Blaine561's Internet Marketing Information Center

With over 12,000 affiliates to manage in 5 separate merchants programs, I review countless affiliate applications and their corresponding websites.

It isn’t a pretty picture. And that’s part of the problem.

So I thought it appropriate to share the 10 most common mistakes I see affiliates make over and over each and every day.

1. The affiliate’s website is poorly designed. A lot of times it’s just plain ugly. Ugly I can stand if it has a purpose. I started my Internet career doing web design and programming. I understand good website design, both for function and look. The affiliate site has to have at least one or the other to be effective, having both is the best. Without one or both of these factors, what are the chances for a visitor to be referred to my merchant’s site?

2. The affiliate site has no affinity to the merchant site. If you have a website without anything in common with the merchant, how do you expect to sell the merchant’s products to your visitor? If your site is all about computer equipment, why are you signing up for my wigs site? Why are you wasting both of our times?

3. The affiliate site has no voice or character. How will a visitor find value on the affiliate’s site long enough to have reason or need to clickthrough on my merchant’s text or banner link? None I would say.

4. The affiliate site has too many banners or text ads. How will the visitor differentiate my offer from the competition? If the site is messy and busy, I may get lots of impressions, but clickthroughs will be low and probably conversions too. Don’t junk up your site with too many ads that don’t have purpose.

5. Affiliate sites with expired coupons. Seeing a site like this implies it’s a “weekender’s” site a part-time affair. Many affiliates started out this way, but today it is highly unlikely that such a site will generate any traffic or sales for my merchants.

6. Affiliate sites with broken banners. It still happens, merchants change their creatives, affiliates don’t keep up and there is an ugly red “x” where a banner should be. Don’t let this happen to you.

7. The affiliate site has no privacy policy. This is a red light for visitors. This means the site is just trying to make a buck and has no interest in visitors for any other reason than getting them to make them money. A sophisticated consumer, as most are getting as Internet experience increases, wants a sophisticated site to convert through. Not having even a simple privacy policy is a giveaway as to the lack of sophistication of the site owner.

8. NO ABILITY TO CONTACT THE WEBSITE OWNER. If you will not disclose who you are, provide an email link or a site form, it is unlikely a visitor to your site will get warm and fuzzy about his site visiting experience and will not covert as a result.

9. NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR THE AFFILIATE MANAGER. In olden days affiliates didn’t want to be bothered by affiliate managers. Now with the tools and special offers merchants can offer through producing affiliates, it is essential for good communications between the affiliate manager and the affiliate. It means more money for both.

10. Affiliate website owner not participating in the industry forums. More and more as I talk with affiliates, we discuss forum postings, industry news and blogs. The top producers know what is going on in the industry. They are creating the news and are creating financial opportunities at the same time.

Seven Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic

An affiliate marketer may have all the things needed for him to be able to succeed in a business such as affiliate marketing. He may have the necessary drive, diligence and perseverance to be able to understand how the system works. He may have all the tools necessary in maintaining the business, including a really unique and interesting website which could earn him a fortune if only the whole world could see it. However, all these would prove useless if he does not know how to drive traffic to his website. His business would sink into oblivion together with all the sales, fortune and dreams that he might have realized if he only knew how to do this particular task.

Getting people who matter to see one’s website is a difficult undertaking if he tries to consider the fact that there are rivals everywhere waiting to pin him down. The immensity of the internet as well as the affiliate marketing world has given birth to the fierce competition between affiliate marketers, each of whom has his own great product to offer. With all the websites piling on top of each other, how would one be able to stand out? The seven best ways to drive laser-targeted traffic to one’s own website would help those who are bent on sticking it out with this business wherever it is bound to take them.

The first step in driving traffic to one’s website is by relying on search engines and what they can do for the affiliate marketer concerned. Because they are popular for driving free targeted traffic, they should not be ignored by all means. Having top search engine rankings is vital in building popularity links, and the use of the right keywords is important in attaining this goal. Once a website is on top of the list, it is easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it for himself.

