How to Earn an Income with Affiliate Programs

An affiliate is someone who earns a part-time or full-time income from selling other people's products and then earns a commission on each product that is being sold through promoting it on their own website, newsletter or email list, depending on the preferred method of delivering their online business. Commission can range from around 5% to approximately 75% for each product, according to the value and popularity given to the products that are promoted.

Selling information appears to be one of the most profitable ways of earning an income as an affiliate, since the public tend to go online to search for information about a subject they want to find out more about. The commission for selling information products online is usually in the region of 50% and higher for digital products. This obviously provides the affiliate marketer with plenty of incentive therefore to promote the products on offer.

So how does someone become an affiliate?

1. Decide on a subject that interests you, since you will be creating a website, newsletter or writing articles around the theme of the product you are selling. For instance, are you interested in dogs? If so, you could create a basic website around an aspect of dog ownership.

Have you any special hobbies or talents that you enjoy spending time doing? Then, perhaps you could create a website or newsletter around the theme of your hobby or talent?

Are you getting any ideas?

2. Once you have decided on a suitable subject for your website, you are ready to start searching for products to advertise based on the theme of your website. For example, a website about dogs could involve all aspects of dog ownership or one aspect such as dog training, dog breeding or dog grooming.

3. When you've decided on a product to promote and sell, you should then sign up as an affiliate with the company offering that product on sale. This usually involves a straightforward means of completing an online registration form to list you as an affiliate of their company. They will then send an email to you with confirmation details of your affiliate membership and a special code that identifies you with the sale of each product that contains your code details.

4. Start creating your website. If you are already experienced at developing websites, then this aspect of building your online business will be the easiest part of your affiliate product promotion. However, if you are like many other online marketers who are new to the concept of web design, you can either learn to do this for free with the number of good tutorials that are available online or through books such as those sold on Amazon that teach you to build a website from scratch. The other alternative is to hire an experienced web designer to build your website for you for a reasonable fee.

5. When you have your website created, you are ready to let the world know your online existence. To do this, you can submit your website to the search engines such as Google and Yahoo for free. Also, write and post articles on your chosen subject and post them on relevant article sites as well as on your own website. Start a newsletter and get people to sign up for it through providing a place on your site for people to leave their names and email address. Also, you can join relevant forums and start posting messages with details of your own website in your signature. There are countless means of promoting and selling affiliate products online.

This article has hopefully provided you with a few ideas to get you started with earning a part-time or full-time income as an Affiliate on the Internet.
Michael Russell - EzineArticles Expert Author


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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Affiliate Programs
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Affiliate Online Program: How To Start A Business Empire

Your dream of real entrepreneurial success may not be an affiliate online program but a business where you are dealing with your own products and services. Your very own creations.

And there is nothing wrong with having such a dream. But why not consider the many advantages of an affiliate online program where you are dealing with somebody else's products?

You can start the moment after you have finished reading this article and you do not require the high set up fees to get a fully functional ecommerce site running. All that has already been done for you. All you need to focus on is referring as many of your visitors as possible to your affiliate online program site and the highly paid experts there will do the rest.

The landing pages have been tested and tried over time and have proved to be the most likely to get a vasy majority of the persons who arrive there, reaching for their credit cards. And they do not need to worry about a little know company because in many cases your affiliate online program is from a well known company with a track record of sorts. And even if they have never heard of it, they will be more likely to buy because somebody else has referred them to the site, even if it is a total stranger.

Most of all when you consider the fact that some super affiliates are taking home over $150,000 a month from a single program, then you quickly realize that there is little difference from a situation where you are dealing with your product. This is because there is really no limit to how much one can earn. Actually the only limit is one's imagination because yet another advantage affiliate entrepreneurs enjoy is the fact that they do not have to worry about the serious problems a sudden upsurge in sales can cause.

With these advantages, the chances of success dramatically improve with an affiliate online program. Setting up a serious business empire based on a couple of affiliate online programs is not so difficult.

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Christopher Kyalo is a successful online entrepreneur involved in several lucrative affiliate programs. Read other parts of this article at his Affiliate program blog. Subscribe to his Affiliate Insider Secrets newsletter now and access a free copy of his life-changing special report My Sure Fire Guide To 6-figure check Affiliate Success. To subscribe simply send a blank email now to affiliate-insider-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Affiliate Marketing - Can You Really Be Successful At It?

