The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs has never been as popular before as it is today. Why? There can be a number of reasons. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly that affiliate marketing can work for both of them. The merchant sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into greater heights, so has the people's outlook about it changed. No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing, and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them. The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

- Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant's banner or text ads. The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant's site. However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

- Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action—that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant's site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

o Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

o Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant's site.

- Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS< PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

- In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant's site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation. Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

- Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant's site. Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell. Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best. Jane runs the website http://www.home-industry.com - a work at home directory which regularly reviews and updates the best home business opportunities and ideas on the internet.

7 Advanced Affiliate Marketing Strategies

If you want to make more money as an affiliate promoting other people's products, you have to set yourself apart from other affiliates. Here are seven advanced strategies that will help you do so:

1. Mailing List

Build your own mailing list of prospects. Keep promoting different affiliate programs to the people on your list, as opposed to losing the visitor forever once they clicked over to the merchant's site.

2. Success Stories

Write an inspirational success story on how this product helped you or someone you know. After identifying with your success story, many people will be ready to buy.

3. Reviews

Write a detailed review of the product with pros and cons. Of course, the pros should outweigh the cons. People will trust the review much more than a sales pitch.

4. Pay Per Click

Try Pay Per Click advertising on Google Adwords and Overture. Start out with a small budget to test the waters. If your sales commissions are greater than the cost of advertising, continue and expand your Pay Per Click campaign.

5. Blogs

Start a blog on a subject relevant to affiliate programs that you promote. Add affiliate links to your posts. Search engines love blogs, so you will get a lot of traffic.

6. Articles

Write articles releated to the product or service you promote. At the end of your articles, include your author bio with your affiliate link. Other websites will publish your articles and bring you free targeted traffic.

7. Tracking

Always track how many visitors you are sending to each affiliate program, and how many sales you get from those visitors. This way you will separate the winning affiliate programs from the losers, and focus on promoting the most profitable ones.

About The Author:

Melanie Mendelson will show you how to write traffic-generating articles in just 30 minutes - even if you hate writing! See her "30 Minute Article Writing System" at http://www.writearticles-getwebsitetraffic.com

The Importance of Affiliate Marketing in Internet Business

For many years ever since we started manufacturing products for sale in the offline physical world, we had been having sales agents representing different manufacturers to help the latter to expand their markets. Their main focus had been to make the sale by getting the orders from the prospects and existing customers, which were then processed by the manufacturers or merchants.

In the Internet online world today we have affiliates instead of agents. Affiliates are highly targeted pay-for-performance sales agents.

There are also some forms of Internet advertising that rewards the affiliates for driving traffic to the advertiser i.e. the manufacturers or the affiliate program owners. The advertiser pays the affiliates to place a link on their website, and the affiliate sends traffic to the advertiser in return. In other words, it's about the affiliates receiving commissions for helping in making the sales.

Affiliates are being considered as a complementary but very important sales channel although the merchants themselves continue to get their own direct traffic in making their own sales.

The affiliates do not have to suffer from the occasional sleepless nights worrying about the processing of orders, packing and shipping etc because this are being taken care of by the merchants who usually have an effective tracking system to determine which affiliates drive which orders to them starting with the so-called affiliate links. These are the links that the affiliates put on their websites, newsletters, ezines or emails.

The most common affiliate link is embedded in the linking URL. For example, if you see a link like "http://www.abcmerchant.com/?xxxx=3456", you can be quite sure that the affiliate with the ID (identification) 3456 will receive money from ABC Merchant when someone places his order after clicking that link.

An excellent example of an affiliate program is that of Amazon.com who happens to have one of the oldest affiliate programs in the Internet. The main advantages of the affiliate marketing as a form of Internet advertisement and strategy are:

1. Low Investment Budget In affiliate marketing, you don't have to invest a lot financially to start pulling in profits. This eliminate the concern of many who are hesitant to venture into any home based businesses because of the lack of fund or the unwillingness to part with money due to uncertainties.

2. No Need For Inventories There is no need to keep and manage an inventory as this would be taken care of by the merchant.

3. Passive Income Through Leverage Strategy Many wealthy people earn their income through various leverage strategies which allow them to make money while they're sleeping, meddling with hobbies, or having vacation in far away places such as the beautiful beaches in Hawaii or Malaysia.

Affiliates could simply drive traffic to the merchants' websites without having to sweat after having provided them your ad copy and links.

4. Minimal Risk The main reason for most successful Internet marketer's extensive use of affiliate marketing is the low-risk nature of the program. This is especially attractive to those with low budget for advertising

5. Globalisation One is dealing with an unending global market place. All you have to do is study, research and select a niche product or service and prepare all the necessary marketing tools for your affiliates to direct traffic from just about anywhere around the world to your website.

6. Getting paid while you sleep This system allows you to recruit thousands of salesmen who are willing to work for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You could switch your business to Autopilot mode so that you could continue to earn money whether you're awake, asleep or holidaying.

Most online businesses use affiliate marketing strategy to sell their products which could include physical products, software or e-books. Service industry can also benefit from an affiliate program via a pay-per-lead program.

A well designed affiliate program could bring very explosive positive results to the affiliate program owners' business and the stream of income for the affiliates themselves.

An affiliate strategy done right can increase online sales tremendously. There are well over 30 affiliate software packages to choose from. There are also more than 200 features in affiliate software and network offerings.

Many success stories of the Internet businesses today are the results of suitable application of affiliate programs without which most online businesses could not survive let alone expanding their businesses.

About The Author: Sung-Liang Woon (John Woon) is a Rubber and Latex Consultant with about 30 years of experience. He enjoys writing, lecturing, travelling, taichi, playing flamenco guitar and singing. Check this fantastic website to find out how he has ventured into Internet business: Take These 3 Steps To Instant Internet Business Visit his website, Earn Cash Now Working From Home. Take a tour at his Blogs: 1) JohnWoon's Internet Home Business. 2) JohnWoon's Low Price Pharmacy. 3) Asthma and Allergy 4) Diabetics' Valuable Guide 5) Hypertension and the Heart 6) Stop Smoking Site

6 Ways To Loose Affiliate Commission

Sure affiliate marketing can be highly profitable but if you're not using the right methods you could actually be driving away your customers.

Here are 6 things to avoid in affiliate marketing:

1) Don't distract visitors with too many offers. You may think by listing a whole bunch of different programs the better your odds of making a sale, but if you give your visitor's too many choices chances are they're going to go into information overdrive and not buy anything at all.

2) Don't go for the sale immediately. People need to be warmed up before they purchase from you. Give them information, advice, substance and then and only then should you make an offer.

3) Don't use exclamation marks!! Exclamation marks and other hype language will make your offer sound like a sales pitch and nobody likes a sales pitch right? Speak in a genuine way and try to avoid too many exclamation marks.

4) Don't Just Let Them Leave. Chances are your visitors aren't going to buy from you the first time around so don't let them leave your website without collecting their email address. You need a way to follow up with them. Send them valuable information through your mailing list along with the relevant offers.

5) Don't OVER sell a product. Product reviews work really well with affiliate marketing but you need to make sure your reviews are honest. Come one lets face it no product is perfect. Be honest in your reviews, if you wish the product offered had a certain function then say so. People will trust you more if they know you're reviews are honest.

6) Don't review products you don't own. This can be a killer. It's so much easier to promote a product you own and use and it will come through in your writing. If you're reviewing a product take the time and make the investment and actually purchase the product and use it.

Ready to start profiting from affiliate marketing? Download your free super affiliate interview at http://www.newtoaffiliatemarketing.com and learn how to boost your affiliate commissions.

Making Your Affiliate Business Profitable

There is a misconception on the internet that it is possible to profit from affiliate programs without really doing much of anything. This has attracted many people to become affiliate marketers.

Many affiliates simply place the merchant's ad on their website and just wait for someone to click on it to collect profits. These are the affiliates who, more often than not, will fail. Most end up quitting out of frustration because they are not seeing profits. Marketing is an essential aspect of any online business and affiliate programs are no exception.

Successful affiliates realize success involves thinking of ways to promote their business and products better. To induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to them by their merchant. Ways to make their affiliate sales increase!

So, if you're new in affiliate marketing and you want to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and earn more commissions, here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

- Try purchasing the product yourself so you can write a testimonial or personal endorsement ad for it. If you don't want to purchase the product, at least do some thorough research about it.