The second way in driving traffic to one’s website is by contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. Locating websites that are related to one’s own website is the primary task. Once there, he should be able to establish communication by personalizing everything as much as possible. It is then possible to make reciprocal link exchanges between webmasters whichever way the affiliate marketer prefers.

The third way is through writing one’s own articles. This is an effective way in promoting a website, because good content that are appreciated by readers will lead them to visit the writer’s very own website out of sheer interest.

The fourth way is through joint venture marketing. This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a product or a service. Having a partner through ad swap or link exchange is beneficial to both parties as it allows them to reach a wide customer base in a short amount of time.

The fifth is through joining affiliate programs. Having affiliates to do the work means allowing them to bring tons of traffic to a website. Skyrocketing sales would be realized as a result, and both the affiliate and the website owner will benefit from the situation.

The sixth is by having a list of subscribers that one can refer to every so often, because they are those which would prove to be valuable assets for the marketer concerned. The use of autoresponders and personalized newsletters is one way of keeping track of them all, and holding on to them by letting them know about new products and services is an essential task that should be done by the affiliate marketer concerned.

The seventh is by knowing one’s market through and through. It is important for traffic to be targeted to those who might have a special interest in the theme or topic of one’s website. This way, a solid customer base is going to be created. Once a potential customer shows an interest in a particular website by paying it a visit, one must not waste time in trying to show him that his effort is worth it.

Traffic generating strategies are important in trying to make one’s affiliate marketing career inch forward. It is always advantageous to plan one’s moves in any business that he might undertake. This is particularly so in affiliate marketing. If one knows how to get people to see what he has to offer, then he is on the right track.

You do not have to have a degree in marketing or be the son or daughter of an agency director to try your hand at advertising. The Internet has offered millions of people the opportunity to explore, learn and share information. On top of this the web has allowed people to earn money and try their hands at industries that simply aren’t available to them in the ‘real world’. One of the industries that has allowed Internet users of all backgrounds and with all experience and qualifications to earn money and try advertising, is that of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing programs are distributed throughout the Internet, with a large number of sites and special portals offering Internet users the opportunity to host adverts on their site. The affiliates do not need to concern themselves about creating advertisements or even paying any money to the sites, everything is supplied and free of charge. The affiliate is then free to host adverts and generate their own income, becoming masters of their own destiny.

Deciding upon a particular affiliate program can be a complicated business as there are so many online industries vying for new affiliates. One of the largest Industries is that of online gaming, or more particularly that of casino gambling. It is an industry that has generated much of its reputation and financial prowess by utilising the availability of the affiliate programs. Affiliates have created a vast network of sites, which in turn advertise the individual casinos. With each site that signs up to the affiliate program a casino gains a further sphere of influence, and may also be able to attract more people or at least get their attention. The affiliates are an integral part of the casinos advertising option, and are responsible for generating much of the business that they are now experiencing. Therefore casinos look to exploit this method of advertising wherever possible, but far from being an exploitative industry, the casinos reward their affiliates handsomely.

The affiliates can build their site and generate extra traffic by advertising their whereabouts through the numerous options available to online users. They can use numerous lexical and advertising techniques to find out which one works best for them in attracting new customers to a site. The successful affiliate needs to generate traffic through their own site first in order to maximise their earning potential. With more people passing through the site an affiliate stands a greater chance of getting the all-important clientele for their associated sites. There is no defined key to success so for new affiliates the best thing to do is to experiment and try out new ideas. Affiliates do not need to make many people join in the casino industry to earn money so for those with low aspirations there should be no trouble in getting what is required. The fact still remains as in most businesses that a little bit of hard work and dedication will go a long way. But it is an excellent introduction into the world of advertising and owning your own business, no matter how small. Best of all it will hardly cost a penny, with no sign up fee to the affiliate scheme, all a new affiliate needs to pay is for their own advertising should they wish to undertake it and the domain name for their site.

