AFFILIATE MARKETING TIPS

SEVEN LESSONS I LEARNT WHILST LOSING THOUSANDS INTERNET MARKETING

By Alan Cutler – alan@leadershiptalks.com

This is the story of a novice internet marketer who has spent a
miserable, frustrating and expensive twelve months learning the
lessons of selling on the internet – the hard way! However, he
believes that he has turned the corner and is now looking
forward to, at least modest, future profits. That person is me,
and I would like to share my experiences with you in the hope
that your journey will be less painful than mine. I am certainly
not suggesting that the lessons I learnt are definitive, nor
will they apply to every one else who embarks on a campaign of
internet marketing. I am merely recounting what happened to me
and the problems I encountered.

My journey started in November 2004 when I attended a conference
with a speaker who was, by his own admission, an internet
millionaire. He, like me, was a professional speaker but he had
diversified into selling his products and services to this
world-wide market. Like many of my colleagues, I had previously
heard bits and pieces about internet marketing and I was hungry
to learn more. It is true to say that I was captivated by his
story and, especially, by the rich pickings that he said were
out there on the net, for relatively little time and expense.
‘Make money in your sleep’ was a phrase he used. I was inspired
- well, who wouldn’t be by the prospect of working at home for a
few hours a day whilst watching the money flow in 24/7! I bought
his pack of tutorials, ebooks, CDs etc for $500 – my first
investment in this Brave New World.

Interestingly, I write this article the day after attending
another meeting that had a speaker again telling us how easy it
is to make serious money on the internet. Whilst I do not doubt
that such people indeed do make a very good living for
relatively little effort, believe me, it is not easy! Making
money selling products or information on the net is not a quick
fix! Like any new business (for that is what it is), it takes
time and effort to learn all its intricacies. Unless you have a
product that people want to buy; a web site that sells it
effectively; and a means of driving lots of people to it, you
will end up throwing good money after bad. Hence my first lesson

Lesson No 1. Do not believe all you hear from internet experts
who tell you how easy it is to make your fortune. It isn’t!

Let me continue my story. So, off I went on my new venture. I
eagerly read the information that I had just bought, along with
lots of other advice and guidance from internet marketers. Many
recommended additional software that would make selling on the
web more effective. I took their advice and bought some of the
products they championed, for example a programme for making
attractive website banners, and another that promised to produce
amazingly effective sales pages for the website that I was to
produce. However, the banners I made were far from attractive
and when I sought advice from the company I bought the software
from, they failed to reply. As for the sales page generator, it
did teach me some good lessons but was far too inflexible and
restrictive so I soon reverted to writing my own copy.

What I did not realise at the time was that the internet
marketers who were recommending these products were affiliates:
they received a commission from every sale resulting from their
recommendation. I now know that affiliate marketing is big
business and can produce significant income flows. In fact, let
me put my cards on the table: I am going to recommend two
products to you later in this article and I will gain a
commission if you take my advice. However, these are products
that I truly believe in and have been extremely helpful to me. I
believe that they are worth every cent to someone serious about
making money. You can, of course, take my word for that, or not.
At least I have been up-front about it!

Lesson No 2. Beware of advice from ‘experts’ who may be more
interested in making money as an affiliate than in helping you.

Of course, to make money in any business you have to have a
product that people want to buy. What was I going to sell? Well,
I have always been fascinated by quotes – words of wisdom from
those who can add so much meaning in so few words. Indeed, my
first book is entitled ‘Leadership Quote Unquote’ and contains a
host of quotes from, as my publisher added to the book cover,
‘world figures – the famous, the infamous and the downright
dastardly!’

Imagine my excitement when I researched how many people were
looking for quotes on the internet. Google estimated that over
5,000 people every day searched for an appropriate quote. I
estimated that if I sold my book for $25 and one in a hundred
people who clicked on my website bought my book, I would make
$369,014 profit a year. Wow! Even if only a modest one in three
hundred bought it I would still make $61,684. Wouldn’t you be
excited by that income earning potential?