- Promote the product using your own website with a short, easy to remember domain name. Most affiliate urls are long and virtually impossible to remember, plus other affiliates will be promoting the same affiliate website as you. Having your own site will give you an edge on many of your competitors. If you can, purchase a domain name with keywords related to your affiliate products.

- Try writing your own ads. Most merchants won't mind if you write and design your own ads for their products as long as you ask permission from them and present your ad to them before posting it on your site. This gives you another advantage over a lot of other affiliates who are advertising the same products.

- Use chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums to promote your product. By focusing your attention on these methods, you will be using tools that many other affiliates tend to ignore. Don't blatantly promote your affiliate products all at once,instead, participate in chats and discussions until you find the right moment to offer some advice or perhaps an endorsement of the product(s) you are promoting.

- Start your own ezine or newsletter. Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to provide information to people about a certain subject. Don't always promote your merchant's product in your newsletter or ezine. Instead,write your own informative articles or use free reprint articles and find areas in your articles to insert links to your affiliate ads. Your subscribers will become annoyed if you constantly bombard them with ads. Don't forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are a few guidelines to help you increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks. There are many more tips and resources out there, and we encourage you to use (them if you believe they will work) to attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your affiliate products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can do this, there is no reason for you to fail at affiliate marketing.

Blair Gwilt is an online marketer and owner of the website http://www.theaffiliatevoice.com. His site offers information and resources for people seeking to start a home business.

First step to succesful affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best money making opportunities of recent times. As Internet access becomes more and more common and widespread, consumers buy more and more things online. E-commerce is more convenient because it lets consumers buy products without leaving their home. However, e-commerce is also very good for the intrepid young businessman or woman who wants to make money online, working from home.

The trick is to find a high paying affiliate program that knows enough about quality business to pay its partners high commissions. Leading affiliate marketing programs know the value of good affiliates. The very features that you should look for in any affiliate marketing program are high commissions and excellent affiliate support.

Are you a web design professional? Are you certain that whatever site you come up with can catch the eye of potential customers and turn them into paying customers? If the answer is no, then you need help. Are you able to write the entire content of your website? Are you sure your writing is good enough? If the answer is no, then you need help. Are you an expert at Search Engine Optimization? Can you make your website go to the top? If the answer is no, then you need help. And, finally, is the affiliate marketing program you are about to join offering to help with all of the problems mentioned above? If the answer is no, then think again before joining.

http://www.MoreNiche.com is used here as an example of a friendly program that helps affiliates set up and manage their websites and also pays them high commissions for every sale. Ben Lloyd, affiliate Manager at MoreNiche believes this to be fundamental to a successful program: MoreNiche's strategy has always been to offer consumers extremely high quality products with a lot of added value. This in turn means we can charge high prices and pay our affiliates the highest commissions around. Imagine waking up to 5 sales notifications for $175 each. The Internet never sleeps so neither do affiliate sales MoreNiche affiliates can also learn the ropes from other affiliates and webmasters using the forum. Checking out their forum is always a good idea because you get to learn about the program from people who are actually working with it. The MoreNiche forum is a valuable resource where affiliates can learn from each others experience and get general advice. It is important to be as supportive as humanly possible, so as well as this we offer affiliates free web designs, fresh weekly content for their sites and SEO help. With so much on offer, newcomers can become major players in short space of time, said Ben.

Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer

Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer

Copyright 2006 by Jason James http://www.AuctionResourceNetwork.com

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme. Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing. There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales. Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.

Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits. Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home. There are virtually no production costs. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate. Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the least cost and the most comfort. You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the convenience of your own home. In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping. These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.

Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing. By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn. Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not making enough money.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business. With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Marketing and Affiliate Programs

If your company is in desperate need of a way to get their name out into the mainstream, there are a couple of options that are available to you. Before you give up because you do not think that you will ever find a way to spread the word about your company, you should consider that there are hundreds of marketing ideas that are available to you.

If you are searching for marketing opportunities you will want to first find out what program will work best for your particular industry. This can be done by completing a lot of market research. This will allow you to choose the opportunities that will best suit your needs, and weed out the ones that have no chance of being successful.

Most people who own their own small business can also be classified as work at home business owners. If you work at home you may have some size disadvantages when you are trying to market your products, so it is important to get everything right the first time.

One of the ways to market your business is through affiliate programs. Affiliate programs have been proven successful by thousands of businesses. These programs are easy to understand, and they consist of rewarding affiliates for sending visitors, customers, or subscribers to your site. Each business owner runs affiliate programs differently, and it is important to find the best system for you. The biggest advantage of affiliate programs is that you can set up a model where you only have to pay your affiliates if the people that they send to your site purchase your product or service. This makes for a very cost effective and efficient marketing plan.

Overall, affiliate programs are among the best marketing ideas that are available. If you are looking for a way to increase traffic to your site and promote your business, you will want to look into affiliate programs.

Copyright © Brian Lannom

To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.2DaysHomeBusiness.com

Affiliate Programs Explained

Affiliate programs are a type of partnership between a seller and an advertiser. The advertiser directs visitors to a seller's website and for this the advertiser receives a percentage of the revenue generated from the visitors coming from the advertiser. The advertiser is said to be an affiliate of the seller.

The percentage paid by the seller to the affiliate is set by the seller and varies depending on the type of products, the profit margin on the products sold and how keen the seller is to promote his or her products through affiliates. Percentages anywhere between 10% and 75% are common.

The advantage for the seller includes additional sales and that the seller knows exactly what margin he or she will have on products sold to visitors coming from affiliates. If the seller markets his or her products through advertising using sponsored links, banners, text ads or similar, the seller does not know before starting a campaign what number of sales will be generated per dollar spent on advertising. The seller thus does not know if the campaign pays off or not. With sales generated from affiliates the seller knows exactly what percentage of revenue from a sale goes to the affiliate and therefore knows exactly how much is left for the seller. A seller who offers an affiliate program can have hundreds or even thousands of affiliates.

For the affiliate participation in an affiliate program allows the affiliate to make money without having a product to sell. For the affiliate, revenue can be generated simply from attracting visitors. The affiliate does not need to worry about procuring or shipping products or about providing any kind of support to the buyer. The affiliate has a wide range of choices for how to attract visitors. In a common setup, the affiliate has a website from which visitors can be sent to the seller's website. The affiliate may also have a blog which generates so much traffic that it pays of to direct visitors to a seller's website. A blog can be created for free and so is the choice of many affiliates. Finally, an affiliate may direct traffic to a seller's website by advertising using banners, text ads or sponsored links as available through Google's AdWords, Overture or similar services. If the affiliate attracts visitors from such advertising only, the affiliate does not need to create a website or blog and so does not need to create any content for such.

Affiliate programs and paying of commissions to the affiliate can be supported by third parties or be handled directly between the seller and the affiliate. If paying of commission is handled directly between seller and affiliate, the affiliate normally needs to sign up for the affiliate program on the seller's website. In case of third parties handling payment of commission it is common that no agreement needs to be set up between the affiliate and the seller. The third party however will then have separate agreements with the seller and with the affiliate. Commissions are normally paid by cheque but in some cases it is paid by PayPal or wire transfer.

Technically affiliate programs are normally supported so a visitor's IP address is recorded when the visitor follows a link provided by the affiliate to the seller's website. If a purchase is made and payment is collected, the visitor's IP address is determined again, and if it matches that recorded when a link was followed, the commission can be paid instantly. In some cases a cookie is stored on a visitor's computer when a link is followed and this is used to identify the source of the visitor.

In short, affiliate programs allow sellers and affiliates to share the revenue generated for sales from sellers' websites and can generate considerable income for both parties.

About the author:

Andrew Nielsen is the author of "The Online Business Builder". He is an internet entrepreneur and is currently helping online business start ups get on their feet. Visit http://www.i-want-to-be-rich.com or mailto: an@i-want-to-be-rich.com

Tips To Choose Good Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs have become more popular nowadays, especially for sales people who want to make money easily and quickly. However, before you choose any affiliate program, make sure that you have answered all questions relating to a good affiliate program. Here are some questions you may ask:

1. Does the affiliate program offer high commission rates for products? I know it is a tough question to answer. How much is high? Normally, commissions of 25%-30% of the product price are expected of a good affiliate program. You can have a look at this site for reference:

http://www.audio4fun.com/affiliate.htm

2. How much traffic does the vendor get to his site?

Before signing up to any affiliate program, remember to do some research on the vendor's site, especially the site's traffic. Alexa.com may be helpful in doing this research. If the site is ranked in the top 100,000 the merchant gets good daily traffic to his site. If the site is ranked below 500,000 it is not worth bothering. You should find another one. So remember to do the research before you want to invest anything.

