Posts Tagged ‘what is an affiliate link’

10 Things to Look For in an Affiliate Management System

There are many different affiliate management systems available. You have to select the best one so that you can get good profit and your affiliates are also happy. This article explains 10 most important things that should be present in a great affiliate management system, so you would be able to run your affiliate marketing business easily:

1) Complete control over recruitment of Affiliates:

This is the basic requirement of any affiliate management system because if you don't have control over the number of affiliates joining and promoting your affiliate program you might be soon end up in loss or some spammers or your competitor may try to break down your affiliate system and create loss in your business. So, wisely choose the affiliate management system which provides complete control over the affiliates so you would be able to contact them, offer them help, request information and keep in-touch.

2) Offer multiple payment options for your customers and affiliates:

Your affiliates are distributed geographically all over the world. In one region particular payment option will be available and the same will not be available in some other region. PayPal is a good option because they are almost present in all countries but you can't withdraw the money in some countries like Egypt where you can use MoneyBookers to withdraw the money. So, your affiliate management system should enable your affiliates to receive the payment via lot of payment processors else they will not work for you. Offer as much affiliate payment options as possible and then you will have no problem getting your product promoted!

3) Affiliate visitor and sales tracking is a must - track as much details as possible:

The affiliate management system should be able to provide you the ratio between the number of visitors and the sales made by them. This can help you to find out your best affiliate and reward your best affiliate every month it will create a healthy competition among your affiliates and you will enjoy the benefits of it. You must be able to track all details of your affiliates activities: views and visitors that your affiliates bring, the number of sales, conversion rates of your promotional partners, refund rates. Some systems even allow you to track the websites referring sales to your website and even keywords used on search engines to find and buy your products.

4) Affiliate reward system based on their performance:

The affiliate management system should not give the same amount of commission to all your affiliates i.e., it should provide more commission to those who bring quality traffic and make good sales and should give somewhat less commission to poor performers. So, that your good affiliates will try to work even harder to get more commission per sale. Make sure to select the system that allows you to set custom affiliate commission percentages for each certain affiliate. Then you will be able to reward your best performing ones!

5) Ban the affiliates if they use illegal methods - Affiliate BAN mechanism :

Some of your affiliates may bring traffic to your site by spamming or by redirecting their browser in malicious manner and some may buy your product if they like it but more than 95% visitors will consider your site to be malicious site and trying to spam them. So, it will bring bad reputation to your business hence, your affiliate management system should identify these affiliates and ban them. Your affiliate management system should allow you to identify these scammers - by allowing you to track number of visitors, websites used by affiliate to refer visitors - and then ban if you feel that certain affiliate hurts your reputation.

6) Be in contact with your affiliates - always stay in touch with them:

Money is the main factor for which your affiliates are working for you, but it isn't the only factor which helps you to retain your affiliates. More or less all the affiliate programs offered by different product sellers are almost the same, so you can have an advantage if you do something different than what others do, you can do this by being in contact with your affiliates try to understand their problem and help them whenever they need your support and get their suggestions to improve your product. Always help your affiliates by contacting them personally, asking if they need some help. This way they will reward you with a lot of sales!

7) Keep track the refund rates of each certain affiliate:

When your customer is not happy with your product they request you to refund the money and you have to do this to maintain good reputation. There are basically two reasons for which your customers will ask you to refund: first is when the product is not really worth the other reason is they might be given some wrong information about the product by your affiliates and when they didn't find that feature in your product they will request you to refund. So, your system should be able to track down those affiliates and ban them if they bring too many sales that ends up as a refund request - in order to protect your product and online reputation.

Track all websites that bring you visitors and sales via affiliate links:

Tracing down the source from where visitors arrive. Your affiliate management system should be able to trace out from where your customers are coming from i.e., the source which directs them to find the sales page and buy your product. After pinpointing it you have to focus advertising there to boost your sales. Such tracking capabilities allow you to identify the most profitable 'traffic sources' and concentrate on them (if it's an affiliate - offer additional help, etc.). This way you can easily make your profits soar!

9) Flexible affiliate training capabilities:

You should provide training to your affiliates about your product so that they can understand what they are selling, its advantages and disadvantages. This will help them greatly to convince their visitors to make them buy your product. Provide all possible promotional materials - banners, pre-written articles, e-mail letters and other content for your affiliates. Your affiliate management system should allow you to place and manage all promotional tools and thus enable your affiliates to access them easily whenever they need to.

10) Track all keywords that bring you visitors and sales and manage affiliates effectively:

Your affiliate management system should be able to find out the keywords used by the visitors to find your product on search engines like Google, yahoo or other search engines. This report can be used to stress these words more in other search engines by using the Meta tags and using ad services of Google, yahoo or other ad service providers. You should be able to track all keywords that people use to find your product via pay per click campaigns such as Google Adwords or Y! Search marketing or regular search engines. Once you find keywords that bring sales, you can easily concentrate on them, bid higher to get even more traffic and sales.

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By Anonymous

http://ezinearticles.com/?10-Things-to-Look-For-in-an-Affiliate-Management-System&id=1589087

Affiliate Marketing Overview For Beginners

Introduction - by offering the proportion of the margin of your product or service to a large number of affiliates, you can dramatically boost sales albeit at a lower overall margin rate. By sharing the profits of a sale with other websites, it is possible for webmasters to generate higher sales volumes. By devising an attractive affiliate scheme and promoting and implementing that scheme in a professional manner, it is possible to generate thousands of website visitors using an affiliate of channel online. Search engines become less relevant if affiliates are sending your website the bulk of its traffic. Amazon.com is one of the pioneers of this business model selling million of books via ten's of thousand's of Amazon affiliates. Today, affiliate marketing is a very well established method of selling online. The main advantage of affiliate marketing is high sales volume with nominal sales effort at an extremely low cost. The main disadvantage is much lower margins, (as affiliates need paying commission to remain motivated).

