There are numerous benefits in starting an affiliate program at your home business web site. The most obvious is that you will end up with numerous links pointing to your site and the result will be a colossal amount of traffic without you having to rely on search engines.

Still many online entrepreneurs and home business owners hesitate to launch an affiliate program because they feel that it is too complex and difficult to launch. Actually nothing could be further from the truth.

Whatever industry or market niche your site represents, you can be sure that there are many others online looking for an affiliate program in that particular industry. You need to understand that we are in the age of specialization and affiliates are not interested in general programs but are looking for something that is just right.

Starting An Affiliate Program Does Not Call For A Sophisticated Project

The affiliate program that you launch for your small home business site does not need to be sophisticated with the latest state of the art affiliate links and flashy banner advertisements. You will be surprised to know that many no-frills simple affiliate programs have worked out quite well for a number of home business web sites.

What the affiliate is concerned about is that they are able to generate some revenue from their affiliate program, all other issues are secondary. In other words what you need to really concentrate all your efforts in is to ensure that as many of your affiliates are able to generate revenue from the affiliate program as possible. Share with them your most successful methods of attracting targeted traffic and converting some of that traffic into paying clients. Remember that the whole idea with affiliate programs is to get numerous people to duplicate exactly what you are doing right.

An E-Book Can Be very Effective In Recruiting Affiliates For Your Program

One idea that can turn out to be very effective in successfully starting an affiliate program is for you to produce an entertaining and yet informative e-book packed with tips on how somebody can be a successful affiliate with your program. You can then distribute this e-book for free online. The magic of an e-book is that if done correctly, it can be very inspirational and can help you win many affiliates over to your program. Especially if the viral marketing effect that touches most useful e-books takes over. Remember that the more affiliates you have the more links you will have pointing at your site and the more profits you will make from your home business web site business.

The advent of the World Wide Web has brought along various kinds of job opportunities, and one of which is the chance to become an affiliate marketer. Practically anyone can be one for as long as certain conditions and prerequisites were taken care of.

For instance, the most important requirement in this line of work is an existing website, preferably one that has a good amount of traffic. But before you sign up with any affiliate programs, you should first enrich your knowledge about the business of affiliate marketing and learn a few tips on how to fully take advantage of it.

A Closer Look

The term affiliate marketing refers to the online marketing practice wherein a company compensates one or more affiliates for every customer or visitor that resulted from the marketer's efforts. It is also the name of the trade where various types of businesses and individuals perform different forms of Internet marketing.

Examples of these strategies include affiliate networks, managers and management companies, expert third-party vendors, and a variety of publishers/affiliates who endorse the specific products and services of their partner companies.

However, affiliate marketing has the tendency to overlap with some Internet marketing methods for the reason that affiliates frequently use standard advertising methods.

Those methods often include email marketing, paid search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and display advertising. Then again, a number of marketers sometimes take the less conventional road of marketing products and services. These less orthodox methods include publishing of product and/or service reviews for partner businesses.

How To Become An Affiliate Marketer

You can actually become one through a number of ways. Here are some suggestions you can follow to get you started on your marketing career.

*Use Affiliate Programs On Your Website

An obvious advantage to adding one or more affiliate programs to your existing site is that both will definitely gain from the exchange of Internet traffic. As you may have known by now, websites need to constantly grow and be updated. Fresh and original content is, therefore, necessary so that websites could reach their fullest potential in the search engines.

Signing up for one or more programs may be a good way to increase your site's content. Plus, you also get compensation for marketing other people's businesses.

* Use A Single Product For Your Site

In the case of affiliate marketing, "more" doesn't always mean "merrier." Deciding to use a single product -- or line of products, perhaps -- enables you to focus your time and effort on a potentially profitable program. More often than not, this strategy produces better Internet traffic compared to having multiple products/services.

* Use Multiple Programs

Signing up with multiple affiliate programs does have its perks and advantages. The most common plus point is the fact that it is less expensive and, often, more cost-effective than having a single program. In addition, by having multiple products on your site, you increase your chances of making a sale.

http://affiliatenetwork.ws - Affiliate Network

"Pay Per Play" Affiliate Advertising (PPP for short; not to be confused with "Pay Per Post") is a Brand-New Stream of Income for Affiliate Marketers that is just getting ready to "Go Live." The scheduled release date is February 1, 2008.

Here's the gist of what "Pay Per Play" Affiliate Advertising (PPP for short; not to be confused with "Pay Per Post") is all about.

Some Online "Heavy Hitters" have created a new system where an advertiser spends money to have a 5 second audio sound bite hosted on just about any type of website as a little commercial.

The advertisers that are being targeted right now by the PPP folks are BIG ADVERTISERS with large advertising budgets. They're going to pay premium prices to try out his new service.

As a website owner, you can grab a piece of this new pie for yourself fairly simply. You signup with the PPP folks and then you'll be able to get the code necessary to play one of these 5 second "commercials" on any of your webpages that have the PPP code embedded in them.

The commercials are targeted to your website's theme so they'll be relevant to your website's visitors.

But here's the beautiful part. You get paid without your visitors having to do a thing!

This means the more traffic you send to your website, the more commissions you'll make.

