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What is Affiliate Markiting?
Affiliate marketing is different things to different people, but essentially, affiliate marketing is the act of marketing someone else’s products or services for a portion, or commission, of each sale that you make.
Some people do affiliate marketing as their full time jobs. That’s it. That’s all they do – they market other people’s products or services, collect their commissions, and live their lives as they wish. They do not have to deal with customer service, shipping orders, or anything else. All they do is promote other people’s products or services, everyday.
Other people use affiliate programs in conjunction with their own products or services, using affiliate programs as front end products, upsells, and back end products. For example, if you had an information product about weight loss, you might want to market exercise equipment, exercise clothing, vitamins, or other items or services that are related to weight loss along with your weight loss information product – to increase your revenue.
Some people are confused about what affiliate marketing actually is. For instance, many people who have products and offer affiliate programs for those products might say that they sell their product through affiliate marketing. What they mean is that they have affiliates who sell the product for them, but they are actually merchants or affiliate managers, in affiliate marketing terms.
But basically, affiliate marketing is selling someone else’s products or services through various means, for various reasons – either to earn an income, to enhance a product, or even to sell an additional product. In fact, many people use low end affiliate products as lead-ins, or entry level products, for higher end affiliate products – never actually creating or promoting a product or service of their own.
Is money being made? You better believe there is! If you include all products and services that are sold through affiliates, affiliate marketing is essentially a multibillion dollar industry, even though it isn’t technically considered an industry in its own right. Many people don’t even consider it a career, but they are mistaken.
Affiliate marketing presents a win-win-win situation. The owner or maker of the product being sold is making money. The affiliate marketer is making money, and the customer is getting what they want or need. Everybody wins. Affiliate marketing has been around longer than you think it has as well.
Again, affiliate marketing is different things to different people, but the goal is the same – to make money. Affiliate marketing offers you the opportunity and ability to make money without creating a product of your own.
Affiliate Marketing: Getting Started
Getting started in affiliate marketing is really quite easy, but too often, many people mistakenly think it’s a lot easier than it actually is. In most cases, the only thing you need to do to join an affiliate program is to fill out a form. That’s the easiest part that there is. But there is still work to be done if you are to be successful.
The first objective is to find a profitable market or niche. This can easily be done in Google or by reading magazines. Let’s start with Google. Do a search for any topic that interests you. Interest in what you hope to sell is important, and later, you will learn why. Make a list of things that interest you, and do a simple search in Google for each thing.
Pay close attention to the sponsored ads. This tells you that money is being spent in this market. Now, do a little logical thinking. As a business person, would you spend money on advertising that is not making you money? Absolutely not. So, if there are sponsored – paid - ads for a topic in Google, money is beingspent in this market, which means that there is profit.
What about the competition? What about them? 90% of all people who sign up for an affiliate program will not do anything to market it at all. Of the 10% that will market the product, 90% of them will do it wrong, and won’t make much money, if they make anything at all. The competition just decreased in size by leaps and bounds. Don’t worry about the competition. Concentrate on promoting your affiliate products and services to the best of your ability – let the competition worry about you.
Once you’ve chosen your market, or your niche, you are almost ready to get started, but there are several other things that you need to do before you can call yourself an affiliate marketer. First, you need to make sure you have the right tools. Then, you must find the programs, understand the terms of the programs, and finally understand how to choose the right programs.
Have The Tools You Need
You can’t do any job successfully without having the tools you need to do the job. This is also true for affiliate marketing. Here is a list of the tools that you will most likely need to get the job done and become a successful affiliate marketer.
An email account – You want to appear as professional as possible. Do NOTuse a free email account such as Yahoo or Hotmail as your business email account. If you have a website with a domain name, you should be able to set up an email account associated with that domain in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
An Autoresponder – An autoresponder is web based software that sends out one email or a series of emails to people who sign up to the autoresponder. This can be used to manage your ezine, which will be discussed later. A good autoresponder will also give you the ability to send out broadcasts to your list.You can start with a free autoresponder.
Keyword Research Tools – If you will be doing PPC campaigns, which are discussed later, you will want Keyword Research Tools. Google has free tools that you can use, but stand alone web based software, such as that found at www.wordtracker.com is also recommended.
A List of Resources – You will definitely need to start gathering a list of resources that includes a list of article directories, PPC search engines, affiliate program directories, and directories of ezines.