What is an Affiliate Program? - an affiliate program is a contractual arrangement between the owner of a product or service (the Merchant) and a separate 'Affiliate' organisation, to pay a commission, in exchange for promotion of its goods and services. Typically, this entails an affiliate website adding advertisements (in the form of banners, buttons links and other textual material) promoting the Merchants offering. There are literally thousands of different affiliate programs in existence on the Internet today. It is usually the responsibility of the affiliate to redirect visitors to their website to the merchant's website. At that point any customer service issues (such as ordering a product, dealing with customers on telephone delivering issues) are dealt with by the Merchant.

Affiliate schemes are normally automated and structured. Affiliates must pre-agree to abide by the merchant's terms and conditions when signing up before entitled to promote anything. For instance, Merchants make it a condition that affiliates do not alter the Merchant sales copy to avoid any potential accidental or deliberate misrepresentation (and ultimately customer dissatisfaction). Affiliates usually have a unique tracking ID associated to their registration or website. By adding this html code to their site, Merchants can track where each individual sale came from. The tracking html is usually combined with a cookie or CGI script to allow the Merchants Affiliate Tracking system to collate a database of visitors and sales. It is normal that affiliates get paid one month in arrears and have an access to a monthly report outlining leads, sales and conversions. Affiliates are primarily motivated by money and so they are usually very interested in knowing the conversion rate of the Merchant.

Merchants benefit hugely from an affiliate marketing model as there is a virtual unlimited supply of keen entrepreneurs seeking out business opportunities to make money (in exchange for promoting an online business idea). Most affiliate schemes operate in a commission scheme based on payments monthly in arrears, payable from the merchant to the affiliate of either via PayPal or an alternative independent escrow service, or check in the post. Some merchants exclude or reject applications from prospective affiliates who do not meet their guidelines for type of website, physical location or regulatory approvals (particularly in Financial Services). The main benefit of an electronic affiliate business model is that it is completely scalable - it is possible to recruit an unlimited number of affiliates to promote your product and the cost of doing so can be negligible...

Types of Commission Schemes - there are various types of affiliate models in use today. Historically, affiliate models existed based on banner advertising which were rewarded on a per impression basis. However, click through ratios were extremely poor and banner exchange schemes gave the sector a bad name. In addition, fraud impacted confidence in this method of marketing. The last nail in the coffin for banner advertising was that 'in your face' flashy moving images also tended to annoy users. Today, textual ads are the primary form of affiliate marketing. These are highly customised to the users needs using contextual advertising (based on the user's individual search profile and IP geographic location) are the preferred means of advertisers to reach their target markets.

1) Pay per sale - the merchant pays the affiliate an agreed sum of money each time a user visits the affiliate's website, clicking through's to the merchant website, and buys something. Most merchants affiliate programs tend to have a fixed commission schemes on a pay per sale basis. This could mean either a commission value for sale or a commission based on a percentage of the sale. These tend to have certain restrictions or caveats such as a minimum order a sale value, whether the client is a new business customer or existing customer. In addition, there may be bonuses based on volume of sales over a given period - all these types factors are used as carrots and sticks to motivate affiliates to behave in a certain way.

2) Pay-per-click - this affiliate commission scheme is based on the number of unique visitor clicks from an affiliate website through to the merchant's website. Unique clicks are identified using IP tracking to prevent click fraud. The user clicks on a text link with an embedded affiliate code or perhaps clicks on a search result or advert. The commission per click is obviously a lot lower than on a pay per sale basis. The affiliate benefits from of an instant and reliable source of commission. If the number of click thorough's from an affiliate's site is high and conversion rates of the merchant low, a pay per click model is ideal to maximise commission.

3) Pay per lead - a pay per lead of commission based model is typically used by merchants in situations where the product or service cannot be easily downloaded or purchased using your credit card, or where the sale requires human call-back and has a long sales cycle. For instance, where the merchant is a mortgage broker and requires the user to fill in a call back form with their contact details on. Each completed contact form would count as a 'lead' and will be paid to the affiliates on a qualified 'per lead' basis.

Two Tier Affiliate Schemes - a two tier affiliate scheme is a multi tiered program where affiliates in the first level of can also earn commission from the sale was generated from affiliates that they are recruit who sit in the second level or 'tier'. Typically the first tier would earn 10% commission on sales it indirectly generates from Merchant sales. In addition, the affiliate may earn a much smaller percentage e.g. 2% from sales from 2nd tier affiliates they recruited to the Merchant. A two tier scheme is aimed to motivate affiliates to recruit like minded people to also become affiliates. It requires additional sales copy marketing material and a good quality affiliate manager software tool. This tool links affiliates together and details of any sales, in order to calculate potentially vast commission sums. Key to success is a higher margin product, where margin can be allocated two separate levels to the point where affiliate's remain motivated and enthusiastic.

Affiliate Networks - an affiliate network website is an independently run collection of affiliate schemes which allow members of the network to join either one, some or all of the affiliate schemes registered with the affiliate network. It is a club making recruit of affiliates a straight forward process. This is ideal for portal websites where a range of different topics and schemes that can be advertised across a large number of different pages. Affiliate networks charge the Merchant to be part of the network and may even take a large slice of affiliates commission. In exchange, the affiliate network provides the merchant with an instant access to hundreds or even thousands of potential affiliates who have already joined the network in the past. In addition, it provides a central management console for affiliate's to track sales and leads. It is quite simply a middleman for a large and complex number of affiliate schemes all promoting themselves alongside their competitors. An example of an affiliate network is Commission Junction.