3. Does the merchant use any tracking system?

All good affiliate programs provide excellent tracking systems. This system allows you to track visitors by using cookies, so that you can get accredited with sales that originate from your site. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer they last, the better chances are of getting paid.

4. Is the payment safe?

Be sure that you can get commission payment easily and safely, otherwise you'll waste a lot of time and effort. A perfect affiliate program has a secure payment system so that you can check your balance any time or be informed shortly when you receive any credit. Moreover, you should ask about the payment time because different affiliate programs have various payment times. Some pay monthly, some quarterly. It is also vital to know the minimum balance you need to earn in order to get paid.

5. Does the affiliate program have any tool to help affiliates sell more?

A standard database with all kind of reports from sales to payment and other tools like ads, banners.. are very vital for affiliate management. Make sure that you can control all the sales, keep track of them and make good decisions. Moreover, the support system must be really good to help you solve some urgent situations you may encounter.

6. Does the affiliate program offer affiliate referral program or two tier affiliate program?

It means that you can get additional commission if you can recruit more affiliates into the affiliate program. The more they sell, the more referral commission you may get. Therefore, recruit as many affiliates for you as possible.

Conclusion: Finding a good affiliate program is a tough work. The best advice for you is to do your own research, using these abovementioned questions as a guide that will lead you to the right merchant, to reach your financial goal. If you find one, tell me.

About the author:

Jessica Lee has been involved in affiliate marketing of Audio4fun.com. You can find more information at: http://www.audio4fun.com/

3 Truthful Facts about Affiliate Marketing

The reality about affiliate marketing is the fact that 90% of affiliates will actually earn less than $100 a month. Consequently, you shouldn't count on earning full time income unless you can get very good at the following:

1. Creating a good web site that converts.

2. Search engine optimization. You'll get need lot of traffic, as possibly 1 out of 200 visitors will buy your products. SEO can assist you get your site in the search engines so more people will be able to locate you.

3. The trial and error of picking the suitable merchants and learning the appropriate ways to promote them.

Too many people out there assume that affiliate marketing is positively a get rich quick type of program. These types of people will create a couple of banners, then wonder why they never make a single sale or any money at all.

How long you'll need to do it depends on how much money you are wanting to make. If you are a quick study and truly understand affiliate marketing, you may earn as much as $2,000 in 2 years. This is based on the fact that you are beginning at 0 and the fact that you have another full time job, not being able to devote a lot of time working with your affiliate marketing program.

If you decide to give it a try, the hardest challenge will be the first few months. If you check your stats and see that you are only making a couple of bucks, you'll find yourself wondering if all the hard work is worth it. If you get some sales going and stay committed with your hard work, the commissions should start growing.

One of the crucial factors with affiliate marketing is the traffic that goes through your site. Even though you'll get a lot of traffic passing through your website, only a fraction of the traffic will be buyers.

The key here is knowing your visitors and then being able to determine which affiliate programs you can offer to meet their needs. There is also the concept of pre-sale, which is the ability to put your visitors in the necessary open mind set that's essential for them to actually click on what you are selling.

By sticking with affiliate marketing, you'll understand more and more through the years. You can't expect to be the best when you first start, it'll take a lot of hard work and perseverence . By putting the time and energy into your programs, you'll be well on your way to succeeding in the very profitable and exciting world of affiliate marketing.

NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks!

Cheryl Mustian is an affiliate marketer, who is involved in e-commerce. You can visit her web site at http://www.cherylworksathome.net Check out her article directory at http://www.cherylworksathome.net/works-at-home-articles/ or visit her blog at http://www.cherylworksathome.net/blog/

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of selling or promoting products or services of an individual or entity, while getting paid in the form of commission. A large number of affiliate-marketing programs are available on the web. These programs are aimed at attracting those who are ready to sell a product or certain products of certain companies on their websites.

In return for their efforts, affiliates are paid commission on sales. The responsibility of the affiliate is mainly to send leads to the original company. The shipping and other handling issues involved in purchase and delivery of the product are taken care of by the parent company. Affiliate-marketing programs are becoming more and more popular, as they provide a team of sales personnel that can run into the millions. These affiliates are to be paid only when they have helped increase the revenue of the parent company.

Affiliate marketing programs can be divided into three broad categories: pay per lead, pay per sale, and pay per click. The affiliate programs are very easy to join; simply go to a website that offers such programs, fill out an online form, and the webmaster will provide you with a unique link. Put that link on your website. The more clicks on this link, the greater the chances of earning a handsome amount of money.

Some of the affiliate-marketing programs allow you to earn money even if you do not have a website. Apart from earning income, an affiliate program also provides additional links to your website, making it more attractive and useful to those who visit it. It is clear by now that the popularity of affiliate marketing is on rise and is likely to increase as the reach of the Internet continues to grow.

Affiliate Programs provides detailed information on Affiliate, Affiliate Programs, Affiliate Marketing, Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs and more. Affiliate Programs is affiliated with Affiliate Marketing Programs.

How to Earn Money as an Affiliate

How to Earn Money as an Affiliate

It seems today that almost every web site offers an affiliate program. They have become an important way of marketing your site. But actually making money as an affiliate can be more challenging then you think. Learn how to earn profits through your affiliateships.

First you must identify what the aim of your site is. Does your company sells products, or is it a personal site, link site, information site, etc? Understanding your goals well help determine which affiliate program is right for you.

It is very common for web-based companies to become affiliates of other sites. This enables them to offer their already existent clients products they do not offer as part of their own product selection. It is a low risk, easy and inexpensive way to introduce new products to your clients.

Long Distance Post, LLC
Long Distance Post, LLC is a small Boston based telecom company that exemplifies good affiliate relationships. They offer a variety of different products including prepaid cell phones, prepaid calling cards, switched long distance, high speed voice/data lines, etc. Prepaid calling cards are Long Distance Post's core business. However, they resell prepaid phones from Locus Telecommunications. Locus is a supplier of prepaid cell phone services. Long Distance Post receives a commission for sales on every product sold. Long Distance Post has accurately matched a complimentary product to their current line up through their affiliateship.

Because of their affiliateship, Long Distance Post is able to offer prepaid cell phones and services to their customers. Trying to develop their own brand of prepaid cell phones and services would be costly and time consuming for a small company. As a result, Long Distance Post markets Locus products, creating mutual benefits between Locus and Long Distance Post.

Selecting an Affiliate Program
There are several different types of affiliate programs to be involved in. Most affiliate programs involve simply placing a link, graphic, or banner ad on your web site. Depending on the affiliate program, some will pay per click, while others pay only for referred sales. In the case of Long Distance Post, they are actually selling and distributing the Locus products. It is a bit more hands on then most affiliate programs, but works the same. Long Distance Post still receives a commission for every product sold.

When selecting an affiliate program it helps to make sure the product or site you are endorsing has some sort of related content on your site. For example if you're a web store selling computer parts, becoming an affiliate of a flower delivery company would be useless to your customers. The computer store would receive greater benefit and more sales if they became affiliates of broadband services or VoIP phones. Both of those products are more related to computers, and would be of interest to someone who is browsing your page. In the Long Distance Post example, they have added another telecom service to their lineup.

Locating an affiliate program is an easy process. There are several directories found on the web that list multiple affiliate programs for all industries. This is an easy way for you to compare which companies or products you would like to offer from your site. Also this will enable you to see which programs pay the highest commissions and best match your needs.

Making Money
Affiliate programs do not make money for themselves. Often people place links on their personal web pages expecting to make high commissions each month. However are surprised at how low their commissions checks are. Making money as an affiliate on the Internet takes work. You need to market your site so it will receive traffic for your products. In the case of Long Distance Post, they have optimized their site to respond to prepaid cell phones, Locus Telecommunications and similar keywords.