According to the PPP folks, "Pay Per Play" Affiliate Advertising will probably make you more money than Google AdSense. Plus, with AdSense, your visitor leaves your website. Not so with PPP. Your visitor hears a short commercial used primarily for brand name advertising for big advertisers.

Right now, you can join the program for free and then use it on your own website(s) where you'll make 25% of the advertising cost of the particular commercial that runs on your site. Plus you can refer other people to the program and earn a residual commission of 5% of the advertising fees they generate as well as a second 5% for anyone they sign up.

You might not get rich off of "Pay Per Play" Affiliate Advertising but to me, it looks like a viable alternative to AdSense that's worth looking into.

They scuttlebutt is that after the program launches February 1, 2008, you might not still have the ability to refer other people to the program so joining now made the most sense to me.

Who knows if PPP will be the next "Latest and Greatest" thing to hit Affiliate Marketing.

But it sounds interesting, has literally no competition right now and you can join for free. Why not give it a try?

The worse thing that can happen is it makes you no money and you quit using it. But maybe the opposite will occur and you'll start raking in commissions from a new source.

Maybe your next stream of income will come from "Pay Per Play" Affiliate Advertising.

For anyone who has ever thought about opening their own shopping mall, affiliate marketing may be the answer. Being able to open a facility with several different stores offering a diverse range of products can invite a wide assortment of visitors. In order to attract tenants to the mall, instead of charging them rent, try collecting a percentage of their gross sales and see how fast the stores fill up with qualified tenants.

Be careful when signing deals as there will also be some fly-by-night companies wanting to set up shop in the mall as well as some offering goods and services that may not meet the standards of the community in which the mall is located, likely driving potential customers away to other shopping centers. All the mall owner has to do is advertise its opening and offer marketing help to the tenants in order to bring traffic through the front door and into the mall shops and the business will soon be booking for everyone.

This has worked well in many brick and mortar shopping malls, except for the part about the free rent and the store owners do not pay a percentage of their sales back to the mall owner. With an online shopping mall and affiliate marketing, anyone who can set up a website can own their own shopping mall. Many different stores under one roof and the mall owner collecting commission on every sale of every store.

This is how affiliate marketing works. Stores allow affiliates to post ads on their website and if a customer comes into their store by way of that website, they pay a commission on the sale. An online shopping mall can create a unique opportunity to create several streams of income, providing the owner maintains the store cleanly and seasonally correct. Affiliate ads will have offer timely merchandise from quality online stores of the visitors will stop showing up.

Additionally, the online mall owner will have to keep the site fresh and marketed online and possibly offline as well, to draw as many visitors as possible. Making sure the online stores owners live up to their end of the bargain with the customers will also help maintain the integrity of the mall. Mall owners have to watch every store carefully to make sure the ads they are running in the mall remain current.

If a store is not drawing visitors from inside the mall or after several months there have been no sales from the store despite a large number of visitors, the mall owner has the choice to stay the course and hope it gets better or canceling their deal and finding another online retailer to take its place. With no advertising costs, most businesses are open to affiliating with an online shopping center.

However, a shopping mall that offers 20 or more shops that specialize in the same type of merchandise will probably be confusing to the customers and non-productive to most of the store owners. They may not want to be under the same roof as the others and ask to be removed from the online real estate.

I am sure you have heard of the term Search Engine Optimization. You probably know alot about it. Or perhaps like me you are learning lots of bits and pieces about it and gradually becoming the expert that will make you an internet marketing guru sometime in the near future I hope!

Search Engine Optimization is the method of making your website easily found by both search engines and search engine users. You might not realize that even though you are targeting people surfing the net out there hoping to get lots of visitors to your site, if your site cannot be found in the first place the visitors cant visit. It has been recognized for some time that the earlier a site appears in a list of search results the more visitors that site gets. Search engines will tend to list a site earlier in their list if they can find the site easily.

How can you make your site search engine friendly? Well it might help if you understand how search engines find sites in the first place. In summary search engines use sets of well defined instructions in the form of certain factors that they look for in a website.These instructions may also be called alogrithims. When a website contains many of these factors that fulfill the instructions the search engine has been given, the search engine will rank that website high in its list of websites.

So what are these factors? Experts use lots of factors and techniques to make a website search engine friendly but for our purposes we will stick to a simplified summary of them:

1. Write good content

2. Design a simple website

3. Use well written metatags

You dont always have to be an expert to include these factors on your website. You could get by quite well by sticking to a few rules:

Writing good content for your website:

Write content relevant to your targeted audience. Use words called keywords in the content. Keywords are words that people are likely to use when searching and surfing the net for your type of product or service or business. Put yourself in that person's place. What words would you type in if looking for a particular product? Use lists of keywords both in content and source code and include common misspellings of difficult words in the source code. Use keyword phrases rather than single keywords.

Search engines will look for these keywords and use them to both categorize and rank your site. When writing content for your site also use text that you have used in other tags like metatags and headings. Write content of at least 200 words per page.

When writing content for your site do also remember to include links from other sites to yours and blogger's links as well.

In the next bits and pieces article we shall look at Simple Web Design and Metatags as ways to make your website search engine friendly.