To cut a long story short, whilst lots of people do regularly
seek out appropriate quotes, I now know that very few are
prepared to pay for them! Why should they, when they can get
them for free on other websites? I am now just about breaking
even with this particular campaign – a situation I am prepared
to accept for the time being as the website does provide me with
other spin-off benefits. However, I have subsequently
diversified and am now selling a number of other information
products, using a different website for each – some more
successful than others. Inevitably, not all sales campaigns will
be initially successful, hence you have to continually fine-tune
several aspects of the marketing process to gradually improve
their effectiveness.

Lesson No 3. It might sound obvious – but make sure that you
sell something that people want to buy.

Note: The purpose of this article is for me to share my
experiences with you. It is not designed to be an internet
marketing tutorial. I am not, therefore, going to go into detail
about technicalities such as website design, Google AdWords,
Google AdSense, market testing, copy writing etc. That said if I
have whetted your appetite and you do want to learn more, email
me at alan@leadershiptalks.com and I will send you a free ebook
all about creating successful sales websites, entitled ‘The
Three Page Site Builders Manual’ ( I make no money by doing
so!). Also, if you are really serious about creating a
profitable internet marketing campaign consider checking out the
specialist guidance of Perry Marshal, especially his ebook
entitled ‘The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords’. This is one
of the two products that I really believe in and that I
mentioned previously. A link for you to learn more about him is
provided at the end of this article.

The next step on my journey, having deciding that selling quotes
was to provide the basis of my pension fund (!), was to design a
website to sell my ebook. The most well-known website design
software, and the one that was recommended to me, was Microsoft
FrontPage so that is what I bought. Unfortunately, I found it to
be extremely confusing, frustrating – not at all user-friendly.
I did make a website but it was far from professional. In fact,
a friend of mine who is a successful internet marketer politely
commented that he would certainly not buy anything from a site
like mine!

He went on to tell me that he had recently discovered a new
website design programme called XSitePro that is two thirds the
price of Front Page and infinitely easier to use. In fact, he
was in the process of redesigning all his many sites using it.
Having faith in his advice, I shelled out $197, bought the
software and was absolutely blown away by it! XsitePro is
designed specifically for people who sell on the internet. It is
so easy to use that I am now churning out professional-looking
websites in less than half a day – and they work. In fact,
having not sold one of my ebooks for weeks beforehand on my
FrontPage site, I launched my new site, using XSitePro, and sold
one within half an hour. I could hardly believe it!

Hence, my fourth piece of advice. I make no apologies for being
so direct – if you want to produce easy websites that sell,
click on the link at the end of this article and check out
XSitePro. The link takes you to a web site that I have made to
tell the world about, what I believe to be, the best web site
design software available today.

Lesson No 4. Don’t waste you time with other website design
software, buy XSitePro.

So, once you have designed your website, you will need to
ensure that your potential customers can find it. Essentially,
you have two choices: work hard at driving it up the search
engine rankings or pay for the privilege by using Google
Adwords. Perry Marshall’s ebook ‘The Definitive Guide to Google
Adwords’ goes into great depth about making the most of Adwords
but, essentially, you bid to have an advert promoting your
website featured on the right-hand side of a Google search page
as a ’sponsored link’. However, you only pay when people click
on your ad.

Most experts will argue that using Pay Per Click (Google
Adwords) is the best way to promote websites of limited size
like the ones internet marketers use to promote their products.
And that is what I did.

Unfortunately, though, I did not pay sufficient attention to
setting up my sites. I accepted Google’s recommended daily
budget; set my pay-per-click rates too high; advertised in too
many countries and advertised in its content network as well as
its search network. Perry Marshall’s ebook explains all these
settings in fine detail. I only wish I had bought it in the
early stages because I ended paying much more than I needed to.

