Affiliate Gold

The advice here can help you make money on affiliate programs, maybe even as much as a few thousand a month. But what about people who make six figures off of affiliate programs? What's their secret?

Well, I call that Affiliate Gold, and really it's a very simple principle: Build a site around an affiliate program. The easiest way to do this is have a review site. For instance lets say you make a site where you review all of the online dating websites, and each review is an affiliate link. So basically every visitor comes to your site looking for information on which program to sign up with, and every time someone signs up you make money. Chances are 90% or more of your visitors are going to signup with someone, that's why they're at your site in the first place.

Reviews are not the only way to do this though. You can also make a site that sells anything via an affiliate program. The site can even be one page with only a few paragraphs of content and a link to a place to buy the product. The real trick here is not in making the site, it is in promoting the site.

Going back to our original example of a photography site (if you're reading this article as part of the website success guide), lets pretend Ray makes a page that gives a brief overview of Digital Camera's and then includes prices on popular models from leading e-tailers, like Amazon.com and Buy.com, in the appropriate affiliate fashion. He might earn some money from it, but not all of Ray's visitors are interested in digital cameras, or are interested in buying a camera at all. However, now imagine that this page is #1 on Google when you search for "digital cameras." Ray will likely get thousands of visitors to that page each month, visitors who are looking for digital cameras.

There is no greater partnership than that between an e-commerce site and a content site. A site that offers photography information, and a site that sells photographic equipment, would be a perfect match. However running an e-commerce site is complicated, and often requires a large investment to setup inventory. So for the small guy the best partnership is a content site and an affiliate site.

So you make a small site selling a single product, or group of products, via an affiliate program, that's the easy part. The hard part is getting it to the top of the search engines. If you think back to the chapter on search engines you'll remember that to get to the top you need incoming links, right? But then, who would want to link to your small affiliate site? Well, you will.

You can build a content site related to the product you are selling. You don't even need to put advertising on this site, as your sole purpose with this site is to gain incoming links. People link to free content, directories list free content, you can offer free content and get a large page rank. Then, using your knowledge of search engines and link popularity, you link from your content site to your affiliate site.

If you can get ranked #1 on the search engines for the product you are trying to sell, you've struck affiliate gold and you will make very good money.

Now you shouldn't just link from any site to your affiliate site. Off topic links made specifically to increase rank are frowned upon by search engines and may result in negative action taken upon you. This is why you build an on topic site to link from, there is nothing wrong with cross promoting two on topic sites.

Sure, building an entire site, or maybe two or three sites, just to promote an affiliate program does seem like a lot of work. However the payoff can be huge. Imagine how much you'd make if you ranked #1 for "Viagra?" Additionally your affiliate site need not be only one page, nor need it be a separate site, you could promote it as a subsection of your content site just as easily.

Before you try to make an affiliate site like this you need to research your keywords and the competition. You should first of all figure out which terms related to your product are searched the most. For instance which is searched for more often, "Digital Camera Deals," or "Digital Camera Sales." Once you find the most popular set of keywords for your product (the keywords you will use to link to your affiliate page) then you need to find out the current competition for those words. So do a search on Google for those words and check the PageRank of the first site to come up. If your Overall PageRank Power is greater than the PageRank of the current #1 site then you will likely have the #1 spot if you make this affiliate site and cross-promote it with your current site. This is especially true considering that 100% of your incoming links will be using your keywords for the anchor text (afterall, you will have complete control over that) and for your competitors this isn't likely to be the case. Using your Overall PageRank Score in calculations like this is a good way to decide when to create a new site, and also to predict how successful that site will be.

So, to summarize, there are two main steps for reaching affiliate gold.

1. Build a site whereby your visitors are already planning on joining something or making a purchase before they ever visit your site (ie make your site a normal step on the path towards completing the transaction).
2. Get your site to the top of the search engines, possibly by cross promoting with a popular free content site.

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Clickbank Affiliate Products

For ClickBank products you want to find a product that has a good sales page. This is the most important thing before commission.

If you have a choice between a product paying out 75% commission with a crappy sales letter or a product with an awesome sales letter and only paying out 25% commission. I would choose the 25% one. The average payout for electronic products is 50%.

The 2nd thing to pay attention to is do they have an autoresponder? If they do not, you should pick an affiliate that does. Email is a great way to make the customer come back to the website. And often the customer will need to be exposed to the product several times before they purchase the item...especially if the product is expensive.