1) Critical success factors - there are usually a range of factors that are critical to the success of your affiliate Marketing strategy:

High Commissions - affiliates marketing efforts are directly proportional to the commission they receive (relative to your competitors affiliate commission levels). A successful affiliate business model relies on a sensible amount of available margin to be divided between the website owner and its affiliate on each sale.

2) Offer a Differentiated or Unique Product or Service - prospective affiliates will be attracted to have something a bit different with professional online marketing literature. If your web site is very similar to dozens of other websites, all promoting their own affiliate scheme, why should a prospective affiliate sign up to your affiliate scheme as opposed to your competitors? Therefore, you must really try and sell to the prospective affiliate (via your website affiliate signup page), in order to recruit them as an affiliate. It is critical to summarise your unique selling points so they can clearly see there is an opportunity to make money together.

3) Quality Feedback & Reporting - constant reassurance through online reporting and real time statistics help motivate affiliates. The more management information you can provide to an affiliate, the more confidence they will have in your ability have to close the sale. As an affiliate, it is a real confidence boost to see an email confirmation every time a lead is generated or sale made that has come from the affiliate's website. Consequently, the more motivated they will be to send additional leads in the future.

4) Great Merchant Customer Service - by providing professional and service to your prospects, your sales conversion ratio obviously improves. Prospective affiliate's will be looking for affiliate schemes that provide good quality conversion ratios and have a good market reputation. Affiliates need to know that that every single visitor they send to your site has the greatest possible chance of making the money vie you're selling effort. There is nothing more de-motivating for an affiliate than a lead that does not get followed up quickly enough or is accidentally deleted or ignored by the merchant.

5) Merchant Affiliate Recruitment Efforts - patience/ time to recruit the desired number of motivated affiliates is very important.. . Ask yourself basic questions... if it takes 6 months to recruit 100 affiliates who generate 200 sales equivalent to £100,000 profit in that time, could you have generated more than 200 sales in that time (and at what profit) if you had concentrated on direct selling only.

6) Affiliate Management & Tracking Systems - as the merchant you must have a thorough understanding of online affiliate tracking software and services to ensure affiliates are paid on time, sales are allocated fairly and automated new affiliate recruitment can be initiated. If you have no systems in place there are many commercial affiliate services available or software packages to provide an end to end service to manage and track affiliate's leads and sales. This is equally important for accounting purposes as the bigger your affiliate program becomes, the more important it is to justify outgoing costs (affiliate commission payments).

 

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By Anonymous

http://ezinearticles.com/?Affiliate-Marketing-Overview-For-Beginners&id=1275858

 

The End All Guide To Affiliate Marketing And Making Money Online For Future Clickbank Webmasters

Firstly, know that this article is not a comprehensive "welcome to affiliate marketing" guide. I will not spend much time going over the basics, but will spotlight the actual methods you need to make money - with a bit of pertinent background to help you understand the reasons behind these methods. You beginners will find this information invaluable and stimulating. You practiced marketers will find this information accurate and refreshing, while also discovering some astonishing new ideas to employ in your everyday endeavors. So, let's continue.

Almost everyone that makes money on the internet (even the millionaires) do so through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a means of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Compensation or commission may be made based on a certain value for each Impression (CPM), click (Pay-per- click), registrant or new customer (Pay-per-lead) or (Cost-per-Acquisition / CPA), sale (usually a percentage, Pay per sale or revenue share), or any combination of them.

In very short English; there are literally hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs on the web featuring tens of millions of products ranging from magazine subscriptions to life insurance and every conceivable thing in between. An affiliate is essentially a salesperson whose job is to send people to a merchant's website. When a predetermined "action" or sale is made, the affiliate is paid a commission. It's the same as being a salesperson in retail, only online. I will teach you more about the actual application of affiliate marketing later in this chapter.

Compensation Models

Another important attribute of an affiliate program is its' compensation model. This may have an impact on which advertisers you decide to join and how you go about promoting them. It will surely have an impact on how much money you will make. Here is a breakdown of the various compensation models that affiliate advertisers utilize.

Pay-per-impression (PPI) / Cost-per-thousand (CPM)

Cost-per-mil (mil/mille/M = Latin/Roman numeral for thousand) impressions. Publisher gets from Advertiser $x.xx amount of money for every 1000 impressions (page views/displays) of the ad. The Ad can be text , rich media, but in most cases, the ad is a banner running across the top, or down the side of a website.

Pay-per-click (PPC) / Cost-per-click (CPC)

Cost-per-click. Advertiser pays publisher $X.XX amount of money, every time a visitor (potential prospect) clicks on the advertiser's ad; it is irrelevant (for the compensation) how often an Ad is displayed. Commission is only due when the Ad is clicked. The PPC model is used by Google AdWords, Miva and other providers. These are the ads that you see running along-side search results and many web-pages out there.

Pay-per-lead (PPL) / Cost-per-action/acquisition (CPA) / Cost-per-lead CPL)

Cost-per-action (CPA). Cost-per-Lead (CPL). Advertiser pays publisher $X.XX in commission for every visitor that was referred by the publisher to the advertiser (web site) and performs a desired action, such as filling out a form, creating an account or signing up for a newsletter. This compensation model is very popular with online services from internet service providers, cell phone providers, banks (loans, mortgages, credit cards) and subscription services.

