Maximizing Affiliate Sales

Any marketer knows very well that there are dozens of ways to advertise a product, any product. It’s not a big deal to come up with an idea that has a good chance of catching the eye of some surfer and get him to click on your affiliate links.

The real problem is to come up with something that makes surfers click through and actually buy something, because this is what puts money in your pocket. Nevertheless, affiliates are not in control of the conversion process, since this is the job of the merchant website, and the only thing you should focus on is to find the top selling products and the best places to advertise them.

Like chat rooms. Go on the popular chat programs and join the conversation if the topic borders on the things you are trying to sell or start a conversation yourself. Just be polite, be on topic and push your products in an honest and non-offending way. Don’t rush in yelling: “LOOK Y’ALL WHAT I’VE GOT HERE!” This will only get you banned.

If you think the company ads aren’t creative enough, or if you have specific information about your target customers, then feel free to adapt existing ads or write new ones from scratch. Nobody’s forcing you to go with an ad that could be improved.

Or write an e-book about the problem that the product you’re selling is designed to solve and present the said product as a very good solution. Put the e-book on your website and invite everybody to download it free of charge. People like freebies and will certainly welcome the chance to become informed without paying anything. Submit it to free e-book directories in order to reach more people.

People need to know that a product is actually working before they decide to buy it. If you’ve tried the program yourself, then write about your experience and a personal endorsement. Let everybody know what kind of benefits they can expect from using the product.

Maximize your chances by subscribing to more than one affiliate program and list all the links on your website on a directory page. Advertise your directory far and wide and then you may have affiliate networks trying to get your attention in order to be listed with the existing ones. Submissions are good, so accept every request.

Create your own signature file. Use a spiffy headline that’s bound to grab attention, talk about the product you’re promoting and keep everything simple and to the point. If the text is longer than five lines, nobody’s going to bother to read it, so take care.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to advertise products on the Internet, because the Internet is nothing else but communication. Therefore feel free to mix and combine promotion techniques to suit your product and your view of how marketing should be done.

The ultimate online income.(Part 6)

 Now you have read the book how about watching the video ?

While on the net I came across this website.



I have been writing about building and monetizing a website to earn money online and this guy comes along and puts it on a series of videos for you.
Absolutely totally free of charge.

Because these videos are free to access online and guide you step by step through the process I was explaining there is no point me carrying on.
Go ahead and take a look at the videos.

The ultimate online income.(Part 5)

Getting your website noticed

Now your website is up and running you need to get noticed, especially by the search engines.

First thing you need to do is submit your website to the search engines. There is plenty of software out there to help you but you can do it yourself.

Use the search term "add my site to" then the search engine you want to submit to.

Make sure you submit to google, yahoo and bing(MSN), and any other search engine you can think of.

Next you need to create some backlinks to your site.

Use the articles you have already written and submit them to article directories.

Ezinearticles

Article content king

Qondio

There are plenty more article directories, just do a search.

Join the Free Traffic System, I am not going into details as you can watch the videos on their homepage to see exactly how the system can work for you. It puts out about 90 backlinks for every article you submit.

Now you need to comment on peoples blogs, do a search for your keyword and use +blogspot or +wordpress you will find a lot of posts you can leave comments on.

When posting your comment you should be able to add your website which will create a link from your name on the comment section.

Make sure you post valid content on your comments or the blog owner may just delete your comment.

Post about 10 comments a day and you will soon build a massive amount of backlinks.

If you log on to Glocksoft and download  fast directory submitter for free you can get your website submitted to about 150 online directories for free.

You can easily search the search engines for more directories to submit your website to.

The more backlinks you have the better your search engine ranking.

If you have researched your keywords correctly then creating these backlinks will start taking you to the top of the search engines pretty quickly.

Most affiliate marketers fall into the trap of so called free traffic or buying traffic packages. They are extremely low quality and you are unlikely to make any sales at all from these methods.

I do use some surfer sites when I first build a website. Having a steady supply of traffic seems to help with google PR rating and Alexa traffic ranking. I only use them until my free traffic from the search engines kicks in and I look for about 200 visitors a day, I don't know why it works but it seems to work quite well.

hitsboosterpro
24sevenhits.com
trafficswarm.com
easyhits4u.com

These 4 traffic site should easily get you 200 visitors a day with very little effort.
Please do not get drawn into getting thousands of visitors to your websites and joining loads of websites offering free traffic. Traffic for your website should be based on quality not quantity.

