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 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.(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.

Whats your website worth.

 I recently came across a website with a little button on it saying "my website is worth $xxx, whats yours worth ?"
Of course we all want to know what our website is worth. I clicked the link and put in my details and voila my websites value in $$$.
I decided to check out other website valuation sites and was surprised by the differences in what they said my sites were worth.
Below are the overviews of 2 not so fantastic sites I ran through 3 different website valuation sites.

The first is http://www.art-decoantiques.com
I bought this website about a month ago but have done little to it at the moment. I registered it as a niche site with little competition, it has a .com domain name which gives it a boost.
So far I have installed wordpress on it with a couple of posts, I plugged it into Free Traffic System hoping other posts would appear from there, 2 posts appeared.  I have also added links of related products from Amazon.
I have done a little backlinking to the website and at the moment have around 250 backlinks although the website has been listed with numerous directories which should show up in a month or two.
The site is listed in major search engines for related keywords, Yahoo and MSN favour it and list it highly although Google has been slow on the uptake.
So a pretty basic website with a reasonable search engine ranking and reasonable amount of backlinks. So what is it worth ?
http://www.websitevaluecalculator.com/  Values it at $78, rather low was hoping for more.

http://www.yourwebsitevalue.com/          Values it at $541, a lot better.

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/             Value has gone up to $963.60, getting better

http://bizinformation.org/                          Value is now $32,000 , Sold to the nearest bidder.

Site 2 is  http://www.affiliategenius.ws
This site is a few months old, I joined http://www.website.ws
I joined them due to the earning potential of their affiliate program, the site didn't have much on it for a while until I joined High Profits  , these supplied a ready made website which I just plugged in. I added a few pages and a couple of banner ads then uploaded it.
Just like my other site it has numerous backlinks and directory listings. Search engine ranking has been harder due to the high competition for affiliate marketing keywords.
So for a plug and play website how much can I earn ?
In the same order as above...............................
Value is $78, rather consistent.
Value is now $234, getting higher.
Value is now $1,124.20, I love the 20 cents LOL.
Value now is now $13,400 , anyone want it ? I'll accept $10,000 for cash.

All website valuation sites are not the same.
Be careful if you come across one of these sites thats saying your website is worth thousands.
Your website is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Time management is the key.

 If you are an affiliate marketer or thinking of becoming an affiliate marketer then the one thing you will need to learn is time management.
Every minute of your time is worth money so make every minute count.

To ensure effective time management there is a few things you can do.

First decide what you want and how much time you can input.
If you already work and have a family then you probably can offer 1-2 hours a day and a few more at weekends. If you know about building a website it will take you less time than if you know nothing about it.
Just be realistic, don't think your going to be handed your goal on a silver platter it could be 3-4 months before the fruits of your labour are noticed.

Don't set your goals too high, if you want to believe you can earn a million dollars in the next month then after you wake up and get back to reality consider earning nothing in the next month. YES absolutely nothing in the next month. Most affiliate marketers take months building an online presence before begining to earn any money, even then it may take a couple of years building your affiliate business before earning a monthly income to live off.
Think about it like this if you jump from one thing to another you will not earn money online.
If you nurture your business then within 2 years you can retire on the income your earning, now your retired you have more time to spend on that business and can build it faster meaning your not only earning enough to live on but building a lifestyle.

Don't be distracted by the next big thing.
When I started out in affiliate marketing this was my biggest mistake. If you see something that catches your eye add it to your favourites and look at it later, your goal is your only concern at this point. Fixate yourself on the goal you have set and work towards that.

Don't give up, what's the point in spending 3-4 months on a project then just giving up. If things are not working re-evaluate what you have done and what you can do.

These simple steps should help you build an income based on reality, not using MLM, Matrix or any other so called get rich quick schemes.

Build yourself a solid income using basic time management.

Your $10 a month automated business.

 If you want an automated online income which will take less than half an hour to set up, has low maintenance time and only costs $10 a month then please read on.
Your $10 a month is for hosting and domain name you are not paying for an MLM or matrix.
This is a rather long post but if you want your own fully built website advertising high paying affiliate income then bear with it. It will explain how to get the website online as well as how to get alternate streams of income and get ranked in google as well as other search engines.