What is Affiliate Marketing / Internet Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a simple concept. You help to sell products for a particular merchant/company and earn a certain percentage as commission (anywhere from $1 - >$10,000). Basically it's a home based business and you can own as many "shops" as you want, without the hassle of stock inventory, shipping, etc.

How much can I earn from Affiliate Marketing?

The top affiliate marketers are earning upwards of $30,000 every month. Kyle and Carson (authors of Beating Adwords), are just some popular examples. When you're just starting out, don't expect to earn thousands overnight. But it is definitely possible to reach $100/day after a month or two of affiliate marketing (provided you do it right).

Is Affiliate Marketing easy to learn?

Yes, anyone can learn affiliate marketing, no matter how computer savvy you are. It is easy to get started on affiliate marketing. But to do it well, you need some dedication and the right resources. You need a good starter guide. There are dozens out there online claiming to be the "best", but in truth there are really only a few genuine resources on learning affiliate marketing.

So, where should I go to learn Affiliate Marketing? And what kind of sites should I avoid as a beginner?

Here's a general rule of thumb, avoid websites which give away too many freebies. In fact, only trust sites which offer one main product, and nothing else. The simple fact is that you won't need the free softwares, free "traffic generators", free newsletters, etc. They are just given away free to tempt you to part with your money. Many times the freebies are plain garbage that you will not use. Get ONE good book on affiliate marketing and you are one step closer to financial freedom.

Resources

You won't find another affiliate marketing guide that is half as good as Beating Adwords. Read a review of it here. The authors of this ebook have years of experience and are real pros in the field of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Programs - Points To Consider Before You Join One

Affiliate Marketing Tips

What Is An Affiliate Program?
Affiliate programs (also known as associate programs), are online arrangements whereby a merchant website pays you (the affiliate) a commission for sending traffic (customers) to them. In essence you are promoting whatever product(s) that merchant is selling. The beauty of this system is that it does not involve: stocking merchandise; shipping and handling; processing credit cards or any kind of customer support. And an added bonus is that you don't even need a website for this type of internet marketing.

Points To Consider Before You Join An Affiliate Program

1. Is The Company Trustworthy? Your concern here is whether you'll be paid on time and if at all. Obviously if the company in question is an ebay or Amazon, you don't have to worry. However if the merchant in question is unknown, that's when you may have some concerns about fly-by-night scenarios or dishonesty.

Solution: Join well established affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or ClickBank that host thousands of merchant affiliate programs and oversee the commission payout to affiliates.

2. Any Contact Information? If you can't find any contact information...MOVE ON!

3. How Long Before They Respond To Your Request To Join? If you don't get a response within 72 hours (3 business days) pass on that particular program. Their tardiness probably extends across board and who's to say they'll be more responsive about your payments or when you have a real problem.

4. Where's The Affiliate Agreement? If the program in question doesn't have an agreement...MOVE ON. No agreement leaves you exposed to being cheated out of your hard earned commissions.

5. What Does The Agreement Say? Okay, nobody likes reading those long-winded go-on-forever agreements; however, in this case make a point of doing so! If you don't, you could be in for a rather nasty surprise later on. Let's say for example you invest several hundred dollars promoting a particular product and your returns from that effort are a couple of thousand dollars. Most likely, you'd want to get paid as soon as possible. But if you didn't read the agreement which stated that the company pays quarterly, your money would be tied up and you'd have nobody but yourself to blame.

6. Agreement Termination Terms. Most agreements have a termination clause detailing the terms under which you or the company can end the affiliation. It is ill-advised to sign up for a program that binds you to a particular company for a specific period of time. Also be wary of programs that demand exclusivity; such programs generally prohibit you from promoting similar products (from a competitor merchant) on the same site, thereby effectively cutting into your bottom line.

7. Does The Affiliate Program Require A Fee To Join? Affiliate programs are free to join; after all, you're in effect advertising for the merchant. If a program requires you to pay a fee to join, it's not an affiliate program but rather a Multi-Level Marketing scheme ( MLM).