Keep posting articles to the article directories and commenting on blogs and you should see your site in the search engines pretty soon.

Before I end this post I just wanted to say do not be impatient. You will discover that it can take weeks for your website to be noticed or get listed on websites. This is the worst time because most people automatically start to submit their website again and again, this is bad news as the search engines will end up ignoring you.
Submit a different page to the search engines once per week, they may take time but as your backlinks begin to grow so will the speed in which your website is indexed.
The website will crawl one of the websites your link is on and the more it does this the faster your site becomes indexed.

The ultimate online income.(Part 4)

Building your Website

Now you have all your content and built up a web presnce it's time to get thet website built.

There are 2 ways to get your website built, the first is building a traditional website. The second is far simpler, wordpress is like an online blog just create posts. Which one you use is up to you.

Using the conventional website will take a little time. First you need to find a theme, if you know how to build web pages this will be easy, if your new to website building then you just need to do a web search for "free website templates" there is thousands of sites offering them.

Once you have a theme suitable for your product then you need to build your pages. My Free Website Buider is a free download which is simple to use. They have a user manual to help you along as well.

A more advanced manual is available at More Niche , this is a free to join affiliate program site specialising in mainly weight loss products and mens enlargement products.

They have some fantastic resources and guides to help you build and market your website, even if you don't want to promote their products they are worth joining just for their guides.

You should build every page individually and ensure they are all linked. I am not going to go into how to do this as the guides are available and I would just be repeating them.

Once you have created each page you must ensure that you put meta tags into your website, these are explained in the manuals so ensure you read them properly.

Now your website is built you can add your adverting. This usually means editing the HTML code, it is not as scary as it sounds.

First choose where you want the ads inserted, place a string of letters in the area then click on the source tab you should be able to see the string of letters you typed. Highlight this text and paste the HTML code you copied from your advertiser where the text was.

Check and double check all your links ensuring they all work and lead to the intended page.

A simpler alternative is wordpress, most hosting providers offer the wordpress platform.

The only problem is that you must get your domain and hosting before you begin building your wordpress site. If you followed the earlier steps you should have enough info to get your site set up pretty quickly.

First do a search for a wordpress template, post your main content and make it sticky. Doing this will ensure that this post is seen whenever someone visits your site.

Take a tour of your back office and familiarise yourself with it, it's pretty easy to get the hang of. Add your advertising in the sidebar which is a similar process to blogger.

Add as many posts as you want each will appear as a list in the sidebar. You can also choose how many posts are listed per page.

Another feature of wordpress is you can create multiple categories, this is useful if you want to expand your advertising to related content.

If you were to do book reviews then you could categorise them into horror books, fiction, non fiction etc.

Now you need a domain name and hosting. I use the baby croc package from Hostgator . Theis package can host unlimited domains with unlimited bandwidth. It is $10 a month without a tie in you can cancel at any time without penalty. Most companies tie you in for a year's minimum contract.

Domain names with the .com are quite difficult to find so it may take a while to find something suitable.

Take a bit of time searching for something suitable, don't just settle for something easy.You want your domain name to reflect you websites theme.

Thats it your website is online, unfortunately no one can see it yet except you and anyone you have given your website address to. My next post will show you how to build your traffic.

The ultimate online income.(Part 3)

Creating your online presence

  Now your becoming an expert in your chosen field you need to create your online presence.

This is just a matter of using social networking and web 2.0.

There are literally thousands of sites out there to help you do this.

First create a blog (just like this one) you can create your blog as a information guide around the product you are going to promote or you can just create a blog and post a range of posts.

I prefer generally to create a random blog about anything, then if you create a second or third website you can create links to it through your blog.

Blog daily about anything you want, useful websites or funny posts usually work quite well but its up to you.

Once you create your blog get it listed at My Blog Log

I also use Feedage.com where you can also submit your blogs RSS Feed, Technorati.com  is another good site to submit your blog to. Stumbleupon.com is a good site.