Top Affiliate Tools Every Marketer Needs To Succeed # 2 - A Handbook

It's all very well having a great affiliate website but if you don't know what to do with it then you'll never earn your full potential online.

A great handbook shows you how to set up & run successful businesses you can grow.

All chefs know that the greatest careers are built on strong foundations.

And almost all chefs built their foundations by learning their skills following recipes out of a book.

What's this got to do with your affiliate business?

Everything.

You see like a great meal, a successful and enjoyable holiday, a well constructed house or any other project that has many ingredients and variables, it's always a good idea to have some guides to help you get the best out of your efforts.

• Cookery books.
• Travel guides & maps.
• Building manuals & DIY handbooks.

And for those embarking on a new career in affiliate marketing, the equivalent is a great handbook to help to show you a genuine method to achieve success.

But Who Do You Trust In The Affiliate World?

Truth is that there are many scam artists on the internet, and the affiliate industry has it's fair share of 'Gurus' who claim that they can make you rich over night!

You've probably read the claims like:

• Work for 1 hour a day and make millions.
• Earn over $1000 in the next 24 hours.
• Get rich while you sleep.
• The easiest way to earn 6 figures with no effort.

Come on, if it was so easy wouldn't we all be using their method?

Truth is that like any successful business, online or off, some planning and effort, dare I say some thinking and hard work, is required in order to build a truly successful and lucrative income stream.

So, Who's Affiliate Handbook Do You Trust?

I want to tell you about the people who I do trust and have given me some great advice and guidance whilst I set up my affiliate businesses.

• All of them have worked hard, had their own initial failures and then worked out how to be successful.
• All of them run successful online affiliate business websites that you can take a look at and see that they actually practice what they preach.
• And all of them have websites that give you advice, continuous development and help so that once you have set up your websites you can continue to learn and build your affiliate business.

Who Are These Super Affiliates That I Trust?

Ros Gardner - The very first book I bought on Affiliate Marketing was Ros Gardner's 'Super Affiliate Handbook'. And I have to tell you that the title isn't a lie.

Ros earns over $400,000 a year from her string of affiliate websites that she has developed over the last 10 or so years.

Her story is one about a frustrated office worker, well an air traffic controller actually, who discovered the internet and then put her effort into developing a business promoting other peoples goods and services in return for a commission - Affiliate selling in a nutshell.

I thoroughly recommend you take a look at my review of her handbook, 'The Super Affiliate Handbook' and consider taking Ros advice on setting up your own super affiliate business.

James Martell - James career and introduction to affiliate marketing couldn't have been more different to Ros's. James, a carpenter by trade, found that he just wasn't earning enough to keep his family finances on the right side of black.

At first James tried his hand at selling on the internet. He tells you his story in his excellent affiliate buzz sessions that you can listen to on this website.

James had limited success with this and then moved on to try his hand at affiliate marketing. He tells of his first big failure, promoting a company that went out of business owing him money!

But then James developed his own very successful method of affiliate marketing and found success. You can read about how James came a cropper and how you can avoid making the same fatal mistakes in his excellent 'Affiliate Marketers Handbook' that I review.

Chris McNeeney - Here again is a very different story. Chris, from the UK, has developed and written some of the most thought provoking handbooks on intermediate and advanced methods of affiliate marketing.

Chis stormed the internet in 2004 with his very first book called 'Adsense Miracle' where he looks at how to turn those little 3 line ads into a huge revenue stream. This book became an instant best seller.

I must say that although the methods were highly successful then, they are less so now due to Google changing it's rules on use of Adsense, though many of the teaching techniques, especially on writing highly clickable ads, are still worth reading.

Next Chris released 'Affiliate Project X' in 2006. This time he looked at 6 clever and sometimes devious ways of generating affiliate incomes.

I am not a fan of all of Chris's methods, I personally like building long term business websites not 'get in quick and try and make a killing' websites that Chris tends towards.

However I can not knock that if you follow Chris's advice you could make a lot of money.

WARNING: Not for beginners!

Final Thoughts

Whether you like any of these books or not I strongly advise you to follow someone's advice when building your first affiliate business website.

There is nothing more disheartening than spending months on a project only to find that it isn't working.

Save yourself heartache and hassle and get your hands on a good affiliate handbook to guide you to success.

Read my reviews of the Best Affiliate Handbooks & Courses

Do you have outstanding selling skills? Do you know how to promote product and services? Are you familiar with various online marketing techniques? Then, you can be one of the best affiliates in the internet today! You can easily earn money by simply driving interested visitors to your merchant website and conveniently earn commission for every sale that you make! Sound easy? Yes, it is. But in order to make sure that you get a fat paycheck, always keep these 4 remarkable steps in mind:

1. Master all types of marketing techniques. Affiliate marketing is all about reaching out to potential clients so they will be aware of the products you are promoting. You can effectively do this by knowing the various types of online marketing techniques like PPC advertising, article writing, blogging, and forum posting. Learn and understand how these techniques work and apply them on your marketing campaign.

2. Work hard. Remember, the amount of money on your paycheck depends on the amount of time and effort you put in promoting your affiliate products. Thus, it follows that if you want a bigger commission, you have to work really hard.