So, I had set up my Google AdWords campaign and was up and
running – but was not selling any products. I was, however,
getting hundreds of clicks a day, so was ever hopeful. My wife
and I then went away on holiday and I put my internet marketing
campaign out of my mind, in the confident knowledge that when I
returned my In Box would be full of orders.

Imagine my horror when I returned to find no product orders but
a $700 Google AdWords bill. It doesn’t take much time to
accumulate those costs when you are getting hundreds of clicks a
day; you are selling no products; and your daily Google budget
is set at $50!

The lesson here is crucial. In the early stages at least, you
MUST keep a close, daily eye on your Google Adwords account. As
time goes on and you have fine-tuned your account you can leave
it for a day, or two, but initially you must not let it get out
of control.

Lesson No 5. Keep very close control of your Google AdWords
account in its early stages

I mentioned previously that you must fine-tune your ad campaign
if you want to maximise its sales potential. The critical factor
here is the Click Through Rate (CTR) – how often people click on
your ad when it is displayed on a page of Google search results.
If your ad features 100 times when people enter, for example,
‘inspirational quote’ as a Google search term and two of them
actually click on your ad the CTR would be 2%. Improving the CTR
is important to maximising your sales potential.

This is a very detailed process where specific changes, for
example trying out different ad formats or even using capital
letters in certain areas of your ad, can make a real difference
to your CTR. Perry Marshall is an accomplished expert on using
Google Adwords and I have, personally, learnt a great deal from
his ebook.

Lesson No 6. Work hard at fine-tuning your Google Adwords
campaigns to maximise their CTR and, if your website and your
product are attractive, your revenue will gradually increase

And so to the last lesson that I have learnt. Going back to
where I started, I have realised that making money on the
internet is not, as I told my wife, ‘the pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow’. However, I do believe that there is serious
money to be made by people like me who are prepared to work hard
at ensuring the three essential elements are in place, namely:

* A product that people are looking for and are prepared to buy
* A website that is effective in selling that product * A sales
campaign that directs people towards your website

Personally, over the last twelve months, I have struggled on all
three counts, and have thus paid the price. However, I have
learnt my lessons and am confident that I will now begin to reap
at least some of the riches that definitely are out there on the
World Wide Web.

I have been told that my experiences are not unusual. Surprise,
surprise: contrary to what some internet experts tell us, very
few people strike gold immediately. It takes time and a lot of
hard work and determination. It does not surprise me, therefore,
that many people who embark on the journey as I did, fell at the
early hurdles. My final lesson, and piece of advice, is
therefore to ensure that your internet strategy is sound and
then work hard at making it successful.

Lesson No 8. Don’t give up – make it work.

Here are the links for the two products that I am happy to
recommend. To see the website I made to promote XSitePro, please
go to www.diy-websitedesign.org. To check out what Perry
Marshall can teach you, please see
http://perrymarshall.com/cmd.php?pg=305720 .

Being a professional speaker, should you wish me to deliver a
presentation developing the content of this article to your
colleagues or company, please contact me on
alan@leadershiptalks.com

Copyright Alan Cutler 2005

This article is written by Alan Cutler. Permission is granted to
copy and use it for any purpose as long as it is not amended in
any way.

More and More people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet.
It’s a fair deal between the merchandiser and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale materialized. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies.
Everyday, as affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase or avail of the products and services offered.
Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing?
There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it.
Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products. As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.
Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program.
In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program.
He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.
The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads.
Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus when they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else.
Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality contents with relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep.
If you won’t be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him to the merchants’ site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.
Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites.
Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.
Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies.
Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business.
Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.
Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business.
When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.