All these will create an online presence for you.

Another thing to do is join Twitter.com then join GFFaster  this will help you build a good list of followers, as you grow your follower list you can use it as an advertising platform for your website.

Facebook.com , Yuwie.com  and Tumblr.com are a few other sites you can use.

There are thousands out there but don't get bogged down with too many, you can always join more later.

Post to your blog regularly and each time you create a new post use PingOMatic.com to let everyone know you just created a new post.

Creating your network will help build your authority on the net. It is better to get used to it now so your ready when your website goes live.

The ultimate online income.(Part 2)

 Content Is King

You should have a viable product by now. Something tangible to build your website around.

Before you continue any further ask yourself this question "How much do I know about this product ?"

Your website needs plenty of information to entice visitors to read and hopefully click through and buy your affiliate product. You will also need to submit articles to directories as well as coming up with some good text ads to distribute to directories. You will need to ensure you have plenty of variations of both articles and text ads as this gives your site more visibility on the net.

The reason for this is if the search engines see the same text over and over all linking back to your website then it will look like your a spammer and you have a chance that they will not bother crawling your site.

To get your site to the top of the search engines you need quality content on your website as well as quality backlinks from other sites.

The first step is designing the text for your website, this should be designed to create a good experience for the visitor and to make you look an expert in the product your trying to sell.

You also need to look at how many pages there are going to be and what is going to be on each page.

The easiest way to do this is to do a simple search and look around at websites similar to what you want to achieve. Look at the layout, design and navigation as well as just the text and pictures.

Do not copy from other peoples websites, search engines will easily spot this and not bother crawling your site.

Use the information you gather to design your website ensuring it is unique content. Do this on paper at the moment to ensure your happy with the design and text.

Ensure the keywords you identified are in your text numerous times, just don't overdo it. Make it look natural.

Next you need about 20-30 articles each should be about 450+ words long. This may sound a bit daunting but it will really help you build your authority on the product your trying to sell. The more authority you have the more sales your likely to make.

To help build your articles there are a few things you can do. First visit article directories and search for articles about your product. Don't copy them but use them as guides to write your articles.

There are also millions of blogs out there that you can search to help you gather information, just type your keyword into a search engine and use +blogspot.

If you were doing book reviews then your search would look like this "book review+blogspot.

It may seem like a lot of work but it will help take your website to the top of the search engines where you will create an endless stream of traffic and sales.

The more you put in the more you will get out.

Now you need to create some text ads. These are pretty simple to do, just think about the keywords your using and put them into a sentence relating to your website.

If you were doing book reviews a few lines you could use are :

Best online book review website.

For the best reading experience take a look at our book reviews.

Totally different descriptions but both have "book reviews" in the text.

Again this may seem like a bit of a pain but it will help build your presence online and give the search engines what they need to keep your site ranked highly.

This might seem a lot of work when you have not even got a website online yet. The french call it "mis en place" we call it "preperation in advance".

By preparing everything in advance we can get our website online and begin building our backlinks and search engine ranking immediately. The other reason to do all this now is as your building your articles, text links and website content you are also learning. This is vital in building your authority about a product or service, the more authority you have the more sales your likely to make.

 

The ultimate online income.(Part 1)

Choosing your Product

 The first and most important part of starting any business is what are you going to sell ?

You may think it is a simple task, your just going to build a website based on a product you are already promoting or one you are thinking of promoting.

Stop Just wait a minute and think.

Does your proposed product have a lot of competition for the keywords your going to use ?

Try searching for them and see how many results are returned.

Do you realise if you follow a high competition product you have virtually no chance of getting ranked highly in the search engines. Without a high search engine rank you will find it hard to make any money at all.

Now your thinking straight you need to start researching products that have a reasonably high search rate with a relatively low competition.

Stay away from MLM, Matrix programs and E-Books. These products will be hard to sell and are not sustainable.

To find sustainable products you will need to do a little searching.

One idea would be to join Amazon as an associate and promote their products, you could do a book review website if you enjoy reading or a music review site. ( Just some ideas, make sure you research your products against competition) Amazon pays around 5% to affiliates for sales made.

CJ.com is a company who is a third party for hundreds of companies. You can search through their directory for products to promote.

