The easiest business to start on the internet is an affiliate business. You don't need a product because you have thousands of products available to you. All you need is a website idea.
There are no products to stock, you don't have to do your own customer service. All you have to do is promote the product.
On the other hand, starting an affiliate business can be the hardest type of business to start. You are competing against hundreds, maybe even thousands of other affiliates. You need a competitive edge to help you make more sales and distinguish yourself from other affiliates.
Below are seven solutions for helping you develop the ultimate affiliate business and make more sales.
1. Link Cloaking
There are advantages and disadvantages to cloaking your links.
The major advantage is that it protects your commissions. Visitors to your site won't know exactly where the link goes so they can't hijack your commissions.
The major disadvantage is that the search engines have a problem with redirects. They will reject any redirect that doesn't go where it is supposed to.
You can solve that with the right link cloaker. Free Link Cloaker - http://click-4-more.com/on/Free-Link-Cloaker.html - is a tool that you can set up on your site to cloak your links that your commissions don't get hijacked. It's very easy to use, and it will make it look like the page is on your site.
This cloaker is also very similar to many products you see on the internet selling for $59 or more.
2. Keyword Search
Before developing your site, or planning any marketing campaigns, you need to make sure that you choose the right keywords. Choose the wrong keywords, and your marketing plan will fail.
Niche Keywords - http://www.easytoolbox.com/cgi-bin/keywords/nichekeywords.cgi - will help you find the right keywords for marketing your business, as well as optimizing your site for the search engines.
3. Affiliate Program Search
Finding the right affiliate programs for your new business is crucial. You want to create multiple income streams, as well as different combinations of programs.
These programs include one time sales, as well as recurring commissions on products like memberships. You can also earn commissions for referring others to services.
Something to keep in mind when choosing your affiliate programs is that you want to look for programs that pay high commissions. You don't want to waste your efforts promoting a program where you only get a few dollars for a lot of hard work.
These two sites will help you find affiliate programs, as well as alert you to new programs as they become available.
http://www.websitemarketingtactics.com/blog/2005/04/affiliates-alert-free-software.html
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/free-software.shtml
4. Affiliate Program Management
You will make a lot more money from your affiliate programs if you track and manage your programs, as well as track and manage your commissions.
This will help you see what programs work best for you, and what is selling the best. Then you can concentrate on promoting those programs.
Personal Affiliate Manager - http://www.georgecain.com/PersonalAffiliateManager.htm - is a free software that will not only keep track of all of your affiliate programs, it will help you find new ones.
You can also use it to track your commissions and keep records of the money that you have made. This software will also create affiliate reports for you, and it's free.
5. Landing Pages
If you promote using any type of Adwords program, or you have a direct response site where you are building a list, then you need some type of software or online tool to help you build your landing pages. This is especially important if you don't know anything about HTML.
Landing Page Builder - http://www.landingpagebuilder.com - this is a donationware software. This means that if you like the software, you can make a donation to help the program owner.
The beauty of this software is that you can use it to help you build landing pages, and you can build as many as you want.
Google Publisher - http://www.googlepublisher.com/index.html - This online tool allows you to build pages that have Google Adsense already incorporated into the page. All you have to do is add your Google Adsense Publisher ID.
This is especially helpful if you have a MAC instead of a PC because you can build your pages online. Also, you don't need a website.
The free version allows you to build about 200 pages, but you don't get to add your Google Adsense ID. The paid version, which is insanely cheap, allows you to build as many landing pages as you like.
6. Website Building
If you really want to succeed as an affiliate, you need to build a content rich, keyword rich website.
If you don't know HTML, this can really be a problem.
These two tools will help you with building your website, as well as finding content for your site.
Orwell - http://www.portalfeeder.com/blog/ - Orwell searches the article directories for you to help you find keyword rich articles on your topic. It will format the articles into HTML for you, and all you have to do is copy and paste the code. It will also tell you the keyword density of the article.
Easy Web Page Creator - http://www.easy-web-page-creator.com/ - is a piece of free software that you can use to build web pages for your site with only a few mouse clicks.
7. List Building
List building is absolutely crucial for affiliates. By building a list, this will give you an opportunity to market to your potential customers repeatedly, allowing you to raise the conversion on sales.
The best tool for list building is an autoresponder. An autoresponder will handle all of the tedious tasks like managing your lists and handling subscribes and unsubscribes.
Two free services:
http://www.getresponse.com
http://www.sendfree.com
I would also recommend that you check out this site. Anthony Tomei offers an excellent tool for affiliates, and you can also get some great resources for your affiliate marketing on this site. They all free.
http://www.gurupal.com
Let me caution you here, the problem with a free service is that they put ads for other products in your headers and footers. You want to upgrade as soon as you possibly can.
Starting an affiliate business can be easy. Plan your website carefully, offer valuable content, and differentiate yourself from other affiliates. Implement these tools in your affiliate business and watch your commissions rise.
January 29, 2007
Top 7 Tools for Affiliates
How to Make a living as an affiliate
95% of all affiliates make $0 - $100 a year. I don't know about you, but in my books, this is not a living. In this quick “How To” guide, we'll take a look at how you can become part of the 5% who ARE making their living online. This guide does not guarantee that you'll make a fortune, but it will point you in the right direction if you're interested in making a living as an affiliate.
1. Mindset: Get in touch with your grey matter. Program your mind with positive, committed thoughts. If you can believe it,you can achieve it. It sounds a bit like a sales seminar, but bottom line is, if you don't believe you can make a living online, you won't. You have to be committed. Commit to yourself that you will develop an income online – no matter what it takes. Think of your business as a bacon and eggs breakfast. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed!