How do you increase website traffic, besides search engines? There are hungry consumers out there, but you are not going to get any of them instantly. One way to get traffic fast is via bulk email marketing. Bulk email marketing is king and will always be king. I don’t think that I can emphasize that enough.. Listen to me, pay per click is absurd. Its too expensive and there is a lot of click fraud. Search engines take way too long.  It seems that you need so sort of science degree just to place your website with all  the search engines. Have you tried submitting your site to search engines? Has it worked? Probably not.I’ll tell you a secret, but its not really a secret. Many website owners, search engines and corporations advertently “debunk” bulk email marketing. THEY  tell you this, to get rid of the competition. They don’t want you to know that you can get rich by using bulk email marketing. Of course there is laws about emailing people, just like there is laws sending mail to your mailbox! But guess what, the law states that you should not send emails to people that don’t like to receive emails. Hell, yea! Well, you know there is a ton of people that sign up to receive offers daily. Thousands upon thousands love to receive offers,  and they actually give out their email addresses. Why do they do this? Because people are naturally curious. We want the new stuff. We all want the new “secret”. We all want the new product. You sell via bulk email marketing because we are all consumers. Hey, I don’t like some of the stuff they send me via email, but once in a while I do find some cool stuff. There is a secret on how and where to get tons of traffic. Do you  want to know what it is? Here it goes:

1. You need a bulk emailing software that uses its own isp server. Research yahoo.com. I suggest Fxstyle’s bulk email software. 2. Get a good email marketing list. There is a good one that brings in me tons of money; see below for the link if you’re interested. Its call www.emailmadness.com3. Mail only to an opt-in list. Don’t mail daily to the same people. Keep your emails apart a few days. Never spam. Follow the rules. Never spam.Increase website traffic with bulk email marketing. I tell you there is nothing like it. Stay away from pay per click and all the “money sucking” garbage out there.

Truly, there are many horror stories about affiliate programs and networks. People have heard them over and over again, that some are even wary of joining one. The stories they may have heard are those related to illegal programs or pyramid schemes. Basically, this kind of market does not have real, worthy product.

You do not want to be associated with these schemes. It is obvious you want to be with a program that offers high quality product that you will readily endorse. The growing number of those who have joined already and are succeeding immensely is proof enough that there are reliable and quality affiliate programs out there.

As my investigation, I am sure you that there are a lot of reliable and quality affiliate programs on the internet right waiting for you to tap-in.

Why participate in an affiliate program?

It allows you to work part-time. It gives you the real home based business opportunity to build a generous residual high income. And it makes you an owner of a small online business. Affiliate programs have already created lots of millionaires. They are the living testimony of how hard work; continuous prospecting, motivating and training others pay off.

If ever you are deciding to join one, you must take note that you are getting into something that is patterned to of what you are capable. This will be an assurance that you are capable of doing anything to come out successful.

Once you are already tapped in the niche markets, the next step is to find the lucrative or high profitable affiliate programs to promote. How do you choose a GREAT affiliate program to promote? You’ll discover my recommended 10 easy tips to choose great affiliate programs in this article.READ THIS: If you are truly serious about affiliate marketing ideas to choose lucrative affiliate programs.

1. A program that you like and have interest in. One of the best affiliate marketing ideas of knowing if that is the kind of program you wish to promote is if you are interested in purchasing the product yourself or passion in the product. If that is the case, the make money business opportunities are, there are many others who are also interested in the same program and products.

2. Look for a program that is of high quality. For example, look for one that is associated with many experts in that particular industry or your niche markets. This way, you are assured that of the standard of the program you will be joining into.

3. Join in the ones that offer real and viable products. How do you know this? Do some initial market & product research? If possible, track down some of the members and customers to give you testimonial on the credibility of the program.

4. The program that is catering to a growing target market. This will ensure you that there will be more and continuous demands for your referrals. Make inquiries. There are forums and discussions you can participate in to get good and reliable feedbacks. Being participant in those social networking sites is one of the powerful affiliate marketing ideas to study your market and products before promoting.

5. A program with a compensation plan that pays out a residual income and a payout of 30% or more would be a great choice. There are some programs offering this kind of compensation. Look closely for one. Do not waste your time with programs that do not reward substantially for your efforts. The more higher compensation you can get, the more reward substantially for your efforts is.