Becoming a successful affiliate can be a slow difficult process. It is important to take time to read the full details of an affiliate program and learn about the company before just signing up. If you are going to invest your time in marketing their products, it would behoove you to make sure you are doing this for a stable company. Affiliates need to work to make their programs successful; they don't just generate revenue themselves. If they did, everyone would be an affiliate.

Garrett Friedman is a well-known and respected published author of numerous articles on telecom services. More information about telecom services can be found at Long Distance Post, LLC.

5 Steps to Become a High-earning Affiliate Champion

There are basicly only 5 steps involved to become successful and rich as an online affiliate. These 5 steps include:

1. Choose the right affiliate programs.

Today there are tons of products that offer opportunities of making money by joining their affiliate programs. How do you single out the real deal out of the millions of scams and silly money games out there? Beware! You may choose the right affiliate have the chance to prosper from the internet or you may be trapped by a get-rich-quick scheme that flushes your money straight down the drain. There is one section in the Affiliate Masters Course eBook that is dedicated to helping you to recognize the real thing from the scams out there. This eBook is wholly written to help you become a high-earning affiliate champion. Download for free here. My favourite affiliate program that has everything an excellent affiliate program could ever have, based on the requirements in the Affiliate Masters Course above is Success University .

2. Build a website.

When you plan on doing marketing online, it's obvious that you need to build your own website. Of course you could simply promote your affiliate link by placing classified ads, or buying expensive homepage links from high traffic websites, or doing other ways that would require huge advertising budget. But there are ways to promote your affiliate link in a much cheaper way: by building your own website. It takes a little bit more effort though, but nowadays there are tons of resources and tools on the internet that can help you design your site inexpensively (and even free) in only a few days. Some webhosting service actually provides easy to use website builder for their customers. All it takes is to follow through the web builder wizard and it's done. My favourite inexpensive webhosting is CheapWebHosting.com. Go to http://www.e-money-machine.com for more information on where you can find other resources mentioned above.

3. Drive targeted traffic to your site.

As you probably know, there are numorous traffic exchange programs that you can sign up for free to drive a mount of traffic to your new site. But to generate sales you don't want just ANY traffic. You want your traffic come to your site that is targetted. Your visitors should be your target market. How your website is designed, the site concept you use, the keywords you choose, the traffic pulling content that you create and how/ where you do advertising... they all play equally important roles in generating the targetted traffic that you want.

4. Build up your CTR (Click Through Rate)

Not only should the traffic be targetted,... it should also be interested so much by the content of your site that they would actually click on your recommendations: your affiliate links. A website that sounds more like a sales pitch would less likely get clicked on. Your content should be so trustworthy and interesting that your visitors would click on your affiliate links with an 'open-to-buy' attitude. Your website must be able to gain your visitor's trust. The more they trust you, the more they will click through your site.

5. Convert your traffic into dollars.

This step is the most important and exciting part of course. Whether or not your website converts the traffic it gets into dollars or not is determined by the quality of the traffic that you recieve and the ad-copy of your site. If you want to market anything successfully, either online or offline, you have to have a powerful ad-copy that could sell sand in the desert. My favourite simple formula that any illiterate drop-out can use to write advertising copy is this eBook - MastersCopyWriters.

It only takes 5 steps to become a high-earning affiliate champion. And it would take a very long article to present this one as a practical step by step guide on how you can make the 5 steps above. But I don't need to do that anyway as there already is an eBook that can show you exactly how to do that. You can download this eBook for free here.

Resource Box:

Dinar P. Wiria-Atmadja is the owner of http://www.financialfreedomawaits.com and http://www.e-money-machine.com. Find resources about making money online on those sites for free.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of selling or promoting products or services of an individual or entity, while getting paid in the form of commission. A large number of affiliate-marketing programs are available on the web. These programs are aimed at attracting those who are ready to sell a product or certain products of certain companies on their websites.

In return for their efforts, affiliates are paid commission on sales. The responsibility of the affiliate is mainly to send leads to the original company. The shipping and other handling issues involved in purchase and delivery of the product are taken care of by the parent company. Affiliate-marketing programs are becoming more and more popular, as they provide a team of sales personnel that can run into the millions. These affiliates are to be paid only when they have helped increase the revenue of the parent company.

Affiliate marketing programs can be divided into three broad categories: pay per lead, pay per sale, and pay per click. The affiliate programs are very easy to join; simply go to a website that offers such programs, fill out an online form, and the webmaster will provide you with a unique link. Put that link on your website. The more clicks on this link, the greater the chances of earning a handsome amount of money.

Some of the affiliate-marketing programs allow you to earn money even if you do not have a website. Apart from earning income, an affiliate program also provides additional links to your website, making it more attractive and useful to those who visit it. It is clear by now that the popularity of affiliate marketing is on rise and is likely to increase as the reach of the Internet continues to grow.

Affiliate Programs provides detailed information on Affiliate, Affiliate Programs, Affiliate Marketing, Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs and more. Affiliate Programs is affiliated with Affiliate Marketing Programs.

Tips To Choose Good Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs have become more popular nowadays, especially for sales people who want to make money easily and quickly. However, before you choose any affiliate program, make sure that you have answered all questions relating to a good affiliate program. Here are some questions you may ask:

1. Does the affiliate program offer high commission rates for products? I know it is a tough question to answer. How much is high? Normally, commissions of 25%-30% of the product price are expected of a good affiliate program. You can have a look at this site for reference:

http://www.audio4fun.com/affiliate.htm

2. How much traffic does the vendor get to his site?

Before signing up to any affiliate program, remember to do some research on the vendor's site, especially the site's traffic. Alexa.com may be helpful in doing this research. If the site is ranked in the top 100,000 the merchant gets good daily traffic to his site. If the site is ranked below 500,000 it is not worth bothering. You should find another one. So remember to do the research before you want to invest anything.

3. Does the merchant use any tracking system?

All good affiliate programs provide excellent tracking systems. This system allows you to track visitors by using cookies, so that you can get accredited with sales that originate from your site. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer they last, the better chances are of getting paid.

4. Is the payment safe?

Be sure that you can get commission payment easily and safely, otherwise you'll waste a lot of time and effort. A perfect affiliate program has a secure payment system so that you can check your balance any time or be informed shortly when you receive any credit. Moreover, you should ask about the payment time because different affiliate programs have various payment times. Some pay monthly, some quarterly. It is also vital to know the minimum balance you need to earn in order to get paid.

5. Does the affiliate program have any tool to help affiliates sell more?

A standard database with all kind of reports from sales to payment and other tools like ads, banners.. are very vital for affiliate management. Make sure that you can control all the sales, keep track of them and make good decisions. Moreover, the support system must be really good to help you solve some urgent situations you may encounter.

6. Does the affiliate program offer affiliate referral program or two tier affiliate program?

It means that you can get additional commission if you can recruit more affiliates into the affiliate program. The more they sell, the more referral commission you may get. Therefore, recruit as many affiliates for you as possible.

Conclusion: Finding a good affiliate program is a tough work. The best advice for you is to do your own research, using these abovementioned questions as a guide that will lead you to the right merchant, to reach your financial goal. If you find one, tell me.

About the author:

Jessica Lee has been involved in affiliate marketing of Audio4fun.com. You can find more information at: http://www.audio4fun.com/

Affiliate Programs Explained

Affiliate programs are a type of partnership between a seller and an advertiser. The advertiser directs visitors to a seller's website and for this the advertiser receives a percentage of the revenue generated from the visitors coming from the advertiser. The advertiser is said to be an affiliate of the seller.

The percentage paid by the seller to the affiliate is set by the seller and varies depending on the type of products, the profit margin on the products sold and how keen the seller is to promote his or her products through affiliates. Percentages anywhere between 10% and 75% are common.

The advantage for the seller includes additional sales and that the seller knows exactly what margin he or she will have on products sold to visitors coming from affiliates. If the seller markets his or her products through advertising using sponsored links, banners, text ads or similar, the seller does not know before starting a campaign what number of sales will be generated per dollar spent on advertising. The seller thus does not know if the campaign pays off or not. With sales generated from affiliates the seller knows exactly what percentage of revenue from a sale goes to the affiliate and therefore knows exactly how much is left for the seller. A seller who offers an affiliate program can have hundreds or even thousands of affiliates.