8. What Type Of Affiliate Program Is It? There're basically three types of affiliate programs: pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead and pay-per-click.

· Pay-Per-Sale: Such programs pay either a fixed cash amount or a fixed percentage for sales generated by your promotional efforts. · Pay-Per-Lead: Here you earn a set amount whenever a customer sent by you fills out a survey, requests a quote or obtains some information. · Pay-Per-Click: These are similar to pay-per-lead programs and you are paid each time one of your visitors clicks on a link through to the merchant's site.

Pay-Per-Lead and Pay-Per-Click affiliate programs require large volumes of traffic to generate any substantial revenue so it's probably better for you to opt for the Pay-Per-Sale type of program. This type is performance based and gives you a much better chance of making serious money!

9. What Is The Commission Rate? The commission rate and structure will determine how much money you make. Generally the best paying programs pay you a commission of 50% for every sale. But you have to dig a little deeper to make sure you really understand what you have to do before you get that 50% commission. For example some pay-per-lead programs promise a 50% commission payout per application (let's say credit card applications), but you only get that commission after said applicant has been approved.

10. Do You Get Recurring Sales? The best kind of affiliate programs entitle you to recurring sales. What this means is that as long as the customer you referred keeps ordering the product (such as a website hosting plan), you keep getting paid every month! This is what is known as residual sales. So be on the lookout for affiliate programs offering residual commissions. It's a great way to make effortless, automated monthly cash!

11. Does The Program Pay Lifetime Commissions? A program that pays lifetime commissions pays you (the affiliate) a commission for each and every product that your referred customer buys from that merchant. This includes any applicable residual commissions. This kind of commission structure is the best there is.

12. Does the Program Use Cookies to Track Sales And How Long Do The Cookies Last? So what are cookies? Simply put, a cookie is a harmless piece of computer code or script that captures harmless information (such as identifying a computer through current and subsequent visits, websites visited and date of visit). This is of importance to you because this is how a merchant can tell that a particular customer was referred by you, thus ensuring you get your commission. The importance of cookies does not stop there. There're cookies and there are cookies! Cookies are coded to expire after a set period of time. So if a merchant supplies you (the affiliate) with cookies programmed to expire after 120 days, this means that if one of your referrals makes a purchase anytime within those 120 days, you'll get credited for that sale and get paid your commission. Remember, it takes at least 7 exposures to a product before a person is ready to buy! So the longer lasting the cookie, the better...at least from your point of view as an affiliate.

13. Do You Get To See Your Sales Statistics In Real Time? Make sure any affiliate program you sign up for offers real-time sales tracking (within seconds to one hour) or almost real-time sales tracking. This is important because you need to be able to assess the success of a particular promotion campaign.

14. Does The Affiliate Program Offer sales Tools? A well-organized and professional affiliate program offers their affiliates advertising copy, banner ads and/or item-specific links. Sales tools such as these make your job easier. If a program does not offer these it's probably best for you to look at other affiliate programs.

15. When Do I Get Paid? How Do I Get Paid? Make sure you know how often the affiliate program pays: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly. Also consider what currency you're going to get paid in. The big plus here is, if you're located outside of the United States, you're still going to be paid in U.S. Dollars as most internet companies transact in U.S. Dollars.

16. What Kind Of Billing Mechanism Is In Place? To avoid payment issues, it's better to join programs that are part of a bigger affiliate network (such as Commission Junction or ClickBank). Such affiliate networks make sure that each and every merchant who is part of their network has sufficient funds in its account to pay its affiliates on time. When you sign up for a program that handles payment and everything else itself, you lack this kind of security.

17. What's The Minimum Payout Amount? Most programs require you to earn a set minimum amount before they'll issue you a check or deposit earnings directly into your bank account.

Ba Kiwanuka
http://www.internetbusinessmart.com

Make Big Money With Affiliate Program

Have you ever joined an affiliate program with a great product/service but still can’t make big money (if any)? Then where in the world all these affiliates with a big pay check came from? Can you still make money as an affiliate? The answer is YES.