First set up hosting here :
www.website.ws
 The reason I use this company is as well as been a cheap effective hosting company they also offer an affiliate pay plan, this is a 5 level pay plan so you get paid $1 for every person you refer and $1 for every referral 5 levels deep. This can turn into a nice income on it's own but we are going to set up another 2 income streams with this account. Make sure when you choose your website name choose someting short and appropriate like onlineincome.ws


Once hosting is set up join :
www.highprofits.com
This company is a third party advertiser for numerous affiliate programs.
Familiarize yourself with the layouts and check out the complete website templates, once you find one you like download it to your computer and unzip it(just right click on it and go to extract all)

Before uploading to your host you need to optimize your website.
Download My Free Website Builder totally free.
Once downloaded open it, go to open a new page and look for the file your website pages are in. Look for the file named "index" and click to open that page.
In the drop down menu at the top click on "format" then go down and click on "page title and properties"
In the box that opens fill in the fields saying title and description.
Read the page and give a title and description based on the individual page, give each page a different title and description.
Once done click ok and then at the bottom of the page you will see four tabs click on the one saying "source"
The test here may look confusing but is pretty simple once you get used to it, if you look you will see your title and description appearing in between some strange text and below this you will see something like this


  meta name="keywords"
 content=" " /
In between the speech marks after the word content type in some words that apear in the text of the page you are using. Words like "affiliate, marketing, makemoney online" you decide how many you want to put in.
Open each page in turn and follow the same rules. None of this appears on your web page this is all HTML which is what search engines will use when they crawl your pages. Known as SEO or search engine optimization.

Next you need an ftp, this is just a program which transfers the files from your pc to your host.
Download and install Filezilla 
This is a free program, once installed open it up. You will need the email that website.ws sent you.
At the top of the screen you will need to enter
ftp host = ftp.hosting.ws
username= your username
password= your password
port= 21

Once logged on you should see your website name on the right of the screen and your computer documents on the left. On the left of the screen find the folder your web page files are in once open just drag and drop all the web pages and the images file into your website on the right of the screen. Thats it your website is online, It may take 24-48 hours to appear so just keep checking.

Once online it's time to get visitors and advertising on our site.
Personally I hate surfer sites and free traffic sources, just a waste of time but when I first set up a site I use them for between around seven to 30 days. This is just to keep a steady flow of traffic appearing on a regular basis, 200 hits a day on average is plenty. here are four simple sites I use.
hitsboosterpro
24sevenhits.com
trafficswarm.com
easyhits4u.com
These four programs should easily get you a steady stram of visitors without spending a lot of time surfing them.
Now Its time to get listed in search engines where you will get free traffic.
First go to each search engine you know of especially google, bing(formerly msn) and yahoo as well as any others you find. In in engine type "add url to" and the name of the search engine, click on the relevant link and add your web address in the form provided. Soon your site will be listed and crawled by the search engine spiders. Next we need backlinks, these are links from other sites linking back to yours.
Freetrafficsystem.com is an automatic backlink creator, watch the videos on how to use the system and use this system to it's fullest as it will create hundreds of free backlinks.

Another great way to create backlinks is to look at blogs of people and when you see a good blog create a comment on it ensuring your website goes into the correct box. Don't just spam hundreds of blogs as the owners will delete your comments, when commenting make sure it's sensible and contributes to the actual blog post. Half an hour a day should be all it takes to build your backlinks and traffic.
These backlinks are mega important as they will increase your ranking in the search engines, the better your ranking the more likely searchers will find you.

Now you need to add advertising, I personally use Widgetbucks.com
These display numerous ads on a CPM and CPC basis.
Open websitebuilder and then open your index page as you did earlier, decide where your ads are going and copy the code you got from Widgetbucks.com.
To add it to your page type something memorable where you want it to go, click on the source tab then look for the word you just typed in (you do get used to doing this and what the source tab is)Highlight the word you typed in, and copy the code over it. Click save at the top of the screen.

Next open Filezilla again, log in and the only webpage you now need to drag and drop across is the index page you just added the HTML code to.

Keep up the backlinking techniques and good luck with your new website.
Please comment on this post especially if theres something you don't understand and I will be happy to help.