3. Follow-up. Communicate with your prospective clients on a regular basis. Send them updates about your latest products and promotions. Continuously learn their needs and match their needs with what you are offering. By keeping in touch with your target market, you are increasing your chances of making a sale.

4. Build your list. To make it easier for you to get in touch with your prospective clients, utilize email marketing. In this method you can easily send them updates and promotions. To make this work for you, build your own e-mail list by obtaining your target market's contact information.

Affiliates love to receive messages with subject line, 'You have made a sale!'

Most of the people in Internet marketing are affiliates at one point of time in their IM career.

Why?

* No need to create a product.

* Start up cost is almost zero.

* Sometimes you don't even need a web site.

* No need to provide support to the buyers.

* No upgrade or maintenance of products.

* No need to register a business.

But simply signing up for a product is not enough. You need to promote it as if you have your own product.

Most important promotional method for an affiliate product is, offering an ecourse.

What is an ecourse?

Ecourse is an 'email course on a specific subject sent as a series of emails using a follow up autoresponder'.

Why you need to send an ecourse as an affiliate?

* First you have to capture your visitors email address.

* Second you have to promote your affiliate product.

* Third as you are developing a list, you can promote other affiliate products.

Tips on sending an ecourse:

* Don't keep direct affiliate link. Try to keep redirect pages. Or more easily here is a script that hides your affiliate links and same time, it tracks the clicks.

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/clicktracking/index.shtml

* Make your ecourse short like 5 - 10 messages. If possible keep links to previous email messages in every next message.

* Send them every alternate day or one on each day. This way they can connect the email content. If you keep long interval between messages, they have to dig their inbox for previous messages to see what you are talking about.

* Make a template for the ecourse. This is to create a consistent layout.

* Keep a discount offer at the end of each ecourse. Most IMers neglect this point. Your subscriber is exposing your affiliate product in each email. So it is time to grab his attention with a discount offer and make him feel that it is a good offer to pass on.

* Check all the links in emails. No long URLs. They will break in emails and subscribers get 404 errors.

* Last but not least is, select the topic for the ecoure that is RELATED to your affiliate product or service. If you are promoting a dating service, offer an ecourse on, 'how to select a suitable date?' subject. Good luck in sending!

Affiliate marketing is by far the easiest way to start online business. You don't need to create your own product, deal with customer support, returns, payments and other tasks. Affiliate simply is a middle man between product vendor and customer, and a sole role for affiliate is to market a product. For the effort, affiliate will receive a cut from the sale (commissions) frequently as high as 75%.

With a huge supply of products available to affiliates, you can start affiliate business in pretty much ANY market - from selling ringtones, how-to ebooks to cruise vacation packages. However, my recommendation is start with products that will pay you $20 and up in commissions. Many affiliates begin with selling ebooks from Clickbank and Paydotcom. Both networks provide big selection of ebooks and courses in a variety of markets.

Ok, you have selected products you want to promote as affiliate. Next step should be to clearly define your online presence strategy (no site, one-page review site, blog, others) and how you are going to market and drive traffic to a product (pay-per-click networks, free ads site, publishing product on a blog). Spend some time on these tasks, educate yourself if something is unclear, and make sure you understand what you'll be doing. Don't make a mistake to jumping into the marketplace too fast, especially advertising using Adwords. You can lose a lot of money before you know it.

Please don't just sit on this information. Go ahead to clickbank.com and explore their product offerings. Open up an account with Clickbank, it's free and easy. Choose products you'd like to promote as affiliate, and establish your marketing and traffic strategies.

Affiliate programs offer the best way to start an internet business quickly, easily, free and with full online support. I would say that otherwise the starter would be in big difficulties, because the affiliate program offers a full set of tools and training, which you should create by yourself, if you start from scratch. And when you will grow your know how, you can continue with the same affiliate program system and just increase your skills.

One thing oils the way to the internet business wealth: the Net marketing is increasing strongly and new people will enter the market every day. This means bigger potential but also heavier competition. One thing is very good: the number of new internet business niches appear regularly and new offers are needed.

In the internet business marketing there are big group of professional people, who will make the product development for the affiliate programs and test them, before the army of affiliates will start to market them. This is a huge workload and requires a long experience. And when the system is working the affiliates can execute it and, wow, again new internet business profit system has been created!

The affiliate marketing system is an ongoing project, which is like a traditional company. There is the owner, who has the responsibility, there is the community of affiliates, who will meet on the internet business forum, there is the online support, there are joint ventures between the affiliates, there are moderators on the forum, there are lots of suppliers for products and for website development and so on.

The affiliate system will be successful, if the whole system works well. Now, how can you determine, when the system works well? The only result, which the owner must follow, is how the single affiliate succeed and does the system produce enough new successful affiliates. You see, the affiliate program system is a service for the affiliates. You can very fairly say that it is like a company, a home for its affiliates.

Okay, but should you avoid the paid services in the very beginning and concentrate on learning and posting questions to the forum. I think, yes, you should. A typical start with any new program goes in the way, that in the start, when you have joined, you are in a big hurry to start to earn real money and you may think to skip the learning! What a shortsighted and stupid idea!