Word Processor – Word processing software is essential. You will use it to write articles, sales letters, ads, and newsletters. While Microsoft Word is the 800pound gorilla a wonderful alternative and free resource is “open source” office. http://www.openoffice.org/
A PDF “maker” - Neevia is a wonderful free programs that will convert your documents into PDF format. I use this constantly! http://convert.neevia.com/
A Website and Domain for Each Niche or Market – Some affiliate programs will give you a replicated website. You will eventually send prospects to that website, but not sending them to your own website first is a big mistake. You need to “capture” your prospects first name and email address. For that, you need a website for each niche with it’s own domain name.
The website should be full of content, with affiliate links worked into the content. Ideally, each website will also have a squeeze page, where you will collect the names and email addresses of your visitors as well, in order to build your lists.
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There may be other tools that you find you need in the future, but all of these things will get you started.
Ideally, you should have a home office. This will not only give you the space and proper atmosphere for success, it will also give you a home office tax deduction. If you don’t have the space for a home office, try to set your desk and computer up in a low-traffic area of your home, where you can work with fewer interruptions.
Know Where To Find The Best Programs
Now that you have the tools, and you know what type of products you want to market, where do you find the best ones that have affiliate programs? Well, there are multiple places that you can start looking, depending on what your objective is. You must know what your objective is first.
If you plan to use affiliate programs as add-ons, such as upsells or backends to a product that you have, or another high ticket product that you are promoting, you may want to look for inexpensive ‘lead in’ or entry level products, such asebooks. ClickBank at www.clickbank.com is one of the best places to find affiliate programs for information products.
If you want to promote hard goods, meaning goods that are delivered via a shipping company or postal mail, there are many different places you can look. First, let’s cover sites that are essentially directories of affiliate programs.
• AffiliatePrograms.com /www.affiliateprograms.com
• Link Share. www.linkshare.com
• Commission Junction. www.cj.com
• Performics
• Fine Click. www.fineclicks.com
• Web Sponsors. www.websponsors.com
• ClixGalore. www.clixgalore.com
• QuinStreet. www.quinstreet.com
• MaxBounty. www.performics.com
The majority of these sites are networks, where many different affiliate programs are managed. This allows you to promote a large number of affiliate products and services, and to receive one check for all sales across the network.
Understand The Language
You are about to encounter a language that you have never heard before – the language of Internet Marketing, as it relates to Affiliate Marketing. It is important that you understand what it all means, to ensure that you are signing up for programs that are worth your time.
As you will learn later, it is important to read the terms and conditions for affiliates. Sometimes, you will be presented with those terms before you sign up, and sometimes you will be presented with them after you sign up – but it is important that you read them, and it is important that you understand what is being said.
CPC – Cost per click. This relates to how much it costs for each click an ad or link receives when advertising on a CPC basis. In other words, instead of paying a flat rate for the advertisement, you would pay a certain amount of money for each click the ad receives.
PPC – Pay Per Click. This relates to CPC, where you pay for each click that your ad or link receives. Google AdWords is an example of Pay Per Click advertising.
CPA – Cost per action, or cost per acquisition. Basically, this means that you will pay each time an action is taken. The action may be a click, a sign up, or a sale.In fact, many affiliate programs also pay on a CPA basis, meaning that each time someone clicks on your link, or signs up to receive information through your link, you earn a little money. Google AdSense is an example of this.
CTR – Click Through Rate. This number is usually represented as a percentage, and it refers to the number of times your ad was clicked on, in relation to how often the ad was viewed.
CPM – Cost per thousand. The amount of money you pay for every one thousand ad impressions.
URL - Uniform Relay Link, otherwise known as a link, or a website address.
Affiliate Link – A URL or link that is assigned to you by the affiliate program. This is the link that you will promote, as it is used to track your clicks and sales.
Contextual Link or Text Link – A contextual link is a link that looks like content, because it is all text. It may be several words long. A text link is a link such as www.link.com , as opposed to a banner ad.
Charge Back – This will be an important term to you. This refers to when customers cancel their orders, or have their credit card companies reverse the charges. It basically means that you lose a sale. Some affiliate programs will hold money back each pay period to cover potential charge backs/refunds, and release that money to you after a specified period.
SPAM – Unsolicited Commercial Email. This term also refers to commercial posts on forums and blogs. Most affiliate programs will have strict anti-spam regulations that you must follow.
Revenue Sharing Program – This is the same thing as an affiliate program.
Co-Branding – Some affiliate programs offer co-branding options, where your company name or logo is placed on a reseller’s website, or on the product itself.
Referral Link – The same as an affiliate link.
Tracking – The method or software used to record sales, clicks, leads, and other information that has to do with your affiliate link.
HTML or HTML Code – HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. This is the programming language used to build webpages. HTML code generally refers to a small portion of HTML code, such as that needed to place affiliate links or banners on your webpages.
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