6. Be aware of the minimum quotas that you must meet or sales target that is too hard to achieve. Some affiliate programs imposes pre-requisites before you get your affiliate commissions. Just be sure that you are capable of attaining their requirements. Personally, this minimum payout is one of my favourite criteria for selection in my home based affiliate business.

7. Select one that has plenty of tools and resources that can help you grow the home based affiliate business in the shortest possible time. Not all affiliate programs have these capacities. Make use you decide on one with lots of helpful tools you can use. Those merchant’s tools and resources are great affiliate marketing ideas for you to get more understand how to market the product online.

8. Check out if the program has a proven system that can allow you to check your networks and compensation. Also check if they have it available online for you to check anytime and anywhere. Monitoring the results is one of the key success factors for your online home based business affiliate internet marketing.

9. The program that is offering strong incentives for members to renew their membership each time. The affiliate program that provides continuous help and upgrades for its products has the tendency to retain its members. These things can assure the growth of your networks. Also, the programs with performance incentives compensation are great affiliate marketing ideas for you to gain more sales and earn more money online.

10. Be aware of the things that members are not happy about in a program. Like with the ones mentioned above, you can do your checking at discussion forums. If you know someone in that same program, there is ho harm asking if there are many downsides involved.

Have a thorough and intensive knowledge about the affiliate program and network you will be promoting on.

Finally, knowing the kind of program you are getting yourself into will make you anticipate and prevent any future problems you may encounter. I am sure that those above 10 tips are winning tips for you to choose great affiliate programs to gain more sales and earn more money online. Selecting the great lucrative affiliate program is one of my powerful affiliate marketing ideas to become an outstanding affiliate marketing entrepreneur and make more money online at home.Learn Affiliate Marketing from highly successful affiliate marketing entrepreneurs, Kyle & Carson, and discover a TON of affiliate marketing ideas to explode your home based affiliate business. You’ll discover great support from other affiliate marketing entrepreneurs for your success. Also, you’ll learn everything you have to know for your highly profitable home based affiliate business.

When starting an online business, one of the most powerful means of success is through using an advertising network, but there are many important factors to take under consideration before you embark on your marketing journey. With careful research and proper implementation, advertising networks are essential tools in helping you promote your business, create attractive banners for your website, use cost-effective marketing techniques and guide you in marketing strategies for your success.

First, it’s important to understand what an advertising network is. Advertising networks are companies that connect websites that host advertisements with advertisers who want to run advertisements. They generally pay money to software developers and websites to allow their ads to be shown when people visit their sites or use their software. The forms of online advertising inventory can be found on websites as RSS feeds, banner ads, rich media, and text links, on blogs, emails, instant messaging applications, adware and other sources. In most cases, such networks deliver their content through a central ad server.

There are two types of advertising networks. First tier advertising networks have high quality traffic that serve ads and traffic to second-tier networks, and they have a large number of their own advertisers and publishers. Popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo are examples of first-tier advertising networks. While second-tier advertising networks may also have some of their own publishers and advertisers, their main revenue source usually comes from other networks’ syndicated ads.

An advertiser buys a run or category of network packages within the network, and the advertising network serves advertisements from its ad server that then responds to a site once a page is called. While larger publishers often sell only their leftover inventory through advertising networks, small publishers usually use those networks to sell their entire inventory. Blind networks are a type of advertising network that is very economical and offer low pricing to direct marketers, but the advertisers do not know where their ads are going to be placed.

Some advertising networks provide free promotions to websites by providing them with banners and links and actively promote other businesses. But the search for authenticated information about an advertising network is essential before signing on. Use a referral system and don’t place your business with a network that is not well known or established. Choose an advertising network that imposes only a nominal financial burden on your website’s advertising campaign. Make sure that the advertising network’s terms and conditions clearly state what the relationship between your business and the network entails as well as a break down of charges per service. Make sure that the network you choose is run by an experienced and dedicated work group that will be able to carefully analyze your business, target the right audience and successfully market your products.

For more information on advertising, visit http://www.advertisementnetwork.eu and http://www.advertisementnetwork.org.