The wealth comes from your skills to build a trusted brand. The brand building happens through actions, because the target audience will build the brand, or fame, out of your many actions, which they have seen. The key idea is to understand the time frame: all brands are built during a long period of time. People want to see repeatedly, whether your quality or success is lasting or just a hype thing. This needs repeated actions and visits to your site, which will all build your fame part by part!

Because the brand is always a niche thing, you must select the things into your internet business strategy very carefully and make sure that your own skills and talents can execute them. The trust is very sensitive issue, which must be built on honest and real capabilities.

Despite of the fact that you have chosen the affiliate program for your internet business, it is your marketing style, which will determine your success. You just have to customize your offer according your communication strategy to be able to stand out from the crowd!

The good thing in your internet business marketing style is that no one can copy it. It is in a way your own personality in the form of messages and that is a very strong strategy. Just trust on yourself and decide to be wealthy some day!

Affiliate marketing keeps booming! For those of you who've never heard of the term, it simply means, you promote and market someone else's product or service. When a sale is made, you earn a commission. If you're looking to make money online,?this is probably the easiest way to get started. The knowledge you will pick up doing this type of business will benefit you for any future endeavors with internet marketing.

An affiliate program holding great appeal is eBay. Why is that? You just answered your own question. You already knew what I meant when I wrote, "eBay". The most important factor in marketing, online or offline is the brand loyalty. The more people who know of your company, the more successful you'll be. It makes perfect business sense that anyone looking to make money online would be attracted to?this company.?All you have to do is go to?their site and sign up as an affiliate. Everything is totally explained to help you become a success.

What's In It For You As An eBay Affiliate?

1. 50%--75% on?revenue from visitor's purchases you send to their site.

2. $25--$35 per new user referral who is sent from your website of blog

3. Website or blog optimized to the hilt

Benefits Of Being An Associate

1. eBay has global presence in 38 markets worldwide

2. $2,000.00 change hands EVERY SECOND

3. Worldwide brand awareness

4. Hundreds of millions of visitors everyday

Astonishing, isn't it? And this company just keeps growing. Affiliating with eBay ensures you a part of the massive sales of goods and services that passionate buyers are after. Where else can you locate buyers who already have their credit cards or PayPal accounts warmed up? How can you beat that?

More and more of our day-to-day activities are conducted online. And that includes our shopping needs. And yes, our desires. Like the most expensive item ever sold to date on eBay. A private business jet. Selling price? Just $4.9 million!?This dynamite company?provides the platform for immense global commerce. And they are inviting you to ride along with them!

(c) Karen Cook

"Focus on Big Markets" - that's it? That's your big tip you ask? Yes it is. You know why? Because so many people do just the opposite. They try to dominate an obscure niche. They think "Oh there is no competition. Great! I can now make tons of money."

Many, many gurus teach that niche marketing is the only way to make good money as an affiliate marketer. That all the big, popular markets are taken and hard to make money from.

This is so far from the truth. While it is true that you can easily dominate an obscure niche, ask yourself how much money you can actually make off it?

An obscure niche means that few people are interested in it. You are starting off with a small target pool of potential customers. You now have the daunting task of getting them to buy.

And you know that not every potential customer actually becomes a paying customer. Not every one of them opens their wallet. So now the number of people who will buy from you (or through your affiliate link) just became even smaller.

Instead of focusing on an obscure niche focus on big markets. Pick a big one like weight loss or dieting or personal development. You will probably hear that it is impossible to get a high search engine, that the market is saturated, that there are already too many players in the big markets. All of these may be true.

What is also true is that there are now so many, many more prospects. Your potential pool is so large that all you need is to capture the attention of a small minuscule percentage.

And it really is easy to capture the attention of a small percentage of a big, rabid market. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. With some viral marketing, some basic search engine optimization and link building, you can get the traffic you need to make you good money.

Affiliate marketing is making it possible for virtually anyone to come online and make money with little or no money of their own. You do not need to create your own product or service so it simply comes down to being able to generate sales. Learning how to sell online can be a great challenge for many people.

Unfortunately most affiliate marketers try one or two approaches to sell and they usually fail and then quit. Do not be part of this group. You must learn from your mistakes because people that are making big money online do things very similarly and people that do not make much money also do things very similarly. Sometimes it can take a bit of time and a few failures before you figure out the game of internet marketing.

Most people want to make money online and they want to do it overnight without any effort. The problem is that this lure of trying to make quick money causes you to use strategies that are simply not effective. An example of this is throwing up a google adwords ad with a direct link to an affiliate page and then targeting any general related keywords. This strategy rarely works and can cost you a lot of money very quickly.

Remember that most people look at the internet as a free information resource and not a shopping mall. They do not make searches on their computer with the intent to buy something. Certainly there are a few searchers that do have clear intentions to buy so if you do want to target these then make sure to only bid on keywords that have the term 'buy' in it. However this is a small percentage, it appears that most people buy things online by being referred from sites they trust.

The kinds of sites people like and trust are simply those that help them and offer them either free information or a free service. For instance article directories can be great for selling products because people will read an article, feel like they have done some research and then maybe they may switch into buying mode when they encounter your links at the bottom of the article which means your conversion rates will be much higher.