And to answer your other question, yes if the customer does not buy the product right away and instead buys it through the follow up emails you should receive credit "generally speaking" because there is a cookie on the customers computer when they first clicked on your Affiliate link. The last click gets the sale. Cookies will last 60 days from ClickBank. If someone clicks on
your link and then returns to the site without going through another affiliate link, you will get the credit. If they go through another affiliate link, the other affiliate will get the credit.

This is what clickbank had to say about cookies:

Quote:
We define a cookie as any string of data that is automatically stored on your computer upon access to our online services. ClickBank employs cookies to assign temporary identification numbers to machines that access our web servers. This information enables us to deliver faster service to our subscribers, prevent denial of service attacks on our systems, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions, and assist with awarding proper sales credit to our partners. All ClickBank cookies are 1) of limited duration, 2) less than 5KB in length, 3) only visible to ClickBank web servers, and 4) devoid of any personally identifiable information.

1. Your sales page needs a Bold Red Headline. A headline will grab the reader’s attention and make them want to continue reading the sales page. If you don't have a headline you might as well kiss a good % of your customer’s goodbye.

2. The longer the sales page the better...to an extent. How long should it be? As long as it takes, generally more expensive products have longer sales pages.

3. You need bullet points. People like to skim sales letters and bullets grab their attentions to key points.

5. You need to have testimonials from other people. Most people will trust what other people say about the product. If your product is new, give a couple copies away to friends / associates and ask them to give their testimonials.

6. You must have at good 100% money back guarantee. I fought this one for the longest time. It hurt to think about it, especially electronic products when someone can easily use the product or service and then claim that they want a refund. But trust me, it has been proven that you will gain more sales from this alone, than if you did not have a money back guarantee. It's called "Risk Reversal" Sure some people will ask for their money back, but a greater percentage of people will buy your product so you end up winning in the end.

7. The layout and fonts need to be the same style and color. Don't have 6 different colored fonts in your sales letter. I made that mistake on my first one. It looked like a bunch of fruit loops with text! The main text should be black font size 12 or 14 and I hear typewriter font is best.

8. Graphics should be professionally done.
Don't screw yourself at the end and try to cheap out by doing the graphics yourself or having some crappy artist design your headers, footers and all around design. If anything you should spend the most possible for the best design. Expect to pay around $97 and up to $397 for a nice looking mini site.

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3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online

Every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication.
There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word “free” because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.

Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day.
Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can made 10 sales based on the average statistic.

The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part.

Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do.
Besides, think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving…

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Discover How To Harness The Power Of ClickBank To Start Earning Lots Of Mon

Most people can make money almost 24 hours after setting up their affiliate links, if done properly of course but first and foremost you have to join an affiliate program. One of the easiest ways by which you can join affiliate programs of hundreds if not thousands of products is by joining Clickbank.

Simply put, you can promote and earn commissions from every product that is being sold via Clickbank. Gone are the days of looking for affiliate programs for particular products or infoproducts individually. You would only have to log-in or visit Clickbank.com in order to view the products that you can promote. As a side note, Clickbank specializes in infoproducts, should you want to promote physical products, most of them can be found on Commission Junction at CJ.com.

To start making money online right now, you have to be a member of Clickbank first. Then once you're a member, click promote products and then select marketplace. Type in the type of infoproduct you want to promote.Then when the list comes out click the create hoplink link below the product you want to promote and then enter your affiliate id which is usually the same as your Clickbank username. Once you have your affiliate link, you can start putting them in your websites or sending them out to your friends for them to check out.

Once they click the link and decide to purchase, you get a hefty cut usually above 50% of the price. Not bad at all! Make sure that you put those links in a site that is related to the product you're promoting and don't hard-sell your site visitors to buy the product.

One of the more useful styles to pre-sell the product is by talking about it on your blog or on your website via a review or commentary. Some people just do a review without actually buying the product so the review they come up with is shallow at best. Try to buy the product first and create a review if you didn't like it then ask for a refund. The benefits of course are enormous, you have an honest review (it comes out in your writing) and people trust you more so they're more willing to buy products through you in the long run resulting in more sales commissions for you.

In closing, if you haven't yet signed up with ClickBank you should strongly consider. It could be your pathway to financial freedom.

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