Affiliate - As Your Money Machine

More people are discovering the power of affiliate marketing to supplement or even replace their existing income. But there are even more people who would like to have a slice of this exciting world but are unsure exactly what an affiliate program is or what it consists of.



Thursday, April 20, 2006

The Numerous and Exquisitely Profitable Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

AUTHOR: Jorge M. Vega

To the average netpreneur, with no product of their own, without an opt-in list, and with little or no sales experience, Affiliate Marketing can easily represent the chance of a lifetime, a gift from Heaven, if you will. It's a viable way to circumvent all the usual requirements that go hand in hand with starting a home based business.

For one thing, you stand to save thousands by not needing to develop and test a product of your own; you just use someone else's already proven winner as your own. Also, you can skip
worrying about designing your own website; here again, use what is supplied for you by the merchant, and run with it. This saves a lot of headaches, time, and, you guessed it -- money.

You'll also have the enviable last word on whether or not to continue promoting anyone's product based on its performance. If it doesn't sell, give it up. You're your own boss.

For all the reasons touched upon above, as well as for a few others not yet discussed for the sake of brevity, affiliate marketing has evolved into one of the most effective ways to start an online business. And, for anyone with a decent website, it's also one of the easiest ways to start seeing a profit online.

WHAT'S AFFILIATE MARKETING?

Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant (owner of the product), and a website owner (the promoter). The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the
promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate.

Every time someone clicks on the link in the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. Obviously, a commission is earned by the affiliate only when a customer makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation, for both the merchant and the affiliate, because of the pay-for-performance scheme. And, as you'll see, both the
merchant and the affiliate do enjoy specific benefits in this arrangement.

HOW THE MERCHANT BENEFITS

There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider customer base to advertise their product or service to. Affiliate marketing gives the product or service the
maximum exposure that it could possibly get, as compared to any other traditional advertising technique.

It goes without saying, the more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, and the higher the chances of converting visitors into sales.

Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who do all the promoting, and only get paid a commission if a customer purchases. If their efforts fail to make a sale,
the merchant isn't out of pocket one thin dime. The burden of performance is, thus, squarely on the shoulders of the affiliate.

It's a "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately?" kind of scenario.

HOW THE AFFILIATE BENEFITS

As described, an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, so the affiliate also enjoys many benefits.

Foremost among these, is the easy chance to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link leading to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click.

As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, they're redirected to the merchant's website, and if they make a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission. The more
prospects being referred, the more profit potential for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money from home. There are no product production costs. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant. All you have to do to is find as many prospects as you can who will visit the merchant's web site.

Ever wondered how the master affiliate marketers make the sinful boat loads of money they do? - this is it! To make mounds of cold, hard cash, you need a Great Product, one that hasn't been
so heavily marketed that everyone that needed it, or wanted it, already has it. 'Become A Master Affiliate Marketer' is exactly what you need... http://tinyurl.com/k2qdb

There are countless, capable affiliates who have mastered the art of convincing prospects to visit the websites they promote. This elite group of marketers earns big chunks of money from their grateful merchants.

In affiliate marketing, start up costs are minimal, if any at all. In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience required. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer with the least cost and the most support.

You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the comfort of your own home, which is what most affiliates do. In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, or roduct shipping. These, along with customer service, are the duties of the merchant.

Breaking news! Don't stumble in the darkness anymore. This is the light at the end of the tunnel. Imagine learning: How to get free traffic, free products and free customers! Learn the almost
'wicked' way to turn any $37 product into a $397 one. How to transform 'dead products' into red hot sellers, and become a megapreneur affiliate... http://tinyurl.com/nrql7

Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the freedom you enjoy. If the product you're advertising isn't making money, you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not profitable. As an affiliate marketer, you have the last word about what you promote.