For the affiliate participation in an affiliate program allows the affiliate to make money without having a product to sell. For the affiliate, revenue can be generated simply from attracting visitors. The affiliate does not need to worry about procuring or shipping products or about providing any kind of support to the buyer. The affiliate has a wide range of choices for how to attract visitors. In a common setup, the affiliate has a website from which visitors can be sent to the seller's website. The affiliate may also have a blog which generates so much traffic that it pays of to direct visitors to a seller's website. A blog can be created for free and so is the choice of many affiliates. Finally, an affiliate may direct traffic to a seller's website by advertising using banners, text ads or sponsored links as available through Google's AdWords, Overture or similar services. If the affiliate attracts visitors from such advertising only, the affiliate does not need to create a website or blog and so does not need to create any content for such.

Affiliate programs and paying of commissions to the affiliate can be supported by third parties or be handled directly between the seller and the affiliate. If paying of commission is handled directly between seller and affiliate, the affiliate normally needs to sign up for the affiliate program on the seller's website. In case of third parties handling payment of commission it is common that no agreement needs to be set up between the affiliate and the seller. The third party however will then have separate agreements with the seller and with the affiliate. Commissions are normally paid by cheque but in some cases it is paid by PayPal or wire transfer.

Technically affiliate programs are normally supported so a visitor's IP address is recorded when the visitor follows a link provided by the affiliate to the seller's website. If a purchase is made and payment is collected, the visitor's IP address is determined again, and if it matches that recorded when a link was followed, the commission can be paid instantly. In some cases a cookie is stored on a visitor's computer when a link is followed and this is used to identify the source of the visitor.

In short, affiliate programs allow sellers and affiliates to share the revenue generated for sales from sellers' websites and can generate considerable income for both parties.

About the author:

Andrew Nielsen is the author of "The Online Business Builder". He is an internet entrepreneur and is currently helping online business start ups get on their feet. Visit http://www.i-want-to-be-rich.com or mailto: an@i-want-to-be-rich.com

The Benefits Of Using Website Templates In Your Seo Business

Starting your own SEO business takes a lot of resources, including time and energy. That's why it's important to learn how to streamline your business moves while maintaining a professional product. When it comes to building websites for clients looking to cash in on the SEO explosion, sometimes website templates can help you get the job done more efficiently, while keeping that professional edge.

“When you are starting your SEO business from the ground up, landing that first client is typically the hardest part. When you are fishing for clients, the most important thing for you to do is concentrate on your own website.”

Article Content: Starting your own SEO business takes a lot of resources, including time and energy. That's why it's important to learn how to streamline your business moves while maintaining a professional product. When it comes to building websites for clients looking to cash in on the SEO explosion, sometimes website templates can help you get the job done more efficiently, while keeping that professional edge.
The Benefits of Website Templates

When you are starting your SEO business from the ground up, landing that first client is typically the hardest part. When you are fishing for clients, the most important thing for you to do is concentrate on your own website. Clients will look to your website for an indication of the professionalism of your work.

Website templates allow you to keep your own website looking clean, organized and beautiful. If you display a cluttered or disorganized website, the client will head the other very much faster than you could imagine.
Templates For Websites Are Easy And Clean

Website templates are perfect for the individual who doesn't have a lot of HTML programming knowledge. The templates allow you to put together a great looking website, that's easy to optimize and simple to navigate.
Website Templates Offer Low-Cost Solutions

The Internet is a great source for thousands of free to low-cost website templates that you can use to increase your portfolio of options. In most cases, simply paying for a website template will save you plenty of money in comparison to having to pay someone to design an original website.
Fully Customizable Solutions: Website Templates

Some templates have that certain "template" look to them. However, someone with even a small amount of HTML experience can make a slight change to the coding to customize the template for its individual purpose. In this case, the same core template can be used in an endless number of campaigns, yet still appear fresh each time because of minor adjustments.
The Benefits Of Website Templates -- Time Saver

When you use website templates in your SEO business, you're basically using "ready-made" websites. Templates allow you to create a professional looking website and yet, still have the result to your client in a quick fashion. The quick turn around time impresses clients and maximizes your income to time-spent on the job.

Templates save you the time it normally takes to create a website design from scratch. In this regard, you're getting more work done and at a faster pace, while still maintaining the professional product that your clients expect.

How Tagline Branding Drives Traffic to Your Site

With so many competitor websites out there, drawing in traffic is more important than ever. While proven tactics such as social marketing and link building are essential, other factors play an important role in your success.

“SEO involves a wide range of strategies, but implementing keywords in specific locations on your website can improve your search ranking significantly. When chosen well, an effective tagline can increase your search ranking for that term or phrase.”

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one essential technique that businesses should never overlook. While many businesses utilize some basic SEO strategies, there is one website element that is often overlooked -- the tagline.

What exactly is a tagline? A tagline is essentially a brief message, often ranging between five to eight words, which convey an important message about your business. While some websites use their tagline to convey the purpose or mission statement, many miss the great search optimization potential that taglines present. By placing carefully chosen keywords in your affiliate marketing tagline, you can boost your search rankings and attract more customers to your website.
Reasons Why Tagline Branding Drives Traffic

Creating a tagline seems simple, but it can be challenging to find a concise message that utilizes your target keywords. In addition to appealing to readers and encapsulating what your business is all about, your tagline needs to focus on the targeted search terms that your customers are using to find information on the web.

SEO involves a wide range of strategies, but implementing keywords in specific locations on your website can improve your search ranking significantly. When chosen well, an effective tagline can increase your search ranking for that term or phrase. By increasing your position in search engine rankings, you can attract more traffic to your site and produce greater affiliate sales.

Start by choosing your keywords and phrases carefully. Spend some time using keyword research tools to find search terms that appeal to a large audience. Once you have a good list of potential keywords, start considering ways that these terms can be integrated into your tagline.
Tips For Effective Tagline Branding

Of course, using this technique effectively means more than just stuffing a large number of keywords into your tagline. Your message should be brief, but it should also clearly describe the purpose of your site using just a few targeted search terms.

Business websites will want to keep their taglines professional and formal. Entertainment websites might want to try an irreverent or informal approach.
Start by asking the following questions:

Who is your target audience? How is your website different than the competition? What are the greatest benefits that you offer? What feelings and emotions are you trying to provoke in your audience?

Remember that your tagline should be quite brief. While your unique tagline may not be able to answer each of these questions, a little creativity and planning can help address one or two of these core ideas. Most importantly, your tagline should make use of your chosen keywords with simply repeating what your competitors are doing. Focus on creating a unique tagline with your chosen keywords in order to achieve the best search optimization results.

Once you have created your tagline, it is important to use it effectively in order to maximize your search optimization efforts. Start by using the keywords in your tagline to serve as anchor text leading back to your homepage. The words used within links can have a major influence over search rankings for that specific term. The more links leading to your main page, the better your site will perform in search results.

Blog Platforms That Drive Search Engine Traffic

Affiliate marketing, search engine traffic and well-managed blogs all work together in making the difference between a broke affiliate marketer and one who is making a living at it. Search engine traffic is the lifeblood of affiliate marketing. For some, using blog platforms is the cardio shock they need to get their business pumping.

“In truth, all blog platforms are excellent for driving search engine traffic. The trick is to stick with one platform and keep your blog up-to-date.”

However, just how do blog platforms drive search engine traffic, and which ones are the best at the job? Let's find out.
Blog Platforms And Search Engine Traffic

In truth, all blog platforms are excellent for driving search engine traffic. The trick is to stick with one platform and keep your blog up-to-date. The longer you use the same blog platform, the stronger it will stick with the search engines. If you change blog platforms often, you will be starting from scratch each time you make the change, at least in the eyes of search engines.

Blog platforms like Blogger, Wordpress and TypePad are commonly found in the upper reaches of the search engine results. Their user-friendly tools make it simple for users to continually update their blogs with new content, photos, videos or audio clips. With fresh content hitting the blog platform often, it causes search engines to take notice and thus pay them more attention.
Blog Platforms Driving Search Engine Traffic

There are a number of blog platforms available that exceed at driving search engine traffic. However, the reality of the fact is the blog's content is what truly drives the traffic to the blog. Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress and Tripod are four of the best platforms currently available for blogging. In fact, Google runs Blogger, so you can imagine its search engine worth.
Maximizing Your Blog For Search Engine Traffic

There are a few tips you can follow to increase your blog's search engine performance. Aside from writing compelling copy, infuse the copy with special keywords that your readers are typically searching for in the search engines.