Pay-per-sale (PPS) / Cost-per-sale (CPS)

Cost-per-sale (CPS). Advertiser pays the publisher a percentage (%) of the order amount (sale) that was created by a customer who was referred by the publisher. This model is by far the most common compensation model used by online retailers that have an affiliate program. This form of compensation is also referred to as Revenue sharing.

Pay-per-call (no abbreviation exists yet)

This is a new compensation model. No official abbreviation exists yet. Advertiser pays publisher a $X.XX commission for phone calls received from potential prospects as response to a specific publishers' ad. Recently developed call-tracking technology allows to create a bridge between online and offline advertising. Pay-per-call advertising is still new and in its infancy.

Choosing a Model:

As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to the various compensation models. This can (and should) be decisive in your selection of which affiliate program to join, but depends largely on what you are promoting and how you decide to go about promoting it. For example, the paid surveys program Survey Adventure, pays out an extremely high $4.50 per double opt-in lead (CPA). The action; signing up with the company is free, so obviously, the program converts very well, but you must provide many leads in order to make a substantial amount of money. The real money is in pay per sale programs (PPS). If you have a good product and a sound marketing plan, the money will come.

Affiliate Marketing & You

There are many other aspects, facts, advice and information that I could share with you on the subject of affiliate marketing, but we don't want to get too far into it. So I will briefly cover a couple of subjects quickly that apply to what I feel you will actually need to know and what you will be employing in your money-making endeavors.

Web 2.0

The rise of blogging, interactive online communities, article directories, simple web sites and other new technologies and are forming the new Web 2.0. These new technologies have impacted the affiliate marketing world in a very big way. Creating a presence online used to take months as well as a number of trained professionals. Nowadays, it is quite possible for newcomers to (by themselves) "set up shop" literally overnight and with very little experience. Also, this new media allows merchants to get closer to their affiliates and improved communication between each other. What this means to you, is that you can be on your way to becoming a super affiliate master as soon as you finish this guide!

Trademark Bidding / SEO

Affiliates were among the earliest to adopt Pay-per-click advertising when the first PPC search engines. In 2000 Google launched their PPC service AdWords which is responsible for the wide spread use and acceptance of PPC as an advertising channel. Since then, a large number of advertisers have adjusted their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those types of keywords. Though we will not go into PPC Marketing, you must understand that some trademarks, such as the term "eBay" are heavily restricted because of this.

One area that has not been hit by new restrictions is SEO or "Search Engine Optimization". Later, I will be teaching you how to create profiles that will trick Google and other search engines into indexing them as relevant websites and list them in top search results. Sign up for AdWords and Miva. I will show how to use these later in the guide.

Why Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the forefront of internet marketing. Affiliates are the first to take advantage of new emerging trends and technologies where established advertisers do not dare to be active. Affiliates take risks and "trial and error" is probably the best way to describe how affiliate marketers are operating. This is also one of the reasons why most affiliates fail and give up before they "make it" and become "super affiliates" who generate $10,000 and more in commission (not sales) per month.

You will not earn the right to call yourself an affiliate marketer overnight. You will have to work (relatively) hard and innovatively to make the kind of money that you want, but know that if you do, the rewards are very large and there for your taking. Never give up!

Affiliate Networks

Very few publishers handle their affiliate programs in house. Most affiliate programs are set up and managed by large affiliate networks. Most of my affiliate programs are set up and maintained by the affiliate network ClickBank, which is the largest affiliate network on the web. Some networks do not have qualification criteria, but most do.

The majority of this online guide will focus on marketing strategies for ClickBank affiliates, but here is a short list of the top affiliate networks that all of the professionals belong to and you should apply to.

The "Big 4" Affiliate Networks

ClickBank connects over a hundred thousand affiliates with thousands of information product vendors offering a huge array of downloadable products, mainly eBooks. Because it is cheap and easy for merchants to join, the quality of the products provided can vary. ClickBank is also a great place to search for unexploited niches.

Commission Junction (or "CJ") is another very popular affiliate network. CJ brings together affiliates and product vendors, but also offers physical products for its affiliates to promote. CJ has many large brand names on its site, and is very well established. It is free to sign up, but most vendors are selective of who represents them.

LinkShare features more than 600 merchants. You'll find mostly big name and well established companies, such as Wal-Mart, Foot Locker, and Apple iTunes. Merchants are selective in representation!

Performics is a highly professional site with very well known brands. Performics' clients include: Orchard Bank, Office Max, Activa Sports, Barnes&Noble, Fossil, and more than 200 other big name, big business advertisers. Performics is owned by DoubleClick. Armatures need not apply, but may try.

Getting Paid By The Networks

Most affiliate networks require that you reach a "payment threshold" before they will release your first payment. While the amount usually varies from network to network, exactly how they pay you is pretty much your choice. Your three choices that you have are Check via mail, Direct Deposit and PayPal. I do not like to wait for checks so I set most of my accounts to direct deposit on payday. You may set your affiliate accounts to deposit your earnings directly to the card. This saves you the week of delivery time on the checks and the two week waits for the out of state checks to clear.

PayPal is also a great option, but not all affiliate networks offer payment via PayPal. It works exactly like direct deposit. Just check your account on payday to find the money there. You may also set up a merchant (business) account like I did so that you can get a PayPal Debit card. Again, it works just like a bank. Oddly enough, when I applied for my card the interest that I was (and still do to this day) earning on my money was higher than any bank I have ever heard of. Almost up there with CDs, but that's another story.