Money can be made from affiliate program as many people still do everyday. Two major problems people fail to make big money from affiliate program:
- They only get a small percent of commission.
- Too many people joined the same affiliate program. Sometimes well over 100,000 affiliates for a single affiliate program.

Making money from affiliate program is not simple as put up a link in your website and expect lots of people to click on it. Even though, some people do make money this way but most of them are not big money. In order to make big money you need a strategy.

Your own opt in email list is probably the best way to make big money from an affiliate program. Building a list will take time but the reward at the end is well worth it. There is higher chance person in your own list will buy a similar product/service or it is complement with the one that you offer. The best of both worlds if you could capture the potential customer’s email before send them off to the affiliate’s website because you are now own that list and you can promote other products/services in the future. Don’t go crazy by offering anything and think people will buy it. Also, never make people in your opt in list feel you are just an advertiser. Give them some valuable information before recommend a product/service. Never recommend a product/service that you do not like it yourself.

The second way to make big money with affiliate is to find a super-affiliate. What is a super-affiliate? Super-affiliate is affiliate with his/her own opt in email list. If you asked a super-affiliate to join an affiliate program and if he/she does then that means he/she is under you whenever someone from his/her list purchases the product/service you will get a commission from it. It’s a win-win situation. Only a few super-affiliates you already build yourself an army of affiliates. An advantage of the second method is time saving. It’s won’t take as much time as build a list but it is a challenge to convince a super-affiliate to join the affiliate program that you are promoting.

There you have the two best ways to make big money with affiliate program. Making money as affiliate is not easy but at the same time is not impossible either.

Copyright 2006 by Bryan Tran, www.unlimitedpayment.com

Bryan Tran is an Internet marketer shows an average guy what the Internet guru marketers’ marketing secrets, http://www.unlimitedpayment.com.

Affiliate Marketing is the Best Income Source

To promote Web businesses, affiliate marketing is used. The Web sites that offers different products or services of other web sites are known as affiliates. Such affiliates find new customers and increase revenues of business firms.

Affiliate marketing is the best way to advertise products at lower costs that results in saving your time and money. Affiliate marketing is a joint effort or relationship between a business firm and affiliates. The affiliate charges a commission, known as affiliate commission on overall profits.

There are many advantages of affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing business there is no boss and no one will tell you what to do. It is an easier way to earn continuous money. Affiliate marketing helps businesses to earn more profits by offering their products to more websites that in turn create more sales. Such marketing business is also beneficial for customers as they get better products on cheap rates. The biggest advantage of this business goes to advertisers because they will get high commissions along with maintenance fees.

The important thing to remember is that what type of affiliate marketing is the best. The affiliate marketing fall under two main categories: pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-performance (PPP). PPC is common type of affiliate marketing and the affiliate gets commission from merchant whenever a new visitor is introduced means click on the merchant's sign or advertisements.

In PPP affiliate marketing program, the affiliates get commission whenever the customer actions takes the real form means when the visitor buys something from the merchant's site. PPP affiliate marketing can also be divided into two different parts: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL). Under PPS, the affiliate is only paid when the customer referred by him buys something from site. Under this the affiliates will get some commission based on sales or a fixed fee. PPL is mainly used by insurance and finance companies. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is only paid when the visitor fills an application form of the company.

Author presents a website on affiliate marketing. This website provides information about meaning of affiliate marketing, advantages of affiliate marketing and different types of affiliate marketing. To get more information click here

Online Affiliate Program Networks: The Home Based Business Goldmine

Home business opportunities are in abundance, the trouble is picking one that suits you. The Internet is awash with new ventures and supposed quick fixes to all business problems. But the trouble with many of these is that there are no guarantees and huge financial risks involved. One home business opportunity has been picked up and mastered by millions, from people looking to subsidise their income with a small regular payment to those looking to generate enough revenue to live off of. It may sound like an unlikely solution to your home business quest, but affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable industries with boundless opportunities.

Affiliate marketing may seem a rather unconventional, even an unlikely business venture, but in terms of free enterprise it is one of the best around. There are payments that have to be made, no customers to contact and best of all as a website owner you become master of your own destiny. All that is required from a new affiliate is to sign up to one of the many affiliate programs circulating the Internet, own a website and then be prepared to host advertisements on the site. Affiliates will then be automatically rewarded each time a customer joins the site that they represent via one of their links.