This is the essence of "search engine optimization." The search engines will pick up on the special keywords embedded in your copy, thus increasing your blog's ranking within the search results.

Next, you can visit MyYahoo.com and set up a feed so the Yahoo! search engine can effectively spider your blog. Once you've completed that, surf over to SubmitFire.com and submit your blog to the other traditional search engines.

Lastly, you can submit your blog to a number of blog directories online to help spread the word about your affiliate marketing blog.

Over time, the search engines will begin taking notice of your blog and your readership will increase. However, it doesn't happen overnight. Your best chance of affiliate marketing success is to stick with the blog platform you choose and keep it optimized for the search engines.

Key Success Factors For Optimizing Your Website

According to most experts, the majority of website traffic is generated from just a handful of search engines. Since search traffic is so vital to the success of your business, it is important to earn a high search rank for the key terms that your target customers use in the search engines. How can you accomplish this task? While there are many websites out there competing for the attention of the same viewers, applying a few simple website optimization tips can dramatically increase your search rankings and site traffic.

“While a particular keyword may receive a large number of searches each month, it may not be the right choice for you. Instead of going after the most searched keywords, consider selecting keywords and phrases that are slightly less popular and feature far less competition.”

Optimize Your Website With Keyword Research

Initial research is a key success factor that you simply should not overlook. In order to target the right words and phrases, develop the appropriate website content and truly understand what your customers are looking for on the web, you need to spend some time researching search terms and consumer trends.

There are plenty of great keyword research tools out there, but the real key to success is knowing how to use them. After entering a potential keyword, take a critical look at the suggestions. Make a list of the potential keywords that seem to be the most promising.

Next, perform a little keyword competition analysis. While a particular keyword may receive a large number of searches each month, it may not be the right choice for you. Instead of going after the most searched keywords, consider selecting keywords and phrases that are slightly less popular and feature far less competition. While there may be fewer people searching for these terms and phrases, you will be more likely to rank high and achieve better traffic results.
Remember That Content Development Is An Essential Key To Success

After you have chosen some keywords and keyword phrases, the next step is to develop website content around those particular search terms. Whether you choose to create your own content or outsource it to a professional writer, always remember to optimize your copy for the web.

Include your key phrase within the first three sentences and keep paragraphs relatively brief. Utilize subheads and bulleted lists to make content more readable and be sure to use your key phrase between five to seven times throughout the page text.

Successful content development involves more than simply creating articles devoted to a specific keyword or phrase. It is also important to create links between related articles on your website. Rather than write just one article on a particular topic, develop a whole collection of related articles that can be cross-linked to maximize search results and website traffic.

Most importantly, only focus on one keyword per page. Trying to optimize for multiple search terms on a single page can hamper your results.
Always Optimize Every Page For Search

Upon developing the content, it is time to publish and optimize your web pages. While it may be tempting to simply cut-and-paste your copy onto the site, making a few simple tweaks can significantly improve your results. A few of the key success factors that can make all the difference are to optimize your title tag, META data, subheads and links.

Start by creating a title tag that incorporates your keyword, but is also appealing to online readers. Next, write a META description that mentions your keyword in the first 60 characters and include your target keywords in the META tag section. Finally, be sure to include your chosen keyword or phrase into the subtitles and anchor text of on-page and off-page links.

While optimizing your website may require some additional time and energy, the potential benefits are well worth the effort. In addition to improving your search ranking and attracting more traffic, website optimization can dramatically improve your business branding and online sales. Start implementing some of these key success factors today in order to make the most of website optimization.

How Using Subheads can Maximize Your Website's Traffic

It's the unspoken golden rule of affiliate marketing -- traffic equals conversions. As an affiliate marketer, you need to get the traffic to your website before you can expect a customer to make a purchase.

“Subheads are especially important in articles found on the web because most people do not want to read a gigantic block of copy on their computer monitor.”

Generating traffic is most often the difference between an affiliate marketer who is doing it for a living and one who is wondering when their first commission will come. The best do it extremely well, and the rest, well, they typically give up on it after a short while.

There are numerous tricks and tips to help increase the flow of traffic to your website or blog, but one of the most successful methods is through the use of subheads in your website's copy. If you don't know what a subhead is, just look at the following sentence.
What Are Subheads?

Subheads introduce the next section of an article. The article may be changing topics or direction. A subhead will help introduce the upcoming content. The key to a great subhead is that it should contain the primary keyword that you are trying to get the search engines to recognize. In this particular case, the keyword is "subheads."
How Subheads Boost Website Traffic

As the keyword becomes more evident throughout the subheads and copy, the search engines will notice your article and therefore rank it higher in the search engine results. As the website becomes more prominent in the search engine ratings, more traffic will flow to the website.

In the world of HTML, articles generally feature an H1 headline and many supplemental H2 subheads. The H tag identifies these lines of text as highly important to the search engines. In addition, the H1 headline and the H2 subheads should also be formatted in bold type. This not only makes it easy on the reader to follow the article, but also improves the keyword visibility to the search engine spiders.
Why Subheads Are Important

Subheads are especially important in articles found on the web because most people do not want to read a gigantic block of copy on their computer monitor. However, if the same amount of copy is broken down into bite-sized chunks with subheads, the reader will be more comfortable when reading it. Subheads also serve to help skimmers find exactly the part of the article they are interested in while avoiding the things they are not.
Who Should Use Subheads?

Anyone writing for the Internet should use subheads. It helps search engines notice your site and makes everything easier to read. When you're an affiliate marketer out looking for a way to get people to visit your site, it's one of the most routinely successful methods of doing so.

Perform or Die: How to survive in the new Internet economy

It's the end of the beginning... Online businesses must now prove they can generate revenue and profits instead of building market share and selling dreams. It's back to business as usual, with growth built on cash flow."

“"It's the end of the beginning... Online businesses must now prove they can generate revenue and profits instead of building market share and selling dreams. It's back to business as usual, with growth built on cash flow."”

There are 2 types of companies on the Internet; those who test, and those who lose money.
Which will you be? Nothing else matters. Here's why:

1. Internet hype is over. Today you have to generate traffic and convert it to sales quickly. Being in the black is not a trend, it's a way of doing business.
2. Getting performance out of your advertising is all that matters. And testing is the only way to get performance, quickly and with precision.

If you have been following the Internet shake out in the news, watched Internet stocks fall down to zero and wondered what really works on the web then this article is for you.

Let us talk about what really matters. Monetization. It is a very fine word for making
money on the web. There is a shift going on at the moment in online advertising. While earlier it was ok to spend huge resources on institutional advertising now you need to make your ads perform. Advertisers need guaranteed results. Your company website needs ads that will put real revenue into your bank account.

Why are banner ads failing? Why are companies going out of business?

Some companies have a wrong business model from the start. Selling clothes online is not smart as an example since clothes are a typical "touch and feel" product. But in many cases they have spent too much money on advertising that does not work. The effect: Customer acquisition costs go through the roof!

Here is what works. The web is an interactive medium. People can take action immediately.
Simply put: The web is a direct response channel.

The Internet is a direct marketing medium that grows through understanding what your visitors want. What you know about your audience will determine your profitability. In fact… your existing web site audience will tell you what they like if you ask them. In our daily work we test everything we do. Online visitors give us the metrics and tell us what they like. The customer is in total control.
Making money online is about two things.
1. Tapping into existing traffic flows on the web
2. Effective merchandizing

Do not try to create traffic from scratch. The traffic is already out there! The audience you desire to get is right now… this very minute while you are reading this sentence… visiting other websites.

To tap into other websites' traffic and customer relationships you need a good existing sales process in place. If you can´t sell your own offer… and show good conversion rates.... they will not be able to promote you to their visitors.

Let us show you the two steps you need to take to get Direct Results for your company.