2. Viewpoint: This is your business. Once you've accomplished your first hurdle and committed yourself to making this work, you have to look at your business from the proper viewpoint. No rose coloured glasses here. This is your business. You are the CEO of your own marketing company. You can choose to offer your services to one or several companies. Bottom line, you are responsible for every action in your company. Every decision you make affects your bottom line.
3. Learning Curve: Expect it. Becoming an affiliate is like going to college or university. You start at the beginning, learn the basics and build on what you learn. Take it step-by-step and you'll build a much stronger business. Think of it like becoming a doctor. One doesn't decide to become a doctor with the expectation of opening a successful practice one week from now. It takes time to learn the products or services you're marketing and it takes time to learn to run your business.
4. Budget: Time and money. Set a general budget for both. As a business owner, you'll use plenty of time developing and promoting your affiliate business. Budget as much time as you can each day and make sure you use your time wisely. Set up a budget for your monetary expenses too. You can run a business online with a shoestring budget, just don't expect a mammoth income in the beginning. The more you can invest in your business, the better. This doesn't mean that simply throwing money at your business will make it grow. Every dollar that goes out your door, needs to come back in and bring another dollar with it.
5. Goals: s/he shoots - s/he scores! Your goals will get you through the tough times. There'll be lots of days when you feel like quitting. If you make your goals tangible, you'll make it through the tough days. Money isn't a motivator, but what money can buy, is. Set your goals for a family vacation, a new car, boat, or home. It's much easier to get excited about a shiny red corvette in your driveway than $100,000 sitting in your bank account. Money is only numbers on a piece of paper or a computer screen, but it can bring you a luxurious lifestyle, and that's where the fun is.
6. Nuts and Bolts: Once you've got your house in order, with the proper mindset, you're looking at your business from a realistic viewpoint, you've got an open mind and you're ready to learn, you've set aside some time and money and you've got pictures of your dream house, car and vacation plastered on your wall, you're ready to go hunting. The next step is to find a business that interests you and offers an affiliate program with a reasonable commission. For information products, one of the most popular and profitable online, you can and should expect a commission of 25% or more.
Pick a product that interests you. Buy it and use it. Your business is based on your recommendations of a product or service. If you haven't used it, how can you recommend it? Avoid running around in circles after the newest, hottest selling product of the day, it only leaves you dizzy and broke.
Choose a product you're interested in. If you like astronomy, becoming an affiliate of a star chart company may be a good fit. Selling women's pantyhose may not.
7. Look before you leap: Finding a company to represent as an affiliate is one thing, finding a company that respects its affiliates is another. Do a bit of research before you jump on the bandwagon. Send an email to the company as if you're a potential customer. 24 – 48 hours is a good response time. This shows that someone is actually running the company. It also gives you an idea of their commitment. Generally, the faster the response, the more committed the company is to doing business. The quality of the response is also important.Did the response answer your question? Was it written in a friendly, professional manor? Did they answer your question directly or simply send you to a FAQ sheet?
8. Flip the switch: If everything checks out up to this point,then your next step is to take action. Fill out the affiliate application form and get your affiliate URL. Now the ball is in your court. It's time to get down to brass tacks. If you freeze now, you make no money and flush your goals down the toilet. If you take action, you make it one step closer to your goals.
9. If you build it – they will come: OK not really, but you do have to build it. If you want to maximize your income and be taken seriously, you need to own a website. Just like a brick and mortar business, you need a professional location to offer your products. Yes, you get an affiliate URL when you sign up as an affiliate, but promoting an affiliate link looks amateur and will help you LOSE 98% of your sales. We'll cover this in point 10.
10. Follow-up = Sales: Only 2% of your prospects will sign up or buy what you're offering, on their first visit. 98% of your sales will be made from your follow up. There's a very simple method for following up and making sales automatically.
i. Check your favourite search engine to locate a free ebook, software program or report that relates to your offer. If you're promoting a website that sells peanut butter, a free peanut butter recipe book would be a good match. Your give-away must always relate to the product you're promoting to maximize the results of this system.
ii. Build a page on your website to give away your free peanut butter recipe book. Design the page as if you were designing a sales page. Make people's mouths water until they want the recipes so bad they'd gladly pay for them, but then give it to them free. All they have to do is fill in their name and email address in the simple form and you'll send their recipe book to them instantly via email.
iii. As soon as your peanut butter prospect fills out the form on your site and clicks the send button, they are taken to your affiliate URL where they can buy peanut butter. At the same time, the peanut butter recipe book is sent to their email address.
iv. Now your peanut butter prospect receives an email from you each week with new tips and useful peanut butter information. This information positions you as a peanut butter expert and gives you the opportunity to promote your peanut butter affiliate website once a week, to hot prospects. This is where you'll make 98% of your sales.
Although this may seem like an overwhelming amount of work for the beginner, it's all very simple. The whole process is run from an autoresponder, a simple piece of email software that automatically sends your prewritten email messages on a predetermined schedule.
Your success as an affiliate is determined by you. 95% of the people that read this simple How To guide will do nothing with it. 5% of the people that read this guide will put all the pieces in place and start making a living as an affiliate. You have to decide which side of the coin you want to be on.
Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing
Why Affiliate Marketing?
Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.
Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.
There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.
Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.
What about Google Adsense?
Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.
While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.
The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.
So, where do all of these lead us to?
Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.
It always takes two. Two people to dance, smooch and love even make money. Find out what I did to market on the internet. www.RightChange4u.com