Some affiliate programs reap a higher reward than others, take the sports betting industry for example. Sports betting has developed into one of the largest and most profitable online industries. The affiliate program package provided by sports betting sites is unrivalled in terms of potential revenue. Rather than fobbing the websites that represent them off with a small one off payment for each customer that an affiliate attracts, sports betting programs offer a percentage scheme.

The percentage is not based on a couple of months of a players betting, it is spread over their entire lifetime on the site. Thanks to the technology that the Internet provides, affiliates have the opportunity to track their customers and see where and how they are earning their money. By offering a percentage system, the affiliate is essentially becoming a diluted version of the bookmakers. This is no bad thing, especially when you consider that the sports betting industry turns over billions of dollars each and every year. The affiliate program lets people earn from this industry, without even getting their fingers burnt. Unlike the bookmakers, affiliates stand no chance of losing money, if their player goes on a winning run the worst thing that can happen is a zero balance on pay day.

Of course in an industry as competitive as affiliate marketing there are no sure-fire ways to get ahead and earn your fortune. Much of the success of affiliate marketing is down to sheer good fortune. However like in any industry you can make your own luck. In affiliate marketing it is essential to maintain visibility on search engines and to keep traffic flowing through your site. The more people that visit a site, the greater the chance that one will click on one of the links. It doesn't take thousands of customers to earn a substantial wage, just a couple each week can help build a customer base that will eventually earn you and your site a revenue. However always be mindful that affiliate programs are slow starters, nobody gets rich in a month. The key to affiliate marketing is having the patience to wait for more customers to filter through, eventually if you attract more and more, so the revenue will increase. Affiliate programs allow a website owner to experiment with advertising and marketing of their own site and that of the company (s) they represent. If one marketing method doesn't work just try another, the Internet is a wide-open expanse full of opportunity. With unrestricted audiences and potentially lucrative salaries with no caps, sports betting affiliate programs could be the way to get your home business working again.

Discover how to become a super poker affiliate by promoting the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing: A Wealth of Opportunities

For as long as employment has been the mandatory way in which to make money, people have been looking for easy escapes. The dream of earning a huge salary without much work, has been the goal of many but has been realised by very few. The online revolution seemed to pry open many of the doors that had shut in the real world. However even now there is an air of disillusionment hanging around the Internet, following the dot com crash and rumours and speculation abound about security. But despite the seemingly insurmountable odds one online industry that has welcomed people of all abilities, backgrounds and qualifications has continued to thrive. The affiliate marketing program is a web based advertising realm, which offers regular website owners the chance to host advertisements and hopefully to earn a little money.

Even in the affiliate program the big money doesn't come easily, it takes time, patience and some good business decisions. The first of these decisions lies in which industry that a new affiliate wishes to join. The Internet is a hot bed of industry performance, with its uninhibited global reach business and enterprise has become a cornerstone for the new e-industries. One of the most successful global sectors is that of online gaming. People from all corners of the global village have been signing up and playing along in some of the most exciting betting action ever seen. Sports betting has become a particularly hot industry, turning over billions of dollars each year, and maintaining one of the largest clientele of an industry. As such the sports betting sites provide the optimum partnership level for new affiliate, looking to get a cut of the action.

The fledgling affiliate is given all of the marketing tools and instructions to make their site a successful advertising forum. Making the transition from Internet user to marketing guru an easy one. No money exchanges hands in this initial transaction, the affiliate is instead paid on a commission basis. Each fully signed up customer the affiliate attracts brings them extra revenue. In the sports betting market this revenue tends to be based around the financial gains that individual creates for the site. The sports betting sites ordinarily offer up to 35% of each player's revenue, to the affiliate that attracted them. Therefore affiliates can earn in line with the profits of an online bookmaker, meaning that like the sports betting sites, the affiliate is able to earn without boundaries or caps.

