What is Affiliate marketing?
1. There is a Merchant or product manufacturer or owner. They are the ones selling a product or service, The usually enter into an agreement with an affiliate network market like clickbank, If you are just starting out it is MUCH better to start out with an affiliate network then with an individual merchant/product owner. Clickbank makes it easy and has great tools for tracking your sales, clickes etc.
2. Affiliates are any website or blog owner (YOU!) who promote merchants affiliate program. This can be profitable if you understand the basics. I am teaching you the outline of the basics. This knowledge has taken me years to compile.
Affiliate marketing has proved to be a cost-efficient business.
- Both the merchants and affiliates benefit from it.
- Merchants have links to the markets and customers without spending extra time searching.
- Banner ads on affiliate sites will produce interest for their products. This will also drive customers to merchants sites.
- There is no payment due to an affiliate until they gain financial results.
- The merchants also have the ability to decide the amount of payment.
- Merchants also decide the method of payment, which is earned from the commission type business.
- You as an affiliate will make percentages for each contact that joins the merchants program.
- This is helpful because you do not need to spend time creating products and doing all the testing.
- You also do not hacve to carry inventory!!
- And you do not havee to do they shipping!
- And you do not have to make or store a product!
- Merchants have already done the math and accessed the trial and error of their creations.
- They have also spent the monies to get to this point.
- As an affiliate, you will get compensations for every customer, the merchant gains.
- This being your efforts to advertise the merchants business.\
- Totally understand what the commission will be,
- Understand the expected payment method
- It might be by check,
- it might be by paypal,
- it might be only payable at the end of the month,
- Or you might only get paid at every hundred dollar interval or something (it isn't efficient for the product owner to send out a check for $2.98 everytiome someone successfully markets one of his e-books for example).
- and time involved in the agreement.
- Be careful to read the agreement completely, understand what is expected of you to gain your commission or percentage.
- An affilaite store sells one or more affiliate products. It can be YOUR BLOG!
- Or it can be a blog or website you set up just to sell affiliate products.
- Amazon has an automated affiliate store that you can set up insiode of your blog or website in a matter of hours.
- The problem with Amazon is the commissions are low. You only make 4-15% per sale.
- With many affiliate products in clickbank you make 25%-75% per sale!
- There is other affiliate store software besides Amazizon that makes it easy to market products from affiliate networkls like clickbank and commission junction, etc.
- Automatically sets up the store
- Lets you select products from multible affiliate networks
- Sets up an SEO Optomized web page for each product
- Lets you select individual products and categories
- Lets you sell as manyu products as you wants
- Then I recomend checking out DataFeedr.
- Click on this link to reed a review of DataFeedr
- This is an all in one software system that will let you set up as many websites as you want
- Each one dedicated to a clickbank product or one of many other affiliate network affiliate products
- This is how many Pro's set up their own netowrk of websites except they do it manually.
- This is an aoutomated software system. It does it all.
- Click here to read a review of the CB Predators Affiliate Marketing Software System
If you ues an automated system like those above or a manual system Affiliate Marketing is a business so organization IS IMPORTANT!
- tKeep rack of everything you incorporate into your business
- Especially usernames and passwords
- Keep an electronic folder on your C drive and organize it.
- Track each affiliate marketing prodduct, where you have it advertised etc.
- Track your Website traffic, the hops you get (people clicking on the ad and going to the Product owners website. They or the affiliate market you join to sell their product thru will track this for you) and the sales you get. Track this every month as there should be a direct ratio for swebsite traffic, to hops to sales.
- Track the above by product and you will so seen which products sell better then others. This will enable to drop "dead"(non selling products) accurately and try fresh new products without guessing what works and what doesn't.
- Without an organizational plan you will get so misled and make costly mistakes. I can tell you this because that is exactly what I did without being organized and dedicated to my business.
- Your business will give to you what you give to it.
- My motto is PRIDE, which I describe as P-Professional, R-Results, I-In, D-Daily, E-Efforts.
- You have to keep in mind that this will be your lifeline, so do a top notch job and be proud of what you have built, and the profits will come!
If you want to manually go about affilate marketing here are some pointers on the basics:
1. Read as many of are articles on affiliate marketing (in our affiliate marketing articles section) as you can.
2. If you don't already have a blog, Start a blog about a niche you like. There are some good articles on getting started blogging at www.keywordsoftwareguide.com and www.wpthemesdeals.conm. The keyword software guide site has a lot of articles about doing keyword research which is critical to understanding your niche market and Doing search engine optimization on your blog.
3. Write articles about your niche and get the content going! People need a reason to come to your blog. Information is usually the best way to get them there and fresh information as frequently as possible is the best way to keep them coming back!
4. Create a fun by professional video about your niche and. Submit it to the popular video sites. Make sure to talk about your blog and put a link to it when you submit the video.
5. Bookmark your efforts! Articles, blogs and videos from the first steps, bookmark, bookmark, bookmark.. There are article submission sites and software that will help with this. The firsst thing I recommend is setting up with Onlywire. It is FREE and will let you automatically submit your articles to many many social bookmarking sites like stumbleon, facebook, twitter, etc.
6. Submit your blog to relevant link directories. Go on other blogs on websites that are about your niche and read articles and submitt thoughtfull coments. you can add a link to a relavant article of yours. do the same on chat rooms. and then write more articles and content for your site. Make sure to organize them into tabs so people can find them easily.
7. Setup Pay Per Click accounts to promote your blog or affiliate link to major Search Engines. Don't put much money into pay per click to start. google adwords will let you do this cheaply and easily. Just set up a maximum you want to spend a month advertising ($5, $100, $1 – it is up to you). But wait until you have plenty of content, a good looking site and your affiliate store set up fiorst!
Here is some keywords to try, change these to reflect your personal niche words: Affiliate Marketer,Affiliate Marketing,Test Affiliate Marketing,Affiliate Marketing Tester,Affiliate Marketing Testing,Test Affiliate Marketing,Affiliate Marketing Jobs,Affiliate Marketer Jobs,Paid Affiliate Marketers,Affiliate Marketing Review
8. Inform your friends through email and social sites.
9. Post and comment on related forums and blogs and have your blog or affiliate link in your footer or post. (Do not spam only useful contributions).
This has to be applied each day, post to your blogs, forums, article markets. Set aside at least two hours to dedicate to your new business. Post to as many of each type from above 1-9 as you can find.
Wow, your new business! It will be worth a few hours you give it each and everyday!
Soon you will be reaping the profits!
By: Linda S. Mcrae and Admin