To those who are not familiar with affiliate marketing, two-tier could be a new term to you but to those who are involved in this kind of money-making experience; it could mean a stream of income. Two-tier is an enticing feature of a particular affiliate program wherein, affiliates are allowed to sign-up additional affiliates below them. So that when the sub-affiliates otherwise known as second tier affiliates, earns a commission, the affiliate above receives a commission too.

In two-tier system, the first tier of commission is just like in the usual affiliate program. The sole difference is that it has an additional tier/s or sub-affiliates, whereby marketers also gain a commission once the people that the additional tiers referred to the program generate sales. Theoretically, affiliate programs can have multi-tier program with infinite number of tiers, however, there are practical limitations. As tiers increase, the affiliate program draws more webmasters who are mostly interested in gaining profit from other’s work and effort.

Two-Tier affiliate program is also recognized as Multi-Level Marketing. When you sign-up for an affiliate program, you are identified as the first tier and the person that you have recruited or encouraged to sign up is the second tier. If there are additional tiers, then the system can now be regarded as multi-level marketing (MLM). But today, MLM isn’t as effective and successful as it was several years ago. It is because at present, affiliates can freely select from thousands of affiliate programs and they can quickly switch from one program to another.

You could probably go wrong if you’re thinking that you can depend on your second tier to do the job for you. So if you want to use two-tier affiliate program to your advantage and generate more income by encouraging sub-affiliates to sign-up below you, make sure that you carefully choose your affiliate merchant. Pick those merchants who generate stable stream of high quality products, give high or just commissions, offers real time tracking, furnishes you with a proven and tested advertising arsenal and treat their affiliates very well. You can also sign-up for the merchant who gives high visitors-to-sales conversion rate.

It is also advisable if you engage yourself with a web merchant that has a user-friendly website which you can access anytime so that you can monitor your statistics including visits and sales. And if possible, choose the one with powerful marketing tools which you can use in promoting their products.

You’re just wasting much of your time and effort and worse, damaging your integrity once you promote poor affiliate program because your visitor will surely presume that the product or service you are reselling must be dreadful too. That’s the reason why it is important to pick first-rate affiliate programs. Through these, you can not only build up a good relationship with your visitor, but also, you can easily get more tiers to sign-up under you. You should also be cautious of some affiliate programs that give more importance on the profits to be earned in taking on other affiliates than on the income from sales, because you’ll just eventually find out that someone has already close those sales without informing you. Usually, this kind of affiliate program offers a very low first-tier payment but a sky-scraping second-tier commission.

If you want to start an affiliate program of your own, you surely have to decide whether it will be a single tier or two-tier affiliate program. Who am I to say which of these two programs are better? But let me tell you the benefits you could get out of two-tier affiliate program.

First, your profit will increase due to increased sales from the customers that your second tier has referred. Second, you have a much broader customer base to which you can sell your products and services. Then, you gain more and stable income because the customers referred by your affiliate and sub-affiliates could probably develop a lifetime loyalty on your site and your products. Plus, you have an army of sub-affiliates who will promote and resell your products and services to their visitors and subscribers.

Two-tier program has been a proven winner and should be the number one choice for the budding affiliates as well as for the affiliate program managers. When you start gaining profits from your site as well as your tiers, this is now the right time to say that you have used two-tier affiliate program to your advantage.

Step 4 – Choose a Domain Name

This sounds like an easy step, but you may soon find it can be surprisingly difficult. As mentioned before the majority of your traffic will hopefully come from search engines. To rank well in search engines one of the key factors is to obtain a domain name that includes one or more of your keywords. This can be a real problem because YourKeywords.com is most likely already registered. You can start by going to a domain registrar such as Go Daddy and enter the domain you want on the homepage. If it’s not registered already you can register it. If someone else has already registered it you will receive a list of suggestions of available domain names or and go back and try another domain. Depending on the term you chose you may or may not find a domain you want by doing this.