Due to the ease with which a person can sign up and start earning through the online sports betting affiliate program, there is absolutely nothing stopping any person signing up and earning. The potential for custom in the sports betting market is unparalleled, therefore an affiliate has a huge Internet clientele to exploit. The earning capabilities of an online affiliate are only inhibited by their own willingness to work and experiment with the online advertising options. The affiliate marketing program offers opportunity in return for very little in the way of effort or financial backing. In essence you can reap the rewards of your own labours, whilst collecting more in the process, just through hosting advertisements.

Discover how to become a super poker affiliate by promoting the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

Pre-Selling in Affiliate Marketing

There are many entrepreneurs today who are earning thousands of dollars each month. They have found financial freedom. And when asked what they exactly do with their online business, their answer is affiliate marketing. But what makes many entrepreneurs successful in affiliate marketing? Entrepreneurs are successful in affiliate marketing because they were able to convert the visits of Internet users into sales.

How is it possible for affiliates to easily convince visitors to purchase the products? The answer lies in pre-selling. The big secret in affiliate marketing success is an effective pre-selling. Pre-selling happens when the visitor is already willing to purchase the product even before he clicks the banner that will link him to the merchant’s website.

In pre-selling, the target customer is already convinced of the importance of a certain product. And by the time the target customer arrives in the merchant’s website, he will immediately proceed to the order form page. Thus, the affiliate gets a high conversion of visits into sales. But how will an affiliate conduct an effective pre-selling?

First, the affiliate must realize that having banners alone are not reliable. Some visitors may click on such banners and the affiliate may be paid by the merchant in a pay-per-click compensation scheme. But the earnings from such a set-up will be meager. With banners only, the affiliate will be struggling just to earn a few dollars. Therefore, the affiliate must have more in his website other than banners.

This leads to the second thing that an affiliate must realize and do something about. The affiliate must realize that he must have good content in his website. Such good content must be two things. First, it should make the affiliate’s website land high on the list of search engines. This is putting the website in the path of target clients. And second, the good content should entice the client of the importance of a certain product or range of products.

The content, however, should not do hard selling. That is, the content should not be obvious about the selling of the products. If the visitor realizes the selling, he will have second thoughts and may not click on the merchant’s banner at all. This is why the content should be informative and should expound on the benefits of the product. The affiliate’s website should become a fountain of information for the visitors so that he will return again and again to the website.

It is also a good idea to have several products being promoted in the affiliate’s website. This way, the visitor will have choices and he will not think that the affiliate is simply selling the product.

Peter Garant's affiliate marketing site sells affordable unique website content to webmasters that understand the need for unplagerised and high quality content on their websites.

Affiliate Marketing and Promotional Materials

In preparing the affiliate marketing program, the online businessman must first find professional affiliates. One affiliate is not enough. Therefore, there should be a sizable number of affiliates that will create a significant impact on the sales of the online business. But once the affiliates have been recruited, the next important step for the online business is to provide his affiliates with promotional materials.

A promotional material is a feature in the website or Internet system that can be utilized by the affiliate to advertise and pre-sell the products of the online company. Without such promotional materials, the affiliate marketing will be slow or will come to a stand still. But one affiliate is different from another. Thus, the online businessman should be able to identify the type of promotional material that will meet the unique needs of the affiliates.

Here are some promotional materials that an online businessman should consider preparing for his affiliates. These promotional materials are quite basic and the online businessman may try other methods that are less conventional and more revolutionary. In the meantime, these are great for any affiliate marketing program on its first steps.

1. Effective email ads – This type of promotional material is ideal for affiliates who have e-zines or newsletters that they send their consumer/visitor base. In fact, most professional affiliates have their own newsletters.

Therefore, a shrewd online businessman must place email advertisements that will be included in the newsletters. He should create several email ads with varying lengths. Some affiliates like these ads to be short, while others prefer longer email ads.

In writing email ads, the online businessman should remember to use animated words that trigger emotional responses from the readers. The reason for this is that buying is mostly an emotional action.

2. Signature Files – This type of promotional material is sought by some affiliates who have signature lines. Thus, the online businessman must submit several clever lines to his affiliates. When the affiliate finds a signature file that he likes, he will include in his own signature line.

