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By Admin On November 6, 2009
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Here’s a variation of a free affiliate marketing strategy that I have used several times over the years to get a lot of affiliate sales. It can be a great way to make some extra money online and every once in a while it works well enough to pull in some major money that can continue to come in for a long time. It’s not overly complicated or very difficult to do. It can also be done for free or very cheap, so almost anyone can do it if you are prepared to take the time and do the steps necessary to make it work. The hardest part is usually finding the right niches to promote, and then all it takes is some time and effort.
Anyway, here are the steps you need to take in order to make money from this free affiliate marketing strategy:
1) Research and find a potentially profitable niche market.
There are plenty of research tools, information products, articles, and tons of other resources that will teach you how to research niches or actually help you do it. This topic would be an entire (very long) post in itself so I won’t go into detail on how to do it here. Just do some searching on Google how to do niche research or how to find profitable niches and you shouldn’t have much trouble finding information on how to do this step.
2) Find an affiliate product in the niche you chose.
Once you have found a good niche you need to find an affiliate product to promote so you can make money from your work. You can usually find an information product for about any niche on Clickbank — but if you can’t find one there you should be able to find one by searching on Google or on other affiliate marketplaces.
Here are some popular affiliate marketplaces to check out if you don’t find what you are looking for on Clickbank:
* RoiRocket
* Shareasale
* Linkshare
* Commission Junction
* Paydotcom
3) Write a review and post it on a blogger blog.
Write a review of the affiliate product you found in step three and make it a good one. You need to really give the pros and cons of the product in your review. Don’t make it all positive because that is not believable to your visitors. Every product has something negative about it. Dig deep and write something that is much better than the average review you see all over the internet about products and services. This is one of the most important parts of this affiliate marketing strategy because it’s where you funnel your visitors who will hopefully buy from your affiliate link, so don’t slack off here!
To do this right you should actually have the product to check out and write a real review of it. This might mean having to bite the bullet and actually purchase it. However, you can usually get it for free if you email the owner and tell them that you plan to promote it and you have a very good strategy for doing so, but you want a review copy first. They are potentially losing out on a lot of money if you decide not to promote it so it’s in their best interest to give you a copy.
You also need to start a blog to post this review on unless you already have a review blog with a lot of authority, but I suggest starting a new one so it’s all about this one particular product. Don’t worry this is free and very easy to do. Just head over to blogger.com and follow the steps to start one. Make your blog title and address(URL) something that reflects the niche and product you are reviewing.
4) Post a high quality “main article” on another general topic blog.
This step works best if you already have a “general” blog with some authority that isn’t specific to any niche to post on. But most people don’t have those and it’s okay, you can simply start one using any free blogging platform of your choice (blogger, wordpress, typepad, etc…) or actually get a domain and host to set one up on.
Write a long, useful, well thought out, informative post on a popular topic related to the niche you picked in step one and the product you picked in step two. This shouldn’t just be a quick post you write up like you might on a daily basis or maybe like you would if you planned to just submit it to directories. You want this to be some very high quality work and quite a bit longer than your average article. Post this article on your general blog with keyword anchored links in it that point to the review you posted in step three.
5) Write a few more articles to submit to article directories.
This is where you write at least three articles and submit them to article directories. These should still be of good quality and useful but they don’t have to be as awesome as the one you wrote in step four. They should obviously be on a topic related to the niche you picked in step one just like everything should be in this strategy.
Submit these articles to anywhere from three to five of the top article directories. Here are some good ones to get you started:
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlesbase.com
http://www.goarticles.com
6) Build a Squidoo Lens, Hubpage, and Infobarrel around the niche.
Write up a few more articles or pages of quality content on various topics related to the niche. Build a squidoo lens, a hub, and an infobarrel to post this content on. This should be really good content that is well-written and keeps the readers attention but leaves them wanting to click the links you will post to your main article. This will take you some time but it’s worth it. Make sure to link all three of them to the main article you wrote in step four with keyword anchored links.
7) Link everything to the main article you posted on your general blog and link that article to the blogger blog review.
This isn’t actually a step of its own as it should have already been done. But it’s very important and ties in with other steps above and I wanted to be sure you got it…
Link every article you submit in step five and every page you build in step six to the main article you wrote on your general blog in step four. And link the article you wrote in step four to the review you wrote in step three. All with keyword anchored links.
Re-read the above paragraph carefully as it might sound a little confusing at first but it’s really not.
8) Submit the main article on your general blog to social bookmarking sites.