Another way to find a product is just do a search for a product and then look at the companies websites. You should see a link for affiliate or associate, just click on it and see how much they are paying.

Before you jump in and start deciding what product your going to promote you need to research it.

You should log on to Google Keyword Tool

Type in the keywords you were thinking of using. As well as giving you alternative keywords you can use it will also show you Advertiser Competition and search volume, both for local and global searches.

This tool will help you decide on products to promote. You are looking for a reasonably low advertiser competition and a good global search volume.

When looking at the keywords listed remember you can use more than one of these as your website keywords. So if you find a good set of keywords with low competition but an overall high amount of traffic your website should do well.

The keywords you choose should be able to fit into the text on your website numerous times but look natural at the same time. Think about this when choosing keywords.

Spend a couple of days identifying products or services to build your website around using these techniques.

Better to pick the right product now rather than wasting time on a product that does not gain search engine ranking and make sales.

The ultimate online income.(Introduction)

 This is not a blog trying to sell you something.
Over the next few weeks I will produce a series of blogs explaining exactly how to build your online income.
These are totally free, nothing to buy at all. The only thing you ever need to pay for is Domain Name and hosting.

If you have experienced affiliate marketing before you have probably failed to make any money. 95% of affiliate marketers never make an online income.
The fact is you are being conned into believing you can earn an income, usually that costs you anywhere between $20 and $200 to realise that.
I give you no promises and offer nothing but experience. By following simple techniques you build a business step by step.

This is not a get rich scheme and if your looking to become a millionair overnight then look somewhere else. I will show you how to build a business to earn an income not to make you a millionaire.

Most newcomers into affiliate marketing are looking for the golden nugget, none have succeeded. You buy an E-book for $67 which promises to give you the golden grail, what they are actually doing is tricking you into joining loads of affiliate sites under them.
They are good writers and make you believe joining all these sites is the way to go. The sites will be either a paid for site so you not only pay for their book your also paying them for each program you join.
The other sites will be free to join but you will join under the E-books writer and any sales you make (if any) they make about 5%-10%.
Whichever way you look at it the E-Book is a tool to get you to earn residual income for them.

This blog is different, WHY  ?
Each step is totally explained and you can see the results appearing, I do add some referral links but only to programs I feel will help you. Any links I do publish on this blog will be totally optional and most will be totally free. Paid programs will only be used where I feel it is totally necessary, there are very few of these as I prefer to use the free programs available.

Ok enough rambling just follow this blog and you will learn all the secrets you need to build an online income without splashing out.
Due to the voluntary work I do this blog will be updated 3-4 times a week.
This should be plenty as the guides will take time to complete.
Building your business should take a minimum of one month, creating a suitable income can take probably 6-12 month depending on the amount of time you can spend on your project.

These estimates are based on a person working a full time job and spending 1-2 hours a day, 4+ hours at the weekend devoted to building your income.

If your interested join me on my next blog where your firt lesson will begin.

Why people fail in affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing looks easy to do, but in reality it is a little trickier than people realize. One of the main reasons for failure to make profits in Affiliate marketing is lack of dedication and work. Affiliate marketing is like any other business. It takes hard work and dedication to make a successful business.

One of the most common reasons for failure is lack of knowledge about promoting. Affiliate marketing depends on getting a lot of targeted traffic to your website. Only then can you hope to achieve a substantial click through and sales conversion. Many new affiliates are not aware of the amount of work they will have to put in to drive this traffic to their websites.

The other mistake is not to have your own website. This prevents you from doing your own website promotions and does not allow you to capture the email addresses of your visitors. When you do this you will only be building your sponsor’s business and not your own. You will also be decreasing your sales conversions.

Not knowing how to advertise and where you should be doing your direct marketing is also another mistake. Advertising must be towards your targeted market and not in unrelated publications and websites.

Selling, not pre selling: Too many affiliates try to sell their sponsor’s products instead of getting the click through. If you try to sell to your visitors and then send them through to your sponsor’s sales page they are in effect being double sold and will not be very inclined to buy.

If you pre sell to your visitors and warm them for the sale they will be ready for your sponsor’s sales page and be inclined to buy. This will increase sales conversions and your commission.