This kind of freedom is something you'll never see in the offline world if you're in sales. For instance, if you're shoe salesman, and your company's buyer blew it this season and bought nothing but alligators, it's very unlikely that you'll turn your back on your career as a result, and start selling home owner's insurance, or kids' bicycles. Chances are, you'll have to stick it out, and hope for something better next year - or, for a different doggone buyer!

By far, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is an unparalleled opportunity to increase your income; and, you can make good money even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business.

Indeed, as you've seen, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities available online today, or anywhere else, for that matter.



About the author:
Success online starts with real, 'in the trenches' type information you can use immediately. Jorge M. Vega, provides this in his hard-hitting minicourse: "Online Advertising for the Completely Clueless!" For a limited time, you'll get 200 free infoproducts with Master Resell Rights with subscription. Sign up today...
mailto:wealthsecrets@pushbuttonresponder.com

COPYRIGHT: ?2006 by Jorge M. Vega - All rights reserved

Monday, April 03, 2006

Affiliate Programs - Discover How To Find the Right Products

by: Anton Linner

Of course, you can promote your own products or services if you have ones. This is the best option to succeed because this way you receive a 100% profit of what you sell. Another way is to buy resale rights, promote the products using AdWords and keep all the profits too.

However, majority of us do not have our own products or services. Therefore, we can join various affiliate programs and promote them. However, what programs to join?

Picture this... You have selected an affiliate program that looked promising to you; you researched your keywords and set up AdWords campaigns. You wait for your profit to roll in...

You spend $10, then $50, then $100 on the AdWords advertising and still do not see a single sale...

Does sound familiar?

It happens to the majority of new advertisers after they run their first AdWords campaigns. In addition, you probably think that making money with AdWords is just another swindle and it does not work.

Well, there can be many reasons why there was not a single sale made. Moreover, one of the reasons may be -- *affiliate product selection*.

The online ebooks like GoogleCash and GoogleAdwords123 have excellent sections about how, where and why to select one or another affiliate program to advertise using Google AdWords.
When choosing a profitable product you have to check sales letter carefully, product owners should pay high commissions, place lifetime cookies on visitors' browsers, etc.

However, what I couldn't find in any of the e-books that I have read so far is that you should promote two-tier or residual income (with lifetime commissions) programs.

When you promote your affiliate links, you need to know two very important things about two tier programs:

1. You will earn big money on every direct sale you make.
2. You will make even more money when people use it to sign up under you and start promoting it! Imagine an entire army of several 100's, each selling the affiliate products - this would mean 100's of commissions for you, altogether equalling $ 1,000's in your pocket every month!

Good examples of residual income affiliate programs are hosting companies. My websites, for example, are hosted at Host4Profit:

http://tny.se/9P

Host4Profit offers killer tools at an affordable price and is easy to handle.

If only you could recruit several of customers for two-tier or residual income products or services, you could make thousands lifetime.

Therefore, for locating the affiliate niche market, first think about the topics, you are interested in. For example, this could be:

Sports -> Specifically: Soccer Pets -> Dogs -> Dog Pictures Cooking Indian Cuisine -> Curry recipes

And so on. Notice how we have broken down those main categories into sub-categories. Now this could be taken further and further…

Soccer -> Learning foot tricks Dogs -> Dog Pictures Curry Recipes -> For the lactose intolerant (curries contain a lot of cream!)

This is niche thinking in action.

Do not get stuck on too broad niche categories. Most new affiliates face this common mistake!
After you have found your niche, you should examine if an affiliate product already exists for this niche. Remember first to look for the two-tier or residual income affiliate programs.

If you cannot find one, another option is the Clickbank catalog:

http://tny.se/9Q

Act now; select your target niche, an affiliate program and implement the strategy that we just talked about. This is what super-affiliates do. They implement new ideas immediately.


About The Author
Anton Linner works as a consultant and internet marketer, focused on marketing strategies. Please visit:
http://www.marketing-tipps.blogspot.com
If you want to learn more how to profit from Google AdWords, please sign-up for our free course at:
http://www.adcontractors.biz/AdWords