This is why creating content rich sites is very important because you must be able to keep the visitor on your site long enough for them to potentially switch into buying mode before they click on your affiliate links. People buy based on emotion and not logic and most people will not purchase something unless they feel that they have done some research on the subject. If your site can offer the research information then people will be much more likely to buy after they click on your links.

Make sure you create a content rich site related to your niche and add your affiliate links either to the side or the bottom of your articles. Also try to make sure your articles are unique and written by you as search engines are becoming more strict with duplicate content. You can use adwords to promote your site but also be sure to use article marketing too as it can be very effective at driving free traffic from both the article directories and also the search engines as your sites ranking increases due to increased link popularity.

Also make it a point to learn about search engine optimization. The biggest key to getting high rankings with the search engines is to create good quality unique sites that offer free useful content for its visitors. Ask yourself whether or not you would find your site useful if you were a visitor. Always try to give your visitors the best possible experience as this is also the goal of the major search engines too. You can do reciprocal linking or article marketing to help increase the visibility of your site on the internet as this is also important to better rankings. Build a site and do it well and in time you are sure to find affiliate marketing success.

As an affiliate marketer, you need to constantly update yourself with the most effective strategies and approaches to ensure that people keep buying and commissions keep coming. You may think that your current methods are doing very well when they truly aren't. You need to be aware of the warning signs that tell you to change things before they get worse.

Signs from Your Affiliated Company

The company you're affiliated with is giving you less and less responsibilities. This is a danger sign since companies usually rely on their best affiliates in bringing in potential buyers. You may notice that the company does not update you quickly with recent information, offers you less products to market or minimizes your quota. These indicate that you are performing less than expected.

The company has delayed responses lately. Companies usually want to contact people who are actually maximizing their assets and income. If they consider your strategy weak or you're simply not helpful in sales, they will most likely contact you the least. Some companies will directly tell you to improve your approach. Observe how quick they respond to calls and emails or if they seem to just keep passing you to the next person.

Signs from Your Customers

No one's buying. You simply aren't receiving any commission since you're not bringing in any buyers. This may be the most common sign that your affiliate marketing strategy is not working. Record every week or month how many customers you've brought in to gauge how well your approaches are working. You may have driven individuals to the company's web site but haven't made any sale or sales had unsatisfactory results leading to refunds.

No positive feedback. Some company web site have customer testimonials showing how well the product or service worked for them or how they came to know about the company. Your affiliate marketing strategies are highlighted if there are customers that you specifically brought in. If there seems to be no praises whatsoever from your clients or the company itself, you may need to up your efforts and improve your techniques.

Your clients are not responding. Delayed responses or no contact at all from your clients mean that they are losing interest. Great newsletters and marketing through emails, blogs and web sites will keep customers wanting to talk to you for more information and support. Check how well your clients are responding especially old ones.

As an affiliate marketer, your strategies need to be innovative and flexible to keep customers and money coming. Since the internet is an ever-changing environment, you need to keep learning new things to be as competent as possible. Study the market as well as your company, product and service. Keep in touch with your company and clients to maintain your credibility and reputable nature.

1. "The Power of One"

This focus isn't just about sticking to your business plan and taking daily action, although those are both crucial parts of the equation. Rather, what I mean by focus is the idea of doing one thing a time, and keeping your sights on one objective at a time.

This means:

a. One affiliate business at a time, based on...
b. One affiliate program - which is promoted via...
c. One web site - and that site should have...
d. One objective - To serve visitors with a landing / "opt-in" page where you collect names and e-mail addresses onto your follow-up list.

Over time, you can have as many affiliate businesses as you want. The point is that you should focus on building one business in one market before you move into another.

2. Simplicity

It involves the following :

a. Creating clean, simple opt-in pages.
b. Sending "to the point" emails which are properly fomatted.
c. Providing alternative mediums for communication and delivery of content.

Please remember that keeping things simple and clean gets more response, and better conversions.

3. Branding

Build your brand as a super affiliate using the following tactics:

a. Using your full name and personal picture.
b. Any graphics you use as site headers must display your name and personal images.
c. Coming up with a memorable slogan, for example, signing off your emails with a "We All Are Super Affiliates", will help to remind people of why you have established a relationship with them.
d. Focus on creating a logo and colour scheme for all sites, reports and bonus products.

4. Lead Generation and List Building

The reason is that "selling" is really all about relationships.

When you build your own leads list, however, you benefit from the following 4 outcomes:

a. Potential customers interact with you (the affiliate) first, rather than going directly to the merchant.
b. You have more control over the customer's perceptions of the product.
c. You are able to generate repeat business from existing customers.
d. Over time, the trust you establish with your list will generate more sales.

Your customers and subscribers benefit from:

a. The high-quality information you provide to them helps to improve their lives.
b. Better buying experiences for your customers. Your trusted recommendations also lead them to appropriate solutions, and this takes the stress out of buying products / services on-line.

5. Follow Ups and List Relationships

Your communication with your list must be consistent and methodical. Just remember this, a successful affiliate with plan his communication in advance, with a specific objective in mind.

However, you must also that spontaneity to building a relationship with your subscribers that goes deeper than just trying to "get the sale" from them.

