional streams of income. For example, Forrester Research has rated Affiliate Marketing as the most effective of all online marketing methods.

Jupiter Communications claims that, "By 2002, 25 percent of the expected $37.5 billion in Internet retail sales, not including autos, will have originated on Affiliate sites."

Some of the giants offering affiliate programs are: Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Microsoft, The Mail.com, and many smaller but well-managed companies.

Affiliate Programs offer a wide range of products and services, many of which are needed by All Internet marketers. The wide range of products and services offered by Affiliate programs are software, web hosting, auto-responders, marketing, art, books, e-books, music, movies, etc... Almost any type of product or service can be packaged and sold using an affiliate program. You'll find that many of the products and/or services needed to support your MLM are Affiliate Programs.

What Is An Affiliate Program?

Affiliate programs are also known as associate, reseller, or
referral programs. They are revenue sharing programs between
companies (the merchant) and individuals (the affiliate). An Affiliate can be likened to an independent contractor. Affiliates are basically self-employed people who are marketing the products and or services of another company. They are then paid by the company they represent for referring customers to the company's website.

This strikes a wonderful partnership between the company and the affiliate, offering a Win-Win situation for both parties. The benefit to the company in soliciting an affiliate to promote their product or service is, that they save in the cost of advertising. The benefit to the affiliate is that they do not have to develop their own product, stock inventory or worry about e-commerce, the order processing or payroll for that matter. It allows them to take an already developed product or service directly to market and focus on marketing.

Affiliate programs are fairly simple to work and will allow you to operate your on-line business much more efficiently while
increasing your income drastically.

The Best Affiliate programs, offer a Two-tier pay plan. First, you earn commissions for signing up associates on your first level, as well as earning additional commissions on their sales. However, if you find an Affiliate program which pays only on one level but allows you to earn residual income this is an excellent opportunity.

Developing Affiliate income is beneficial to you in that it builds a stable secondary income stream. For many people this could be the difference in income they need to maintain building their MLM into a profitable venture.

About 90% of people who try to make money from two-tier affiliate programs are missing it by simply signing up free, in hopes they will make money through others, who most likely also signed up free. This just does not work.

Why doesn't that work? Well, if everyone signs up to an Affiliate program free, no one is Actively Promoting it consequently no one makes any money. This is also true of MLM programs. If everyone has the option of a free sign-up, most will take it. If most people are signed up free and in turn promote that offer to others who also sign-up free, there is no revenue generated. Without revenue there are not profits. Remember, it's all Your business, You have to work it. You cannot depend upon the next person.

In Affiliate Marketing as well as any other type of business, You Must do the work yourself. Build your first level and
invest a little time and training to teach them, so they can then build their first level, which then becomes your second level. In Affiliate Marketing, your second level commission should be considered a Bonus.

There are many supporting products and/or services needed to build any MLM, which offer an Affiliate program. For example, the use of an Auto-responder is a must in any online promotional effort. Since the use of an Auto-responder is necessary in building your MLM, becoming an Affiliate of a good Auto-responder program would be a wise choice.

As you focus on building your MLM begin to look closely at the products and services you are using and determine if they offer an Affiliate program or not. I believe you'll be much surprised.

If you don't have an existing business, that's not a problem. A combination of a solid group of Affiliate programs working in synergy offers a great income producing potential, when effectively promoted. This could actually help you to begin earning income as you research and seek out the MLM opportunity that's best for you.

To re-cap, we have learnt that Affiliate Programs are offered in a variety of products and services. By choosing the right group of Affiliat programs in support of your MLM, you can quickly begin earning additional income.

6 Must Read Reasons to Join Online Affiliate Programs

Are you looking for a very cost effective way to make an extra income? Let me show you why online affiliate programs are a great answer to your needs...

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

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

1. Your Products

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

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

2. Your Income Potential

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

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

3. Your Investment

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

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

4. Your Business Training

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

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

5. Your Business Needs

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

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

6. Your Bottom Line

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

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

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

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

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