The second method I’d recommend is a domain name suggestion tool such as Name Boy. This tool will let you enter your keywords and come up with a large number of suggestions for domains based on those keywords. It will also show you which of those domains are still available. I used this tool to register the sample site TropicalArt.org. I normally do not register .org sites, and if this was a site I was seriously looking putting the effort into making profitable instead of a simple example I would make every effort to obtain tropicalart.com. For this example it will do though.

Finally if you just can’t find an acceptable domain using the first two methods you can buy one that is already registered from someone else. This can be much more expensive than the first two options but in some cases it makes sense to do. The two main sites for doing this are Sedo and Afternic. These sites work as a trusted third party to coordinate the sale and transaction between the buyer and seller, and collect a percentage of the sale from the seller for performing this service (much like EBay). I used these services to obtain this domain name, ArtAffiliate.com.

Step 5 – Build Your Website

This is a very important step and unfortunately one I can’t explain in enough detail in this section. For those of you who are already experienced web developers, you have most likely already decided how you are going to develop your site and can move on to the next section. The rest of this section is for those who do not have any experience in this area. You’re going to need to make a choice at this point to do it yourself or hire someone else.

Do it Yourself

If you choose to do it yourself and have no previous web development experience then you’re best bet will be to develop a static site. This means you will manually be creating pages for each product you wish to sell and listing them on your site. It will also require maintenance to make sure you keep the prices up to date and add and remove products as needed. There are several tools available for doing this and you can just search Google to find them, but most likely you already have one on your computer, Microsoft FrontPage. It is included with Microsoft Office and is a great tool for beginners.

Hire Somebody Else

This may sound like it would be way to expensive for some people, but you’ll if you are reasonable about the requirements it’s really not that bad and will definitely save you a lot of time of having to manually add products. The biggest benefit is instead of manually creating a page for each product, all the products can be loaded into a database and the pages generated dynamically. Periodically a new datafeed can be downloaded from the affiliate program website and you’ll instantly have the updated prices and current list of products.

So how do you find someone? You may already know someone who does web development, that will be willing to create a site for you for free or cheap. If so great! But developing the average art affiliate website will take about 15-20 hours worth of work and you may not be so lucky to find a volunteer. On top of that software development is typically a fairly high paying job so hiring someone locally to do it can cost a pretty penny. The method I would suggest is going to a third party website that pairs developers with clients such as RentACoder.com.

RentACoder and sites like it allow clients to list the requirements for their project and developers to bid on the project. You will be able to get your project done for a much better rate here because it’s typically individuals doing the work instead of companies and there is competition from overseas developers keeping the prices down. It’s very important that you be thorough on what exactly your requirements are. You also need to keep the requirements reasonable in order to keep the price down. Everything you ask for will add hours and cost to the project so if you don’t really need it, don’t ask for it. To give you a rule of thumb on what you should expect to pay, a no frills site such as the example Tropical Art should cost you somewhere around $300.

Step 6 – Find a Host

You are going to need a place to host your website. Your ISP may provide some web hosting space but typically this is a very small amount, so you’re most likely going to need to find a web host.

The first factor to consider when finding a web host is if they support the technology your website uses. For example if your site was created using FrontPage, ASP or ASP.NET you will need a windows host. For static html, php or Java you can go with a Windows or Unix host. If you site requires a database such as MS SQL or MySql you’ll need to make sure the host supports that as well.

There are several other factors such as price, bandwidth, reliability, etc that you’ll need to consider as well. You can simply search Google for “web hosts” and compare the results to get an idea of what’s available. I’d personally recommend StartLogic or PowWeb.

Step 7 – Optimize for Search Engines

It’s important that search engines know what your site is about. You want to emphasis the keywords you selected earlier to make sure they know that is the primary subject of your site. To do this you need to make sure those keywords are included as part of the title on every page. Every page should have a different title though. Notice how on Tropical Art the title on each page is different but includes “tropical art” as part of the title. You should do something similar.