Step 1: Monetize your existing traffic and study your users' behaviors.
Implement a tracking system to study all actions visitors take on your site.
Analyze your audience's expressed demands. What do they want? What do they like?
Test via email, Web sites, interstitials, etc. to see which advertising mediums provide the maximum effect for your message
Add offers from co-marketing partners to get additional revenue from your website audience.
Step 2: Plug your existing tested offer into other peoples web sites and start buying ads based on performance.
Get placement on other websites and only pay per performance.
Pay the publisher based on a completed action, not an impression.
You can compensate per lead, per click or per sale or a hybrid version of these three.
Track and administrate these relationships through affiliate program software.
This is what smart companies do today. They do not guess. Instead they test and apply working direct marketing principles into their online business activities.

Does this perspective differ from traditional advertising agencies that spend millions of dollars on banner ads mostly funded by venture capitalists and the stock market?

It certainly does.

Building a successful brand should be based on a good ROI measured instantly. And the best branding is giving your users a good clear visitor experience and having them take action and start a dialogue with your company. While you are doing this make sure that you monetize every single action they take.

Branding is important. But revenue and performance will keep you alive.

All the best.
Ola Edvardsson
Declan Dunn

A Beginners Guide On How To Make Money Online

It's hard to escape the reality that the Internet is the future. There is an unlimited world of cyber real estate out there for the taking. You can have it for a minimal outlay and make a fortune, but only if you know what to do. If you don't, don't worry, you will in about five minutes.

“Pages with long, cumbersome blocks of text will not inspire visitors to continue reading. You want good information in digestible chunks that will make visitors want to return to your site.”

How To Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

A major way that people are building incredible wealth online today is through affiliate marketing. The concept behind affiliate marketing is simple. You post a link to a merchant on your site. Someone comes to your site and sees the link. They click on the link and land on the merchant's product or service.

The merchant pays you for getting the customer to them. Although the amount paid for one hit or sale may not be great, when you consider the millions of people who use the Internet every day, it's easy to see how this process can add up to big bucks fast.
Beginners Guide To Making Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing:
Designing A Website

To get affiliates, you need a website. Where are you going to get a website? You're going to have to build one.

There are programs and instructional guides that will show you how to design your website, or you can get a professional to help. You'll also need a web host to give you a place to park your new website. Once you have the design and the host for your website, you're ready to get started.
Building Out A Website

• Content

Content that makes your site "sticky" (people come there and stay there) is informative, interesting and readable. Pages that simply bludgeon the reader with keywords will be clicked away from fast. Pages with long, cumbersome blocks of text will not inspire visitors to continue reading. You want good information in digestible chunks that will make visitors want to return to your site.

You're going to need to fill your website with content. Content is the matter on your website that gets people to come to the website and stay there. The way content gets people to your website is through search engine optimization, or SEO. Internet visitors tend to find websites through search engines like Google or Yahoo!

• Keywords

You will need relevant keywords to get your website to show up on one of the first pages of one of these search engines. Keywords are specific words that web searchers put into search engines in order to navigate their searches. If those keywords register with your site, that site is more likely to show up in the search.

• Link Building

Keywords aren't the only thing that gets a search engine's interest. Search engines also analyze links. Search engines also measure the relevance of your website based on how many other sites link to your pages. As a newcomer to affiliate marketing, you'll want to build links primarily through engaging, relevant content. You can also build links by submitting articles containing your link to other websites and by posting to forums and bulletin boards with a link to your site.
Adding The Right Affiliates To Your Website

Once you have a great website that's starting to generate traffic, you're going to want to add some affiliate programs. That's the way this site will generate income for you. Your first step will be choosing which affiliate programs.

Some affiliate programs, like poker and mortgage sites, can offer big money for each client because they are so lucrative. However, you will be competing with many other affiliate sites for their business. Others may pay less but you may be dealing with less competition. You'll have to decide which affiliate programs will work best for you based on the type of content you will be featuring and the kind of traffic you expect to get.
Enhancing Your Affiliate Marketing Website

You should always be thinking of ways to improve the traffic your site gets. There are online programs that will analyze your site traffic and let you know where your traffic is coming from and why. It will let you know which keywords are getting the most hits so that you can tailor your content accordingly.

Remember, that while you can make a lot of affiliate dollars, there is also a lot of competition out there. Everyone wants traffic coming to their site rather than someone else's, so you must constantly be looking for ways to make your website stand out from the pack.
Moving Forward With Your Affiliate Marketing Website

Don't worry if you're not ready to retire from your affiliate revenue after the first week your site is up and running. Building a profitable website is a long process that requires dedication and effort. It may take a while for web surfers to find your site, and it may take longer for the right visitors to come to your site and stick to it.

If you stay with it and keep adjusting your website until you hit the right formula for success, the money should eventually start rolling. When it does, use what you've learned to continue to build your affiliate marketing plan with more and better content, stickier pages and new links. You may even decide to take on some assistance. Once you have the money, hiring professionals to redesign and write quality content for your site can give your profits an instant boost.
Taking The Right Approach To Affiliate Marketing

Thinking of affiliate marketing as a get rich quick scheme is not a winning approach, although some people have quickly become rich. If you handle affiliate marketing seriously, you may reap rewards accordingly. If you recognize affiliate marketing as a business and approach it with the same hard work and dedication as any new business, you have a great chance to build terrific wealth.

Loyal Visitors More Favorable to Advertising

Increasing the number of visitors to your affiliate site is an important factor in order to successfully make money online. But building user loyalty and a positive attitude towards your site also can make a great difference. A study made by OPA (Online Publishers Association Audience Affinity Study) to survey and measure attitudes towards websites and online advertising shows that with higher affinity, sense of belonging, comes a more favorable attitude towards a website's advertising.

“So by creating the sense of affinity your website visitors are going to be more accessible to affiliate advertisement on your website and will convert more easily!”

Affinity Targeting

We are leaving SEO for a second and focusing on targeting approaches concerning affiliate advertising. Though search engine optimization is essential in order to become a successful affiliate marketer, learning and exploring ways of targeting your website's advertisements will determine just how successful your affiliate business will be. Plainly put - how much money you are going to earn on affiliate marketing!

Affinity targeting is simply a way of targeting your advertisements. To learn how to maximize clicks on and profits of online advertisement affinity targeting focuses on the attitude of website visitors toward online advertising. It further suggests that if a person likes a certain website more than others he will not only devote more time on that site but also be more receptive to its advertisements.

According to a survey made by OPA (Online Publishers Association Audience Affinity Study) measuring the connection between user attitude towards websites and their online advertisements. High-affinity visitors showed following characteristics:

* Visitors spend more time at the site.
* Visitors are more positive towards the site and its content
* Visitors are more positive towards advertisement on the site

So by creating the sense of affinity you visitors are going to be more accessible to affiliate advertisement on your website and convert more easily, simple as that! Or is it?
How To Create Visitor Loyalty

What makes a visitor take a liking to a certain website depends on many things. One thing is certain though; if your visitors become loyal to your affiliate site your conversion rate most definitely will increase. Of course visitors won't click on your banners and ad-links just because they like your site. But when people normally are restricted and skeptic towards advertisement your website visitors will more receptive to the ad and its message.

Here are 4 tips on how to create affinity amongst your website visitors:

* Keep usability in mind when you design your website. A website that is easy to navigate and use will stand out from all other content clustered websites.

* Keep a fresh content. Update your website regularly, preferably on a daily basis with news, blogposts etc. By always having unique content your visitors will make it a routine and habit to always return to your website.

* Maximize the website experience. Don't settle for just text content and information. Include tools, video-clips, images, animations and games etc to maximize the user potential of your website.

* Create visitor trust. Making your visitors trust your website and rely on its content is a corner stone in visitor loyalty.

What To Advertise

If you are just starting with affiliate marketing a tip would be to choose a market niche and devote your affiliate website to it. Some segments are more lucrative than others like, online poker, mortgage loan and education but if you have a strong interest we would advise you to focus on that subject. Whether it's about cars, tennis, health, business really doesn't matter. With an interest about your affiliate business you will much easier fill your website with quality content and useful information.

By assigning your website to a specific subject you will also be able to niche your advertising. Internet users visiting your website will do it because they are looking for information concerning the subject you've chosen to create a website around. Make sure to promote products and services that have a connection to your website content.

Why You Should be Using Google Analytics

ffiliate marketing is an industry in which it is extremely important to stay on top of the traffic flowing to and from your website. Google Analytics makes it easy to monitor and track that all-important traffic. It can help you adjust your marketing strategies to increase your conversion rates and experience greater success.