This powerful article is just the beginning and you will discover tons of real value and INSIDER information every month (which is not available anywhere else) to make you an even bigger fortune as a super affiliate!

*Avis Rent a Car "We're number two. We try harder."

*Federal Express "When it absolutely, positively has to be there."

*Domino's Pizza "Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less"

*Ewen Chia's Super Affiliates Club "Worlds number 1 Affiliate"

What do all four of these slogans have in common? They are powerful statements of uniqueness that helped to propel their respective companies to success.

Avis Car Rental knew that Hertz, the number one car rental company was so much bigger than them that they couldn't compete head on so they positioned themselves as the number two car company that worked harder for the customer.

Federal Express based their slogan on a promise of delivery reliability. Domino's based their slogan on the fact that most pizza eaters don't care how much stuff is on their pizza, but that it is hot, fresh, and delivered quickly.

Ewen Chia's Super Affiliates Club realized that only through continued success and consistent ranking on worldwide affiliates leaderboards coupled with independent alliances talking up said success could they position themselves as world's number 1.

How do you "differentiate" yourself in your business?

Each of these slogans is their respective company's unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is something that differentiates you from all your competitors both local and industry-wide. In the case of Ewen Chia he has many other affiliate marketers calling themselves "world's number 1". The proof comes from other successful affiliates talking about Ewen and why and how he is successful. Apply these rules to yourself: It's what makes you so unique that people will choose to do business with you over any of your competitors. Your USP states your distinct advantage.

One of the deadliest mistakes small businesses make is not being unique. Now more than ever you must differentiate your small business. Today there is an explosion of choices for consumers. If you are wanting to become an affiliate marketer online you will find more than ever that it is difficult to be unique.

During slow times, the same number of small businesses will be vying for a diminishing number of prospects. When this happens the competitive landscape gets tougher and choices for consumers get more difficult.

If you want to survive during the slow economy you must differentiate yourself in the eyes of your prospect. Your USP is what states to the world why you are different.

Take a quick look at Ewen's Super Affiliates website and you will see there are many similarities to other affiliates. The sales copy looks the same. The layout is similar and the structured bonuses are presented the same - always "but wait, there's more". There is one glaring uniqueness though not exclusive, is still rare. What is it? Do you need to hurry over to the site and have a look? Whatever you must do, if you look carefully you will see it. It's the membership. Yes, it may sound innocuous but a membership that provides ongoing support, materials, forums and teleconferences is rare and therefore unique.

Ewen doesn't have to provide all of this. He could sell it all, packaged up for a one off tidy sum or three monthly payments. He doesn't. I would hazard a guess as to why he doesn't - it is part of his Unique Selling Proposition.

Here's a fact. The origin of USP comes from a man named Rosser Reeves who was considered the "high priest of hard sell." He was an advertising agency chairman back in the 60's. He wrote a book titled, "Reality in Advertising" that became very popular. It was translated into 28 languages. He introduced and defined the concept called Unique Selling Proposition.

Why is your USP so important?

To be successful in small an affiliate marketing business you don't have to be the best, you just have to be unique. Identifying, developing, and incorporating your USP into everything you do is challenging and a lot of businesses find it too hard. But the reward is worth every effort. It will differentiate you, distinguish you, and give you advantage over everyone in your marketplace.

"Me too" businesses rarely survive. Look at your business right now. If it is a "me too" business in the early days then that's' OK. Hardly anything is original these days however as you move forward you simply cannot remain a "me too" business as they usually end up in price wars because they don't have anything unique about them to establish value in the minds of their prospects. They are left with only one weapon with which to compete - price. And unless you have a significant cost advantage over your other small business competitors, you will lose.

If you are looking for a case study for an affiliate marketing business that has a uniqueness that is recognized and fully leveraged look no further than Ewan Chia's Super Affiliates Club BUT don't copy it. Take, take, take whatever is good about it, change it to make it YOURS and you will be on your way to having a Unique Selling Proposition.

There are few areas growing as rapidly in modern business and as successfully as that of affiliate Internet marketing. It is a great way for young entrepreneurs to cut their teeth in the business world. Take an existing brand, sign up as an affiliate, put your own spin on the Internet marketing, and work a business model that has been proven and can cost very little to start. Among the affiliate marketing opportunities in America today, few of them are as popular as the kid's market.

Toy manufactures and other affiliate programs geared toward the younger people are quickly becoming one of the top markets of today's world. Perhaps it is because young businessmen love to watch the more sophisticated and interesting cartoons and Anime today. These cartoons keep them from being so far removed from kids themselves this way they can remember what children of all ages like to play with and what is likely to appeal to that set. Whatever the reason, the fact remains strong that the kid's markets are to be taken seriously by any savvy business person.

What makes the kid's market so hot in today's business world is the simple reason that today, more than ever, kids are making decisions for their parent's incomes. This was not as true fifteen or twenty years ago. Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year for their children's requirements, not to mention leisure and entertainment. With this much money up for grabs in the US markets, it's no wonder the kids' affiliate marketing is thriving. That number is not going to get any smaller, according to many experts; it is only going to get a lot bigger in the coming years.