You also should provide alternate text for all of your images. This not only helps search engines know what the site is about but also helps people with software to assist with vision disabilities to navigate your site. You’re keywords should also be contained within parts of the body text on your site, at least on the home page and preferably on sub pages. Just be careful not to overdue it, your page is made for human readers and should be designed as such. Search engines will detect over stuffing of keywords and rank your site lower as a result. It is also very helpful to have static urls such as /1234/subject.htm instead of urls with query string parameters such as /subject.php?subjectId=1234 . You can use url-rewriting to accomplish this with a dynamic site. It’s also beneficial to place keywords in the url.

There are many other on-site optimizations you can perform. I recommend visiting High Rankings for more advice. Also keep in mind that your primary phrase isn’t the only term you should target. If you have a subpage about a more specific topic, optimize that page for that topic not your main one. For example the page about the artist Carl Aagaard is optimized for his name instead of the more generic term “Tropical Art”.

There is a new and explosive trend in the world of gambling and sports betting—Internet sports betting. People are finding out in droves through Internet searches and word of mouth how simple it is to bet on sports on the World Wide Web. The Internet is saturated with new ideas and schemes to ‘get rich quick’—but few are successful, except if you are dealing in sports betting. The introduction of the Internet has especially opened the floodgates for the sports betting industry. The Internet finally allowed websites and their owners to tap into an audience and membership worldwide instead of only a local audience. The diversity of members has increased the feasibility of the sports betting industry online and has created one of the chief and most commanding online sectors. These sports betting websites turn over billions of dollars every year and are growing more and more every day.

What if I told you that you could make money as a sports betting affiliate without ever risking even a penny of your own money? It’s true. There are literally thousands of sports betting websites all vying for a piece of the pie. The big money is not only being made by the facilitators of the sports betting websites, but rather by an affiliate system. The sports betting affiliate program is evident on most of the sports betting and gambling websites. They offer a bounty and/or revenue sharing program to help advertise their particular sports betting website, hopefully above the others.

Bounty sharing, in terms of sports betting affiliate systems, offers you a reward for attracting a new, paying customer. You, as an affiliate, can do this by word of mouth, directing traffic on your website to a particular sports betting website and advertising. This is a ‘take the money and run’ effort—a one time payment for your efforts of drawing in new, paying customers.

However, bounty sharing may not be the most profitable venture in the long run. Many sports betting websites offer a revenue sharing affiliate program. The programs offered vary slightly from company to company, however the generalized idea is that you earn a percentage of the money spent by a player, which usually runs between 20 and 35 percent and in some cases, you can also earn money on player deposits. 20 percent may not seem like very much money, but it can indeed add up to a large amount of cash—your cash—as you build your referral base of paying sports betters. As they say, “the bookie never loses”—you are placing your bets on the right side of the coin by joining as an affiliate.

Let’s face it—advertising is expensive and getting yourself to the top of the ‘Google scale’ is nearly impossible without investing thousands and thousands of dollars and then the websites have to worry about getting people to click specifically on their website. There is a better way for them to market their sports betting website. A way to stretch their dollar further and work that much harder for them—by paying you to advertise for them. Nothing travels faster than word of mouth advertising—by placing a banner on your website, which already generates traffic, they only pay you for the paying customers that your website or link generates for their sports betting site.

Do not confuse this for a ‘click-through’ program—it’s not. This type of sports betting affiliate program requires the customer that clicks through your banner/website/link to actually sign up to the sports betting website, deposit money and gamble it. What do they have to lose? Twenty percent of how much ever much money your clientele spends. That leaves the sports betting website 80 percent of the pie, which in turn equals cheap advertising and marketing for them, and possibly mega bucks for you.

As your paying referred clientele list grows with the sports betting affiliate program, so will your earnings. Think about it—if you have 10 people who spend $100 dollars a month at the sports betting website, you have earned yourself $200 with very little work. If you have 50 paying referrals who each spend $250 a month—at 20 percent you have just earned yourself $2,500 for simply directing traffic from your website to sign up on a sports betting site.