Finally, you want to submit the link of the blog post you wrote in step four to several social bookmarking sites. This is just for a little extra link juice and a quick traffic boost to get everything flowing. Don’t expect to make any sales from these visitors, although you might get a few if you’re lucky.
Here are several popular social bookmarking sites to submit it to:
http://twitter.com
http://digg.com
http://mixx.com
http://delicious.com
http://slashdot.org
http://stumbleupon.com
Bonus step: A good way to boost your backlinks to increase your search engine rankings, visitors and affiliate sales even more is to write some more articles on topics in the niche you chose and use free traffic system to send them out. It’s completely free and pretty easy to use. Link these articles to your review from step three or your main article from step four, or both if you can.
That’s it! Now you just sit back and wait for the money to roll in… And pray it does! ;-)
Doing all of these steps exactly as explained above should bring in some direct traffic and sales pretty quickly but more importantly it helps to boost your main article and review in the search engine rankings, which will hopefully bring in traffic and sales for a long time into the future.
Every step of this strategy is important but it all starts with researching and finding good niches to target. Fail to do that and it probably won’t work. You need niches that don’t have an overload of competition but do have enough of a buying market for you to make money from.
It all sounds like a lot of work and it kind of is, but you have to do these sorts of things if you want to really make money online. It’s not difficult to do and can be done pretty quickly once you get the hang of it. This free affiliate marketing strategy won’t always work for everyone and it certainly won’t work well every time you do it, but it can be a great way to earn an affiliate income if done correctly and consistently. The more you do it will add up over time and could increase your income significantly.
Now, you just need to get started!
Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
By Admin On August 18, 2009
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These days money can be very tight for many people and most of us can definitely use some extra money. There are many different ways to make money online, and unfortunately many of them are nothing but “get rich quick schemes” that never work or sometimes even outright scams. However, if you want a legitimate way to make money online, one of the most popular ways is through affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing and can you really make money with it?
Basically affiliate marketing is a way of making money online by marketing products or services for other businesses. You do this by putting links, banners or specific product information on your own website or blog. You are not creating products you are just affiliating yourself with an existing company and marketing their products and services to others online.
There are two different types of affiliate marketing. First, you put a link on your blog or website to the business you are marketing and when someone clicks on the link it will take them to a page where they can purchase something from that particular business. You make money this way by getting a certain percentage of the sales.
The other way is by referring someone to the business website where the person is able to sign up for something or leave their contact information on the businesses website. You make money simply from them giving their information. There are many different types of affiliate programs available so finding a company that you are comfortable advertising for that will also match your website or blog is a lot easier then you think. A great place to start is the Clickbank.com marketplace.
The popularity of affiliate marketing has grown tremendously in recent years because of the ease of entry and the desire to make money online. There are also many individuals needing to find ways to supplement their income and affiliate marketing can be a great way to do that. It is quite possible to make a decent income from affiliate marketing you just have to invest the time and effort needed to build a successful online business. You won’t get rich quick so don’t even let that thought enter your mind!
There are many websites/blogs that offer free information about how to start an online business with affiliate marketing, and also plenty of forums available that you can use to find tips and tricks to help get you started. The nice thing about affiliate marketing is that you can do it in the comfort of your own home and on your own schedule, if you want to do it part time or full time that is entirely up to you. Just remember that it will take time to build a decent income from affiliate marketing, but once you become familiar as to how things work you will be surprised at the amount of money you truly can make by marketing for other companies.
By Admin On June 25, 2009
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Many experts believe that affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to make money online. The best thing about online affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to have a background in business or sales to enter it and become successful at it. All you need to succeed in this field is creativity, your time and some focused effort.
Affiliate marketing is actually quite easy to do. In fact, if you wanted to, you could start right now and become an “affiliate marketer” in a matter of minutes. All you have to do to get started is sign up with any of the free affiliate sites such as Clickbank.com and choose a product to promote, and then start promoting it. One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can find an unlimited number of products and services to promote in just about every niche imaginable.
In order to sell your affiliate products you will need to start a campaign. Simply put, a campaign covers everything that you are planning to do to promote your selected affiliate product. A popular type of an affiliate marketing campaign is called pay-per-click (PPC) which is a paid advertising campaign where you bid for a spot on a site and you have to pay every time someone click on your ad, hence the name.
Though PPC is one of the best ways to attract traffic it is not advisable for newbie’s because it can be very expensive and easy to mess up. There’s a lot to learn before you become an expert PPC marketer. Those new to affiliate marketing will benefit more from the free methods of increasing traffic to a site.