3. Articles – This type of promotional material is needed by affiliates who wants good content in their websites, and even in their newsletters. The online businessman should have good articles that can be posted in the affiliates’ websites. Such good articles can also help the website’s ranking in search engines

4. Banners – This type of promotional material may not be the most effective that it can still attract visitors. The online businessman must be ready with his banners that will fit various parts of the website, such as the toolbar, the sidebar, the top, and the bottom.

5. Product Images – This type of promotional material is attractive to affiliates who wanted to display the images of the products that they are promoting.

Peter Garant's affiliate marketing site sells affordable unique website content to webmasters that understand the need for unplagerised and high quality content on their websites.

6 Essential Tactics to Maximizing Your Affiliate Profits!

If you are like most new affiliate marketers, you have signed up as an affiliate and posted links and are actively promoting products but you are making few sales. Here are things that you can do to start making real profits:

#1 – Build your own Website:

You need to build your own website to promote the products. Make sure it has its own paid for domain name (mybizsite.com), not a free site like (mybizsite.othersitename.com). If you have been using free hosting, people looking at your site will not take your business seriously. If you don't know how to build a website there are many services that offer simple website building programs for a small fee or you can hire someone build a site for you. Check out elance.com where website designers will bid for the opportunity to build a site for you!

#2 - Write reviews of the products you are promoting:

You need to know the products you are promoting! It is crucial that you purchase all the products you are promoting so that you can write honest reviews about them. Let potential customers know that you are using these products and why they are worth buying! You then need to post these reviews on your website, in your newsletters and in articles.

#3 – Get yourself a Blog:

I recommend that you get a Blog and link it to your website. This will allow you to create discussions on the blog about the products you are selling and list any updates to your regular website. Blogs that are updated and posted to regularly (I recommend every other day) are indexed quicker by the search engines than are new websites, and after the blog is indexed, the pages you have linked to the blog will also get indexed. This is a very powerful way to get your site indexed and to get more links to your website. I recommend posting link to your website at the end of each post you make to your blog. This will give you even more links to your site

#4 - Write Articles:

One of the best ways to become an expert on your product is to write articles on the Internet and include a link to your website in the resource box. The articles you write can be the reviews of the products you have written or any topic related to your business and what you know.There are many places to submit articles and the more you write the more exposure to your website; more click thorough of your affiliate links and purchases of the products you are promoting which will in turn make you more money. The top place to post articles for free that will be picked up by webmasters is; Ezinearticles.com You can also search google for article sites!

#5 – Join forums on the internet related to your products:

Go to google and search; forums (your affiliate products), Join the forums you find After you join the forums make sure you use your signature in your posts and threads .You then need to have your website links in your signature line. Make sure you post regularly! It is important to post relevant and useful information in the forums. You will find an incredible amount of free, useful information in the forums. They are an indispensable resource. I highly recommend this tactic! Signature links are also indexed by the search engines and will provide you more links to your site thus increasing your ranking in the search engines and driving more traffic to your site!

#6 - Use text links not banners or buttons:

Due to the enormous use of pop-ups and flashy banners that we see each time we visit a website, It's much more professional looking and effective to have a text link with a few lines about the products you are promoting. Stay away from banners and pop ups, Most web surfers are sick of pop ups and have pop up blockers built into their browsers.

Utilizing all of the above mentioned tactics will help your affiliate commissions grow Significantly!

Mark Davies has been reviewing internet businesses for over 5 years and has over 8 years of experience selling and marketing products on the internet. http://bestinternetbusinessesreview.com The #1 site for Work at Home Businesses that Make Money! 10,000 free articles on making a living online @

http://freeinternetmarketingarticles.org

Four Questions Before You Look for Affiliate Programs

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.

I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.

In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.

Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:

Incoming visitors -> Internet Presence < - Sales or Actions

You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence -- the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.

The other represents the process of Internet advertising:

Impression -> Click -> Action

Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…

1. Do you know enough about your visitors?

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.

Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.

Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.

You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).

If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc).

After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.

Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.

2. Is your site perfect?

You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.

Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.

Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.

The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.

Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.

3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?

People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).

Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.

A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.

If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.

4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?

I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.

If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.

Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.

Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.

Matt DeAngelis runs Affiliate Blog. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. Matt devised the technology behind ad campaigns and online presence for a good portion of the Fortune 100, including GE, AT&T and Compaq.