One of the commonly held beliefs for this rapid growth in the industry of children's products could be the disappearance of the traditional one-working-parent families. While this is trying to be minimized by some family experts, the fact remains that two parents working out site the home describes many families. And trying to juggle career and children rather than doing one or the other has never been easy. This leads to two things: more discretionary income and less family time with the kids. This means children are left to fend for themselves when it comes to their entertainment, and this of course leads to greater amounts of spending in this area.

In addition to educations and entertainment items, what cannot be ignored are the huge opportunities in the world of providing day care and extra-curricular activities for these young children. Combined with the need for necessities, it has created a wide open world for affiliate marketing possibilities. The market cannot be ignored by anyone wishing to enter an industry with unlimited growth potential. If you are someone who wants to work from home by go into business for yourself but aren't sure what market to focus on, you may want to look into something around the kids market. It's not going away, and it could provide you and your family with a strong source of income for many years.

When I am away from my computer, just about everybody I know asks me how to make money online after learning that is what I do for a living. This is exactly what I tell them.

Locate an Affiliate Program To Promote

There are loads of affiliate networks that have vendors who pay commissions when you sell their product. Choose the best and newest ones for your affiliate campaigns.

Build a Simple Squeeze Page

There are free software that you can download that has a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface. Craft yourself a witty and original headline, list the benefits of the product you are selling and include an opt-in box at the bottom.

When somebody opts-in to get more information, you re-direct the thank you page to the offer. When they opt-in, they are showing interest in what you are offering, and they are stored into your auto-responder which lets you make the offer over and over again.

Drive Traffic To Your Squeeze Page

There are literally millions of ways to drive traffic over the internet to your offer. Some of the best ways are article marketing, paid advertising (such as Google Adwords), or Joint Ventures with other Internet Marketers. You could advertise in your neighborhood, issue a press release, or post a link on your Myspace page. Just think out of the box.

Follow Up With Your Prospects Through Email

Since the prospect opted-in to your list, you can send them some more information about the product or service daily. Since most people won't buy until you've contacted them multiple times, your auto-responder will become a great tool to use in your efforts. That's it. Keep in mind that this is a very brief run-through, but that is how you can do it starting tomorrow.

Making money online seemed just like an illusion a couple of years back. Today, with the birth of affiliate marketing, it suddenly became one of the sweetest perks an avid internet user can take advantage of.

Here are the 5 popular ways to make money through affiliate marketing:

1. Choose the products to sell. Most first-timers are wondering about what items they can sell online. Professional affiliate marketers suggest that you promote products and services that you know very well or compliment your interest. If you love traveling, you can sell travel packages or hotel accommodations. When you start with something you are very good at, you can add your opinion or even your personality when you promote your products.

2. Use banners sparingly. When advertising using banners on your website, remember, less is more. Too much banner advertisements can shun your visitors and bury your website's content.

3. Promote your products incessantly. Never get satisfied with the amount of exposure your product gets. Utilize PPC advertising so you can direct targeted visitors to your site. You can also promote your product using free advertising tools like forum posting and article marketing.

4. Work hard. This is the secret of most successful affiliate marketers. They never get tired of promoting their products and they continuously make follow ups on their potential clients. Remember, the more time you spend letting other people know your offerings, the higher your chances of closing a sale.

5. Establish personal relationship with your target market. Get in touch with them through e-mail or phone call. Continuously learn their growing needs and identify where your product fits.

6. Get rid of "parasites". Parasites are applications being used by scammers to redirect your customers to their site to rob your sales and your commission. Learn how to safeguard your investment against this kind of scam to make sure that you get what you worked for.

The biggest epiphany I ever had was when my brain just clicked and I thought: "Ok, so I can do all this work and get paid one time or do the work one time and get paid over and over again."

Sounds logical enough, right? Well, it is only if you take advantage of it. The thing is, many people don't. Either they have never heard of residual income or they just don't know how to find programs that pay these recurring commissions.

You have endless opportunities to make money on the internet. Every company needs sales to stay in business and more and more are offering affiliate programs. You don't even need to have any products of your own to sell because other people want their's to be sold.

The internet is finally starting to come of age and it really holds great opportunities for any type of person.

An affiliate program is the perfect kind of relationship and is truly a type of dream-job, if one so exists. A company only pays a commission if a result is made. For them, it is hands off marketing that brings results. For you, it is the chance to earn unlimited amounts of income based off your performance.

At the time of this writing (Dec. 2007), many new sorts of affiliate programs have began to pop up. Programs that pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale (one-time or recurring) and pay-per-action.

As a newbie yourself, the best way to start looking out for opportunities is to continue surfing the websites you normally would, but from now on looking out for a "affiliates" link somewhere on the home page. Here you can find the details for that particular affiliate program.

A Google search will suffice too if your getting excited. Clickbank is a great place to start and there are plenty of forums where you can speak directly to others who enjoy this job as much as I do.

As for money making potential, the super affiliates are the ones who focus on programs that pay over and over, residually. For every sale you generate, you get paid each and every month the customer continues to use the product or service.

It really is a beautiful kind of relationship. One you do from home and allows you to finally start that business you've always dreamed about. Believe me when I say there are way too many opportunities for 1 person to handle.