One popular free method of affiliate marketing is blogging. If you don’t have a blog yet then you should know that it is very easy to start one using services such as Blogger or Wordpress. Before you sign up for a blogging service you should first select an affiliate product that you would want to promote from one of the various affiliate marketing sites. Now create a blog centered on a theme related to the product or service you have chosen. Then start posting useful content to your blog and promote your blog by submitting it to blog directories or by writing articles with your blog link on it then submitting them to article directories.
The above description of affiliate marketing may be a simple one but it provides a basic idea of how affiliate marketing works. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing there are many resources available that can help you. In choosing a resource to help you learn affiliate marketing, choose one that is not full of hype and empty promises. Many affiliate marketing resources from so-called “gurus” are simply fluff filled materials that will do nothing but make you more confused about how to become a successful affiliate marketer.
The best affiliate marketing resources you can get are the ones that provide real, useful, step-by-step information about how to make money online as an affiliate marketer.
By Admin On June 22, 2009
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Marketing products and services through the Internet is unquestionably easier and more rewarding compared to traditional marketing methods. With the millions of people worldwide getting online each day, there’s an enormous possibility for a merchant to sell his products and generate huge income.
However, merchandisers are not the only ones who can benefit from online marketing. A booming industry nowadays, provides great opportunity as well to individuals as affiliate marketers. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate marketer doesn’t need to have his own products and services to sell. All he needs to do is to refer people to the merchant’s business site for them to buy the products and thereby, earn a commission.
The key to an affiliate marketer’s success is to choose a good affiliate program and to employ excellent marketing techniques in promoting or selling the products to consumers. Why good and not the best affiliate program? There is no “best affiliate marketing program,” as one program might make one affiliate marketer a millionaire and the other a frustrated marketer. In other words, it can be a success to one and a failure to another. But there certainly is a good affiliate marketing program to start with. How to make it best would now depend on you.
But before you think how you are going to make it best and financially rewarding, first think about how you are going to land on a good affiliate program with the thousands of affiliate marketing opportunities abounding in the Internet today. Try to look into the following tips and suggestions on how to best select the affiliate program that’s right for you.
Information, that’s you need in order to make the right choice. It is helpful when you have already focused your search to a specific interest, which may be the theme of your website (if you already have one). In this way, you would be able to direct yourself towards a program that really matches your needs, wants and resources. It would be easier for you to eliminate options that are not suited to your own criteria for a good affiliate marketing program. You can join affiliate forums and learn some tips and get suggestions from experienced affiliate marketers. However, be wise enough to weigh their ideas before you buy them.
The Internet Affiliate marketing program networks are good places to look for choices. Here, merchants and affiliate marketers like you meet. The merchants advertise their affiliate programs to interested affiliates who sign up in the network for free. Third party affiliate program networks are helpful since they provide you with access to a large number of advertisers (merchandisers) simultaneously. You can easily track and compare their sales records, performances, benefits, products and services.
So now you have choices, the next question is which among those options is the right one. Here are some things to consider in deciding which to take and which to reject. First is the quality of the products and services. As an affiliate marketer your goal is not only to make visitors of your site click the link to the business site; but more importantly, to promote the product so they would buy it. If the customers are not convinced upon going to the business site, then you don’t earn. Make sure the products you are endorsing are worthwhile or in the business context, saleable. Ask yourself: if I were the customer, would I buy it? Would I recommend it to my family or good friend? If you can’t convince yourself or your family and friends to buy it, take a look at your next option.
Another is the affiliate program or the merchandiser’s history. Look into their previous and present sales data, their proven and tested affiliate marketing systems and their partners’ experiences with them. Although, success of the program really depends on you, this one is still very important. The sales records don’t only show how good the affiliates are, but they speak about the products’ reliability, market availability and the company or the merchandisers’ reputation as well. Moreover, look into and carefully study the company’s compensation plan. Your purpose for joining the program is to earn, so make sure you’ll be paid for all your efforts fairly.
If you do not have much time to promote intensively the affiliate products by creating banners, graphics and articles, choose affiliate programs that help you create these for your web site. It would be great if the company provides training on how to effectively market products online. Remember that affiliate marketing is a partnership, so make sure your partner is able to support you as you help him promote his products and services.
Take down all the advantages and disadvantages of each program you are considering so you can clearly see the difference among your options; then later, compare the advantages of the programs with your own checklist. Take time to gather all the info you need to choose the right program. Remember an informed choice is the best choice.
By Admin On June 11, 2009
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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 multilevel 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.