What’s more, you have nothing to lose and money to gain. Even if your referred clients win big throughout the month, most sports betting affiliate programs do not carry over a negative balance. The more of your own advertising you do for the company, the sweeter your own rewards will be. What are you waiting for? The time to act is now—it is never too late to get a piece of this fast-growing evolution in gambling.

I personally receive over a dozen checks and commission payments every month from various affiliate programs that I promote.

Last month, those checks totaled more than $10,000 and some months they have been as high as $25,000.

Given my success as an affiliate marketer, I’m often asked what affiliate programs I personally recommend.

The answer is easy because it’s actually a pretty short list.

First, let me explain what an affiliate program is.

Affiliate programs are used by monster companies like Amazon, eBay, and many others to recruit resellers (affiliates) to help bring customers to their websites.

But the affiliate programs I prefer are those offered by smaller companies that sell digital products online. Those are the programs that pay up to 75% commission, while most larger companies may pay just a few percent.

You can join an affiliate program usually by applying online at the company’s website. Being accepted into the program gives you the right to market the company’s products as an independent reseller and receive commissions when you make a sale.

I’ve looked at hundreds of affiliate programs over the years and have come up with my own personal Top 10 Affiliate Programs that I actively participate in and heartily recommend.

Some of these programs require that you pay a membership fee and some do not. The reason some programs charge a fee (including my own affiliate programs) is because you get more value as an affiliate.

In most cases you get a full-blown website from which to sell the products and copies of most – if not all – of the products you’ll be selling. For example, I charge $124.50 to join my program, but you get access to over $500 in products.

To make my list of the Top Affiliate Programs is not an easy task.

First of all, I have to personally be an affiliate of the program and must have earned considerable sums to prove its validity.

To make my list the program must also:

Offer quality products that offer real value, no fluff

Offer high commissions (30% minimum, 50% preferred)

Offer 2 tier commissions (if the 1st tier payout is substantial, I can live with a single tier)

Have a proven track record of success

Have a spotless reputation

Pay commissions on time, every time

Have well-known affiliates who will vouch for the program

Be more than 6 months old

Have a low rate or returns

Be referred to me by someone I trust.

That last one’s a biggie for me. If one of my peers recommends a program, I know it’s going to be good.

So, here is my personal Top 10 Affiliate Programs that make me thousands of dollars every month and with a little time and effort, there is no reason they can’t do the same for you.

These are the programs that I personally participate in and recommend. If you’re serious about starting your own affiliate marketing empire, take a close look at these.

Internet Marketing Center

IMC was founded by the late Corey Rudl and is now headed up by Derek Gehl, Corey’s right hand man. IMC racked up $40 million in sales and pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to their affiliates. Their products are top notch, as is the support and the commissions. I regularly get checks from IMC that range from $3,000 to $7,000 a month. This program is free to join.

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DropshipDesign Turnkey Websites

This is the only turnkey dropship website company that I recommend and I have been their affiliate for 2 years now. I regularly earn $500 to $1,000 week as an affiliate and also have my own turnkey dropship product site that brings in revenue from orders placed by customers. You must sign on as a customer first, but doing so gets you your own turnkey website and affiliate marketing rights.

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Hot Item Finder

Dave Guindon is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet online. He’s also one of the most talented programmers and product creators. His flagship product, Hot Item Finder, helps users identify what’s hot and what’s not on eBay. It’s one of the best eBay related products I’ve ever seen. Dave’s affiliate program is also tops in my book. His product converts like crazy and his support is second to none.

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1stPromotion.com

No one knows affiliate marketing better than Rick Davies and his brother Ron. They are considered “The Masters” at making a six-figure affiliate income from home with affiliate marketing. Using that expertise, the brothers Davies have created 1stPromotion.com, which is quickly becoming the top Clickbank affiliate site on the planet. Their turnkey system is great for beginners at an extremely low cost.