“Google Analytics allows you to track the success of everything from affiliate campaigns to how well your keywords are performing on Google and other search engines.”

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a full-service website statistics generator that features a multitude of additional components and benefits for anyone interested in tracking and comparing the performance of their website. It's provided free of charge by the leader in search engines, Google.
How To Use Google Analytics

First, you have to set up your Google Analytics account. If you already have a Google AdWords account, then you can use Google Analytics directly through the AdWords interface.

Next, you will have to add the tracking code into the html of your website. Once the code is embedded into the pages of your website, it immediately begins to track your visitors.
The Benefits Of Using Google Analytics

With Google Analytics, you can effectively compare and track all of your advertising and marketing campaigns. You can adjust the strategies of the ones that aren't working well and make the necessary changes to increase conversion rates. Google Analytics allows you to track the success of everything from affiliate campaigns to how well your keywords are performing on Google and other search engines.

Google Analytics is also extremely easy to use, so now, even beginners can implement these powerful tracking tools. Google Analytics is extremely flexible. All companies, from the smallest, one-man business to the world's largest conglomerations can equally experience the benefits of its unique capabilities.

Google Analytics also seamlessly integrates with Google AdWords, making it easier than ever to calculate your ROI from keyword tracking data. This helps to save time, money and effort.
Additional Features Of Google Analytics

Identify revenue sources easier than ever before through Google Analytics' Ecommerce tracking capabilities. You can even track revenue to specific campaigns or keywords. You can find out exactly what's working and what isn't.

You can also check each link on your site, as you surf, to view the traffic and conversion information. Plus, you can discover the origination of many of your most affluent visitors, so you can target your affiliate marketing campaign directly at them.

Google Analytics also incorporates a powerful email dashboard that allows you to send personalized reports to the people you need to. The emails are customizable and you can also schedule them for a specific delivery time.

To learn more about Google Analytics and how it can help your affiliate marketing business to find the success you desire, visit www.Google.com.

How to draw attention to your website

The most important thing when it comes to making a successful site is good quality content. But the content isn't everything. You also have to put great emphasis on the packaging and promotion of your content. I mean what is the point of having great content if no one sees it.

“The most important thing when it comes to making a successful site is good quality content. But the content isn't everything. You also have to put great emphasis on the packaging and promotion of your content. I mean what is the point of having great content if no one sees it.”

A very effective way to draw attention to your site is link baiting. This means writing content that others find interesting, exciting or useful and will link to from their own sites. If you succeed in doing this you will both get traffic directly from the links and if enough people link to you will also manage to rank high in search engines such as Google on things that relate to the content of your site. By building links the awareness of you website is bound to increase.

The title is the key
So how to you create good link baits? Well, the key is a catch title. To draw attention to your text piece you want it to be rated high at social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious and Reddit. This rating is based on the votes cast by the users at these sites. Many of them will only see your title in a list when they vote at it, which makes the title far more important than the rest of the text.

Once you have decided on a catchy title it is really important that the text delivers the things that the title promises. There is nothing more irritating than reading a text to discover that it doesn't contain what you expected. Only give promises you can deliver in the title.

Content is still king
Once you have a good title you should write a text that is focused and to the point on the subject. You have to deliver what you have promised in the title. This is very important. People don't read texts in online in the same way as they read a book or a magazine. Online, people skim texts and want to find what they look for fast. Use short paragraphs and sub-headers in order to make it easy for the visitor to get a grasp of the text.

The subject of your text can be basically anything, but should have some connection to the things you promote on your site. To find the right angle for your piece you can use a hook.

There are several different hooks that can be used:

1. News hook, be the first to write about something and you are sure to get loads of links.
2. Resource hook, practical and useful articles or a compilation of useful information regarding your area of interest.
3. Humor hook, this can be pictures, texts or list were you make fun of things regarding your niche. Everybody loves a good laugh. And if others in your field recognize themselves in your humor hook they will often link to it.
4. Contrary hook, kill a myth or take a different stance in an issue of interest in your niche.


If you have found the right hook and have created a piece that you think will take the world by storm you have to make sure that other people find it and link to it.

Push your piece

Post it on social bookmarking sites such Digg and Delicious etc. Email a link to your link bait to others in your particular field. Post links in blog comments on blogs that write about the same subjects.

If you use your imagination you will see that there are numerous of ways to get others to notice your stuff. The most important stuff is to get there attention and if the content you have created is good enough the rest will follow.
Learn more about increase your website traffic

Here at seo affiliate marketing our archive with good and reliable affiliate and seo articles is at your disposal. So if you don't mind we would like to recommend one of our articles, Step By Step Guide To Optimizing Your Website, that we are sure will be helpfull.

Great Affiliate Tools You Can't Live Without!

One of the first things new affiliates need is help. Tools and other online resources can here make the difference between fortune and failure. To host, build, advertise on and optimize your website are few of the many problems affiliates are faced with every day. And for many the solution is found in online tools. This step-by-step guide will not only list top affiliate tools but also show when and where to use them!
Step 1: Find a Proper Web Hosting Provider

Finding good and customized web hosting on an already clustered market is far more time consuming and frustrating than you might think. To start off this list of useful tools we have listed the top 3 hosting providers for both affiliates and merchants.

Name: Web Hosting Buzz
Website: www.webhostingbuzz.com
Description: Hosting from $3.95 and 24/7 live chat support are exceptional features of this web host.


Name: ThinkHost
Website: www.thinkhost.com
Description: Green web hosting powered by 100 % renewable energy. Plants a tree for each new client.



Name: LunarPages web hosting
Website: www.lunarpages.com
Description: Focuses on reliablity and customer assistance with 24/7 support.


Step 2: Start a Website through Site Building Tools

Building a website can be a complicated procedure when programming skills and server knowledge often is a must. These easy-to-use site building tools manages hosting set up, SEO, web design and much more.


Name: BuildOffers
Website: www.buildoffers.com
Description: Offers pre-designed affiliate marketing websites, easily customized and quickly set up.

Name: Site Build It!
Website: www.sitbuildit.sitesell.com
Description: A business building-tool. More than 50 functions; site builder, hosting, marketing tools..

Step 3: Publish Ads on Your Site

TextLink Ads is a highly appreciated tool, used in making the text link advertisement process for both advertisers and publishers much easier. Through this tool publishers can find appropriate ads to display on their websites and make money. Perfect to locate relevant ads and publish them on your site in no time!

Name: TextLink Ads
Website: www.text-link-ads-com
Description: More than 20,000 publishers use this tool to advertise ads on their websites.

Step 4: Optimize Your Content with Keyword & SEO Tools

One of the most significant factors in ranking high in Google is finding appropriate keywords and optimizing your website accordingly. When building AdWords Ad-campaigns or working with SEO these are the most commonly used and trusted tools to find the best suitable keywords.

Name: Keyword Country
Website: www.keywordcountry.com
Description: Produces extensive keyword lists with relevant traffic volume, average CPC and level of competition.

Name: Trellian's KeywordDiscovery
Website: www.keyworddiscovery.com
Description: KeywordDiscovery gathers keyword statistics from more than 180 search engines and reveals what search phrases that are used.

Name: WordTracker by WebTrends
Website: www.wordtracker.com
Description: Wordtracker helps you optimize your website content, generate relevant keywords, and research online markets.

Name: WebPosition
Website: www.webposition.com
Description: SEO tool that reports trend graphs, link popularity, off-site metrics and more. All essential tools to get higher rankings in the search engines.
Step 5: Analyze Your Business with AffiliateTips Marketing Tools

Then of course we cannot forget our in-house marketing tools that have been especially tailored to meet various needs of our visiting affiliates. All tools are easily embedded into your website.
Affiliate Calculator
Fill in affiliate segment, unique visits, conversion ratio and referral domains and calculate your affiliate earning potential. Through the Affiliate Calculator you can find out more about your affiliate revenue- or SEO-potential!

Affiliate Glossary
Learn the affiliate terminology with our extensive glossary tool.

Basic Affiliate Content Feeds
Get basic affiliate articles content feeds directly on your website

Latest Affiliate Content Feeds
Allow your visitors to read the latest affiliate articles from Affiliatetips.com directly on your website.

These tools are very useful for affiliates to get started. When it later is time to choose an affiliate program you will easily find the 10 top affiliate programs here. Ranked, reviewed and ready!