I like to set up my finances this way so that I always have affiliate earnings separate from the other earnings that I associate with my normal bank accounts. Also, when Uncle Sam asks me about my income at the end of the year, I don't have to worry about gathering paystubs or the like. I can just print out my account history for two accounts. Really, how you get paid is up to you, but as far as I know, fast and free is always better.

ClickBank & CJ

ClickBank connects over a hundred thousand affiliates with thousands of information product vendors offering a huge array of downloadable products, mainly informational eBooks. Because it is cheap and easy for merchants to join, the quality of the products provided can vary. ClickBank is also a great place to search for unexploited niches.

Why ClickBank

If you are wondering what an "information product" is, you have one in your hands (or at your fingertips) right now. Information products include e-books, video tutorials, audio teleconferences, software, etc. - fundamentally anything that comes in a digital form.

To keep it simple; the first thing that you will do is sign up with ClickBank, get a free affiliate account and look for products you want to promote. Whenever you get a sale, your account is credited with your affiliate commission and checks are mailed out every two weeks (once you break the small minimum sale threshold).

The reason that ClickBank is so popular is the large commissions. Since ClickBank specializes in information products, the product vendor's costs are minuscule and large commissions are passed on to affiliates - often as much as 50-75%. In most cases, it is far easier to make a lot of money online earning 50% of a sale than 5% of one (which is what you will get with many products on other networks such as Commission Junction and LinkShare). For these reasons, the majority of this guide will be focused on strategies for ClickBank affiliates.

ClickBank Marketplace

One section of ClickBank that you will be visiting frequently during your time as a marketer is the ClickBank Marketplace. The ClickBank marketplace lists the products that are currently being sold by publishers. Once you have found a product that you would like to promote, you simply enter your ClickBank name to receive your hop-link. This will track your sales.

When looking for a product to promote, you are going to base your decision on results of your target market criteria. You may for example, click on "money and employment" and search for "Make Money Online", in which you will find too many results to count, but of course you can narrow that down to your target market by being more specific. Search for something like "Affiliate Marketing Beginners". Once you have a list of potential products you will be searching for products by the following important factors:

$/Sale: The amount of money (minus refunds) that network affiliates have earned per sale in the past.

%/Sale: The percentage of profit that is paid to affiliates per sale. Most product vendors at ClickBank pay 25% to 50%. Most vendors looking to sell a lot of their products pay 75%, regardless of quality or other factors.

% Referred: The percentage of product sales that were generated by affiliates rather than the vendors own promotions.

Gravity: Gravity in short represents the popularity of a product - (the amount of affiliate sales have been made recently). Just because a product may be more popular than the other does not necessarily mean that the product is making more money for its affiliates.

The products are arranged by their popularity. You may review the above factors as well, so you can click on the product title to have a look at the "pitch page". You may find something you like and decide to promote it as an affiliate.

What To Sell

There are a many "gurus" out there that will all tell you how to promote the most popular products on ClickBank, but the truth is that not too many of them have anything great to share. They will tell you about AdWords, article writing and scamming people into buying the highest priced products you can find, all of which will cost you quite a bit of money to get started. AdWords alone these days costs a fortune to "play" in.

Here is what I say you need to do. Don't try to go onto ClickBank and find the highest selling products to promote. Find something that appeal to your target market. Believe me when I tell you, that you can find products on ClickBank related to anything and everything, all offering affiliates great commissions.

A great example would be the World of Warcraft player's niche. This game has got to be the most massively multiplayer game in the world and one of the most popular. Personally; I think that it is for geeks, but many of my college friends enjoy playing it, ahem, "living it".

When you search ClickBank for "Warcraft", you will find quite a few good products and about four that I would consider "great". (Update: What was a "few" products are now a few pages of them. These things must be selling.) When you search Google for "Warcraft", you get 10,610,000 results. On the popular social network Myspace, there are more than 3124 Warcraft groups, with the top group featuring 40,000 members.

This goes to show that with a minimal amount of research into a niche with ClickBank, you cannot go wrong. I was quite literally going to save this niche for myself and use a different example for this, but then I started to feel greedy and I want this method of marketing to work for you. So, if you are the first one reading this guide, you already have a head start, but don't be surprised to find this niche swamped soon after.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction (or "CJ") is another very popular affiliate network. CJ brings together affiliates and product vendors, but also offers services and physical products for its affiliates to promote. CJ has many large brand names on its site, and is extremely well established. It is free to sign up with the network, but most vendors are selective of who represents them. Most often, a website with substantial targeted traffic is a requirement of vendors.

Instead of a "marketplace", Commission Junction arranges its advertisers in its "Advertiser List" and you may only promote advertisers once you have been approved to be one of their "publishers" which is what CJ calls its affiliates. Below is a list of the paid survey advertisers that I work with. Notice how there is a "date accepted" column? This goes to show that I grew my business relationships over time.

Network Earnings: which is like ClickBank's $/sale feature and represents the amount of money (minus refunds) that network affiliates have earned per sale in the past.

$/Action: Like ClickBank, many products on CJ offer a percentage or dollar amount that you earn per sale of a product, but with CJ you may also sort by the amount earned per lead and click (CPC and CPA).

EPC: Commission Junction also has a few different ways of representing the popularity of an advertiser. The most important of these is done by showing the "EPC" or "earnings per click" ratio which is represented by how much money is earned on average per 100 clicks. So a 7 day EPC of 24.69 which is the case of Greenfield Online means that in the last 7 days of 8.9 of the last 100 visitors to the site, have signed up with Greenfield and the referring affiliates have made money. That may not sound "great", but in the world of affiliate marketing, it's ok.