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CBMall (Clickbank Mall)

I personally earn several thousand dollars in passive income every month with this system and there’s no reason you can’t do the same… and the great thing is, you don’t even need a website to get started! No monthly charges. Great for beginners.

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Automatic Money Machine

Howard Mooreland’s Automatic Money Machine has proven itself to be one of the top programs. Howard offers big commissions and his sales pages convert like mad. I never fail to generate hundreds of dollars anytime I promote Howard’s products, which help users build a web site in just a couple of hours that can literally start generating money instantly.

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Emergency Cash Generators

James Jones always delivers by providing his affiliates with excellent products that sell like mad. I have done so well promoting James’ new book, Emergency Cash Generators, 101 Profit Generating Techniques, that it jumped into my Top 10 after just one month. You can’t miss affiliating with James.

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MyClickPages.com

MyClickPages.com is the program I created specifically for Clickbank affiliates. http://MyClickPages.com gives you a complete, professionally designed website from which you can sell my Clickbank registered products. I pay 50% commission on all sales. It’s free to join, but please only do so if you are serious about affiliate marketing.

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DropshipWholesale.net

Naturally I have to recommend my own affiliate program. Yes, I charge for the affiliate license, but I also give affiliates a full blown website and copies of all my products and my track record is 2nd to none. I signed checks last year that paid out over several hundred thousand dollars to affiliates in 2004, so I know it works.

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Prosperity & Profits

My P&P affiliate program is one of the top programs on the web for serious internet marketers. As a P&P member and affiliate you get access to every section of the P&P website, including the wholesale database, the business opportunity and franchise database, the extensive ebook library, and more. Commissions are 50% of sales and paid monthly by check.

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There you go, my personal Top 10 Affiliate Programs, but don’t think that is the definitive list. There are tens of thousands of products and companies that you can sign on with as an affiliate and earn commissions.

You can find most of them listed at Clickbank or Commission Junction.

All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. But how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads. And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions—that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action—that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page—it should be a great landing page!

It’s an exciting adventure that you’re about to begin by being self-employed. It’s time to let everyone know about your soon-to-be successful company by promoting your home business.

While hiring a marketing or public relations firm is an easy option, since you are just starting out, it may be a tool you cannot yet afford. If this is the case, it is up to you to develop different media means to promoting your home business.

The most obvious is starting a Web site. There are many freelances out there who would gladly do this for you for a fee, but this is not really necessary if you have basic computer skills. Several sites are dedicated to instructing you on a step-by-step procedure on how to create a Web site for promoting your home business. Many provide usage for a price, but there are some out there in which you can use for no cost at all. This would be a practical option. A free site might not offer all the flourishes of a paid-for one, but as your first priority would be simply promoting your home business, other features, graphics and designs can be added once the money starts rolling in and you have extra cash to spend on creating a stand out site.

Writing a weekly or monthly newsletter is also a great marketing tool in promoting your home business. Fill the copy with your personal background, services provided and costs involved. Update your newsletter with savings advertisements, new services offered and comments from pleased customers when promoting your home business through a newsletter.

While posting a link or subscriber option to your web site for the newsletter is a given, additional initiative must be taken as part of promoting your home business. Obtain e-mail addresses of several companies or individuals who might be interested in using your services. Shoot for the addresses of actual people rather than sending a letter promoting your home business to a general business site. You are then taking the risk of becoming a deleted spam file.

If your home business is a local one, such as a day care or accounting service, advertise in your local newspapers and trade magazines. Coupons always catch a consumers eye, so including them in your ad would be a key tool in promoting your home business. Offering a 10 percent discount is always a plus.

Also, holding contests with prizes would catch they eye of a newspaper or magazine browser. Consider making the prize a week of free service or a sales item.

Lastly, get some business cards together as part of promoting your home business. You can design and print them using a home computer or pay a professional printer who may have additional design ideas that would capture consumer’s attention. Distribute your business cards to individuals and companies, and post them in every store that offers a free advertising billboard.

Making money through affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding careers one could ever have. What’s good about this business is that anyone can join and make their way to success. Affiliate marketing has been known to be cost-efficient, assessable method of conveying long-term results. In fact, you can start even with a shoe string budget. And with affiliate marketing, you can have the benefit of working from home and enjoying the freedom and flexibility of working for yourself.

But there are also some people who failed in this kind of business. It could be because they lack knowledge and tactics. If you are a web site owner and you want to join in an affiliate marketing business, you should know where to get good affiliate programs.

Clickbank is an ideal place to start. Here, you can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, http://www.clickbank.com and secure a clickbank ID. From the Clickbank’s home page, proceed to “Earn Commissions” and look for the products and services that perfectly fit you and your site. These products are typically ranked according to their popularity.

Clickbank is one of the affiliate networks that serve as a 3rd party between the web merchants and the associated affiliates. It is responsible in providing the technology to deliver the merchant’s offers and campaigns. The affiliate network also do the job of collecting commission fees from the merchant and giving it to the affiliates involved in the program.

Clickbank provides you a large and increasing network of publishers or affiliates to tap into. To be more specific, clickbank has more than 100,000 affiliates who are experts in finding potential customers for your affiliate program. The reason why more and more affiliates are joining Clickbank is obvious – the process of gaining commissions in this network is absolutely fair and transparent.

For web merchants, joining Clickbank is so easy. You just need to sign up in their site for free and allow them to sell your products. Keep up a promotional web site that gives your potential customers detailed information about your offered product or services. At your website, you must also maintain a comprehensive technical support pages for your product. In return, Clickbank will promote and sell your product, give customer service for your product, allow their affiliates to pass on traffic to your web site, enable you to encourage new affiliates to advertise your web site, furnish real-time sales reporting for you and the affiliates and send you and all affiliates a paycheck twice a month.

If you’re a Clickbank affiliate wannabe, you surely won’t find it hard to be a part of this network. First, you are required to place their link on your website and if you don’t have a Clickbank account, you need to complete the Clickbank affiliate form and create your own account. Then, if you already have a Clickbank username, you are free to choose whatever marketing tools you want to use bring in more clicks and generate more sales. After selecting marketing tools, you can now get your affiliate link.

That’s how simple it is to join Clickbank. But being a Clickbank super affiliate is no minor achievement. It means you need to possess the ability to sell lots of affiliate products. You also need to have expertise in search engine optimization, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal linkage, link exchanges and other methods of promoting your merchant’s goods and services.

Among the secrets to become successful in affiliate marketing is to come up with good content based website and put your affiliate links in all your content. Your main purpose here is to give your visitors good quality content about the things they are interested in. Set aside the job of selling. It must be done by the sales letter page you are transferring them to.

Promote multiple affiliate programs in your website but don’t promote everything the world has to offer. Just choose the affiliate programs that fit your site and focus on it. Then, it is advisable to automate the whole process, giving you more time for other ventures. Yes, you’ve read it right! Automation is another key to become a super affiliate.

Of course, you have to spend more time in reading, learning and taking up the changes in affiliate marketing business. Through this, you’ll remain on top of the trends. If you are knowledgeable with online marketing, you’ll understand how important it is to stay up-to-date. In this kind of business, what worked and what was accepted few months ago may not work at present. So always see to it that you know what’s new in affiliate marketing everyday.

It’s really hard to be a Clickbank super affiliate, but you shouldn’t say NO to the thought of giving up. Bear in mind that in affiliate marketing business, you need to develop persistence, patience and knowledge. These traits will teach you to carry on no matter how tough the job is. Also, check your statistics. This will help you find out what is working and what is not. Make necessary changes if needed but do it one at a time and be patient.

Don’t forget that in affiliate marketing, everything won’t take place overnight. And it will not happen without blood, sweat and hefty time commitment. Again, just encompass patience, persistence and knowledge; then do above mentioned tactics. Before you recognize it, you will start gaining profits. Believe me, the fruits of all your efforts here in affiliate marketing will be way too sweet.