What To Sell

Just about all of the advertisers that I work with via Commission Junction employ the CPA compensation model. One of the most popular markets both on Commission Junction and among web-surfers right now is paid surveys. Because CJ offers the option of CPA, a great number of survey companies have signed up with them.

Commission Junction has some of the best converting free to join CPA programs on the net such as the paid surveys program Survey Adventure. It pays out an extremely high $4.50 per lead (CPA). Once again, this is a high converting program because sign up with the company is free. It may seem that $4.50 is not a very high payout. That's true to an extent. You may have to send a good amount of traffic to this company to see great results. With CPA the desired action that you want your visitors to complete is free for them, so the profits should come quickly.

But Remember Your Target Market

At first glance, it may look like the Network Earnings should be the deciding factor in what you will promote, but I assure you, it is not. Your target market should always be the deciding factor in what you decide to promote. Because paid surveys are so popular among college students, such programs convert very well.

Once again, you really need to do just a bit of research to find out what will appeal most to your target market.

For Newbies: The Easy Way To Get Into Affiliate Marketing

I am not going to get into this on an in-depth level. I am just going to say it; and you had better remember it. The best way to make money selling ANY product or service of someone else's is to pre-sell it and the best way to do this on the web is by creating a simple website that may consist of no more than a presales page. It is probably the simplest and most effective one webpage in any webmasters arsenal. Often in a "product review" format which has become wildly popular ever since the release of a number of short and sweet eBooks. The presales page can often take on many other formats such as customer testimonial, anti-scam and programs database page just to name a few. In the end, all of these are simply teasers of a product or products that are so effective, a visitor cannot wait to purchase the product(s) that you are promoting. I am not claiming this to be the only method of selling, just the most effective for you.

Now a great many "gurus" would like to take credit for the key components of an effective sales-page, but the methods and theories of pre-selling have been around longer than computers. It's just a matter of bringing them to the attention of potential webmasters while teaching how to easily implement them, so, here they are, the key components of an effective website:

The Attributes of A Successful Website

Give Visitors Hope: Every single day, people buy things. If what they buy is not meant to simply keep them alive, such as food, the product that they buy is meant to improve their life in some way. They hope that buying "the next best thing" will lead them to "the next best stage" in their lives. Take you for example. You are reading this in the hopes that you may apply the methods I am showing you to make money on the internet; and this money would undoubtedly improve your life. Here's a shocker: Why do you think I wrote it? Because I want to make money and build a name for myself by helping others make money online, thus, improving my life.

I have found "how to make money" informational products to be the best selling on the web, but there are many products that this can apply to. Even in a not so life altering sense. I recently saw a offer where users can "download a vast array of media and games ready to be played on the iPhone" and it was selling like crazy. I don't care for the "locked" iPhone or Apple for that matter, but the thing insanely popular among the techies and status seekers. Anyway, these people are hoping that this product will give them an entertainment on the go, thus improving their commutes or whatever, and in some small way, their lives. When you create your presales page you will feed on this need for hope. If you decide to take the product review approach, tell visitors how "your" product is so much better than the others. If you go with the customer testimonial format; (which I suggest if you decide to market ProfilesToProfits), tell them how this product has changed your life and how it will do the very same for them.

Create Urgency: In my experience, both personal and professional, the average web browser has the attention span of a goldfish. To combat this problem, a great presales page must create a sense of urgency in the visitor. Let it be known that for whatever reason, the visitor must continue to stay on your page, read the entire thing and when they finish, they must buy your product because if they don't than they are missing out on the one thing that could have changed their life forever. Did you see that? I just tied in this urgency with the first component of a successful presales page and in doing so; I have both created more hope and a more effective sense of urgency.

Many people try to do this by putting discount deadlines on their products. "Buy in the next ten minutes and blah blah...." this coming from the supposed "pros" and "gurus". Click the back button, and then the forward button to see the same deadline. People see right through this these days. It is content that creates urgency. It is the manner in which you present your product and how you play on the many factors of an effective presales page. Once again, you must create the impression that they must buy your product because if they don't than they are missing out on the one thing that could have changed their life forever.

Be an Authority: Appearance is everything. Whether you know anything about your product or not, you must appear to the visitor as the most informed, educated and trustworthy person regarding this product on the face of the earth. You will NEVER sell a product using the presales page format if the user feels that you do not know what you are talking about. Study up on your product, use this product yourself. Turn yourself into the one person to talk to regarding this product. If that is too much work, find somebody who knows what you ought to and pay them to help you appear as an expert. I cannot stress this enough. This may be the most important piece of the presales page puzzle. If the visitor thinks that you are and idiot or that you don't know what you are talking about, they will not buy from you, unless of course, they are an idiot!

Optional Components

The first three components of an effective sales page/website are not optional. If you decide to build a website and you do not factor these components in, you will not make it online. You will fail. Below are a few optional components that you can add to your website. Sometimes these components will work for you, other times they will not, so think hard on whether or not implementing them will ultimately benefit your cause, or hurt it.

Appear Unbiased: This is the most effective way of gaining a visitor's trust second only to your being an authority on the given topic. Most of the time, appearing unbiased is a tactic used by database sites. I recall a site that I went to when I first became interested in affiliate marketing (I was 16). It was a database of products to sell online. At the time, it just looked like a database. I later found that just about all of the programs listed were multi-level-marketing schemes, which means that if I signed up with one of the programs that was on this site and made a sale, the owner of the site would make money as well. No, there is nothing wrong with this. MLM is far from a scam as many like to slander. The ones who give it a bad name just suck at it.

Back to the point; If a visitor comes to your site and becomes under the impression that you "just want to help", they are far more likely to buy from you than if have a sales pitch at every turn. Review a product or products. Set up a product database. Help people avoid internet scams (you will read more on that next). Do whatever you must to make it look like you are their helpful friend. They don't have to know that you will be making a commission from a purchase that they make.

Strike Fear: This is another tactic that has gone mainstream since the release of "The Rich Jerk" and works best when used to promote products that belong to a saturated market, such as the "how to make money in real estate" eBook market and I have found it to be terribly overdone lately, especially by users of Google AdWords and other pay-per-click methods of promotion.

The idea here is that you are out to convince people that there will be tribulation down the road for them if they decide to go with any product besides yours. Most people who endeavor this plan have simple anti-scam websites that consist of no more than a page or two describing the horrors of a particular market. They tell visitors that there are so many scams out there that they should not sign up for any program, unless of course, the visitor signs up for the one(s) that they are promoting (which pay the largest commissions).

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Jason Stilwell - My name is Jason Stilwell, a business and marketing student in the beautiful State of Michigan. I started MoneyInCollege.com to show students worldwide simple, fun ...

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Affiliate Marketing Success Stories – Raising an Affiliate Program Cash Cow (Part 2)

The following interview with Shawn Collins, a prominent expert in the

affiliate marketing field, should prove instructive to the reader. Shawn

has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the field and now runs his own affiliate

program management and consulting firm. As this interview is inherently

limited in scope, one is encouraged to read more about Shawn's experiences

in the field and the advice he dispenses through his books, conferences,

blog, articles, reports, and weekly radio show. The reader can also meet

Shawn at the Affiliate Summit, a "can't miss" conference for those

interested in excelling in the competitive world of affiliate marketing.

Q. Shawn, how would you describe your initial experiences with affiliate

marketing?

A. It was back in 1997. I had a dial-up account on AOL, a 14.4 modem and

a desire to make more money. At the time, I didn't know a thing about

creating websites, marketing, etc. But I went through a tutorial at AOL on

writing HTML and picked up the basics. Then, I created a hideous, single

page site about New York City and put up some Amazon links. I never earned

a cent on that site.

Q. What growing pains did you endure at first? What were the biggest

obstacles and challenges from that period of time?

A. Back then, there was a monopoly on registering domains, and it cost

$35 a year. At the time, that was a bit prohibitive for me (I didn't

realize what a good investment a short name would be). That was a trend -

an unwillingness to invest in my affiliate efforts. I was going the free

route with tools, hosting, etc. That definitely delayed my progress.

Q. What was your first "Ah-ha" moment? How did you incorporate the

lesson learned into your affiliate marketing business?

A. The first time I got my reporting via email from Amazon with

information on commission earned. Back then, there was no option to login

to an interface - just a periodic email with affiliate stats. When I

realized it was real that I could earn money this way, I was excited and

motivated. This persuaded me that I was wasting my time working in

magazine publishing - it was time for me to get into a line of work that

was stimulating and rewarding.

With my limited affiliate marketing experience, I managed to get a job

with a start-up in 1997 called Medsite.com, and I bluffed my way into

running the affiliate program there. I've enjoyed my work ever since.

Q. Without mentioning names, have you joined affiliate programs that did

not keep their promises and/or provide appropriate compensation? What

measures did you take when confronted with this situation and what advice

can you give others to avoid this circumstance?

A. Lots of affiliate programs lie in their recruiting efforts - they

talk about how easy it is to earn commission from them. That's simply not

true - it's not easy. I just don't pay attention to most recruiting

efforts from affiliate programs. I would encourage affiliates to ignore

proclamations of easy earnings and high EPCs - the most important thing is

to test everything yourself and promote what works for you.

Q. How has affiliate marketing changed in the last seven years? What

strategies would you implement now that you would not or could not do

years ago?

A. The industry has matured greatly. Seven years ago, many affiliate

marketers were content sites which relied on 468x60 banners. The analytics

were primitive and fewer companies offered affiliate programs.

Now, the industry is so diversified. Essentially, any way to market online

is being leveraged by affiliates... including comparison shopping,

domaining, video, SEO, e-mail, social networks, PPC, rewards programs,

etc.

If I could turn back time, I would have started up multiple niche

community sites back then for popular topics. By now, if nurtured they

would have grown nicely and become lucrative affiliate sites.

Q. If one is gifted marketing an affiliate product or service, is it

likely that this individual can effectively market his/her own products or

services? Should people look into developing their own items while

marketing or instead of marketing others' products/services?

A. I'd say anything that is already selling online can be effectively

marketed through an affiliate program. Selling your own products or

services can certainly provide more rewards in the best case scenario, but

then you've got a lot more risk, too.

If somebody has the infrastructure and know-how to sell a certain product

or service, I'd say to go for it. But don't take uncalculated risks.

Q. What are crucial mistakes that newbies tend to commit?

A. Lack of investment and understanding. It's really difficult to

succeed in affiliate marketing if you are unwilling to spend the time and

money required to develop a long-term strategy. And affiliate marketing is

most certainly not a quick endeavor - it takes patience to endure and

succeed.

Q. What are some of the creative (perhaps seldom used) strategies to

employ in the affiliate marketing field?

A. Simply going beyond the banner. There are a lot of exciting

opportunities out there with Web 2.0. It's just a matter of figuring out a

unique angle.

Q. How long does it realistically take to build a full-time income with

affiliate marketing, assuming "full-time commitment"?

A. I don't think you can qualify and quantify passion. And to me,

passion is an essential ingredient in affiliate marketing success. Also,

there are so many variables, like the size of a given vertical, the

margins involved, competition, etc.

Q. Is it easier to build income from this type of marketing now or was

it easier years ago? (Please consider competition, Internet usage, advent

of Adwords and Pay Per Click, etc.)

A. It was never easy. There was certainly less competition in the past,

but also less in the way of options of advertisers to choose and methods

to promote them. Plus, there is the continuing growth of ecommerce. I

think the opportunities for success are just as healthy now as they were

years ago.

Q. While I know that you do not recommend any particular affiliate

marketing programs, in your estimation, what are the "hottest fields?"

A. The "hottest fields" are a slippery slope. They change over time. I

think the hottest field for any given person should be the area that

interests them most. You can certainly go out there as a mercenary and

promote the most lucrative thing at the moment, like ringtones or debt

consolidation, but I suggest going with a long-term plan in an area that

interests you.

Q. Is there any affiliate marketing software that is a "must" when one

pursues an affiliate marketing venture?

A. This really depends on the type of affiliate. There are software

programs that help optimize affiliate efforts for different affiliates.

For instance, if you're working with data feeds, you should check out

WebMerge.

Q. What are your views concerning affiliate marketing networks such as

LinkShare and Commission Junction?

A. I think they're the backbone of the industry. The affiliate networks

account for the majority of large affiliate programs, and they also

provide a level of convenience in that you can consolidate a lot of your

activity under a few logins.

I would like to see them work together to establish standards. For

instance, there is a lack of standards in data feeds, which is a challenge

for the folks using them.

Q. Can any absolute statements be made regarding the most lucrative type

of affiliate marketing payment system (e.g pay per sale, pay per click,

etc.)?

A. In general, CPA seems to be more profitable, especially offers for

products and services that are not physical items.

Q. What influence, if any, will blogs make on the affiliate marketing

landscape?

A. I think some are influencial in the way networks, merchants and

affiliates operate. For instance, Jangro.com is considered to have had an

impact in the decision by Commission Junction to change their plans on the

Link Management Initiative (LMI).

Q. What are, statistically, the best avenues to market an affiliate

program?

A. It depends on the vertical. Email and PPC work well for some CPA

offers, while an established web presence can be more important for

selling goods on a revenue share.

Q. Do you see any future trends in the affiliate marketing field?

A. Smaller affiliate programs. Affiliate managers are focusing on

working more closely with fewer affiliates. Also, I think we'll see an

increasing number of affiliates embrace the opportunities out there with

Web 2.0 and innovate with the new tools that roll out.

Q. What current projects are you undertaking in affiliate marketing, including

your work with the Affiliate Summit?

A. My main focus is Affiliate Summit, the largest affiliate marketing

conference. Our last show had over 2,000 this past January in Las Vegas.

We also have events scheduled in Miami (July 8-10) and London (September

28) this year.

Additionally, I provide affiliate management and consulting services as

Shawn Collins Consulting, and I publish an annual report on affiliate

marketing benchmarks called AffStat.

I also have a blog at http://blog.affiliatetip.com where I post daily

about issues in affiliate marketing. And I'm the co-host with Lisa

Picarille, Editor-in-Chief at Revenue Magazine, for the weekly show,

Affiliate Thing, on WebmasterRadio.FM.

Q. What do you attribute your affiliate marketing success to (e.g.,

building content, writing articles, following footsteps of a mentor, forum

participation, etc.)? Please include any last words of advice for one who

aspires to succeed/excel in the affiliate marketing field.

A. It's all about dedication, tenacity, and relationships. I don't look

at my affiliate marketing activity as a job, but rather a fun, profitable

hobby. Over the decade I've been involved in the industry, there are way

too many factors to list that have contributed to my success. But I'd say

the most important of all is to constantly endeavor to learn from others.

_____________________

Conclusion - Do's and Don'ts of successful affiliates

Analyzing the success stories, we may conclude the following do's and

don'ts of being a successful affiliate:

Do's

Build a useful website. Visitors must gain some benefit by visiting

your site.Retain visitors through unique content or adding your "personal

touch." Provide something unique / personal on a consistent basis so that

visitors will be motivated to revisit your site.Sign up with a known and established affiliate program. They have

their tracking systems updated and so you can be rest assured that you

will get your payments.Market your affiliate program so that you can increase the number of

visitors who see your affiliate offering.Optimize your website so that you get a high ranking in natural search

engines.Know your competition. You have to provide something better than

them.Choose the advertisement model that is in line with your overall

business model.Launch your site for some time, before joining any program. Good

affiliate programs may like to see your site and study the traffic before

enrolling you.Look for outside help. You may employ skilled people.Use blogs and RSS feeds for promotion.Remain active in your industry. You must know the latest trends and

needs of visitors.

Don'ts

Join just any affiliate program. Many affiliate programs are outright

frauds.Ignore your competition. They are the best evaluators of your

products/services.Get obsolete. Update your content regularly.Rely only on banner ads. Experiment with all types of

advertisements.Waste time. Be the first to capture any new opportunity.Encourage spamming. You will get blacklisted.

With successful identification of customer needs, providing a way to

fulfill those needs, and collaborating with established affiliate

programs, it is possible to create your own affiliate success story. You

just need to manifest a methodical, patient approach and perform lots of

hard work. But raising an affiliate program cash cow is certainly worth

the effort!

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By Anonymous
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