|
Find the best deals,
|
Affiliate Programs(See also, books on affiliate programs.) I've had mixed results with affiliate programs. I've been working hard for the past couple of years to learn how to promote them effectively and earn an income by preselling their products. When I started, there were just a few affiliate programs, but their numbers are mushrooming now. They've mostly abandoned the pay per click model which was rife with fraud and now most affiliate programs pay for performance -- from sales and/or referrals made from your link to the merchant's website. Don't think you're going to put up a few banners and get rich overnight. If your site doesn't have at least a couple of thousand unique visitors each month, you probably won't make much income from affiliate programs -- unless those visitors are highly targeted and are motivated puchasers of the products and services you'll be promoting. You must work on building focused visitors to your site before you'll earn much from affiliate programs. Basically, affiliate programs are advertising methods whereby the merchant pays you (the publisher) for advertising their products on your pages -- just like magazine and newspaper advertising. The big difference is that magazine and newspaper publishers get paid a set amount in advance and you get paid a set amount when each sale is made. You get paid for performance. Some people complain that this isn't fair, but I just don't see it. In general, newspapers and magazines spend large amounts of money and effort to build their circulation and provide a targeted audience for the merchants' ads. You must do the same thing to build an audience for your website. You can choose to invest time or you can choose to invest money, or both. But, you must remember that you're competing with billions -- yes, billions with a 'b' -- of other web pages on the Internet, and many of them are much better financed than you are and they have an advantage when it comes to building their visitor flow to their websites. When a company like NBC or CBS runs a 10 second ad with their URL, they'll draw more visitors in a day than you will draw in several years. But, with work, you'll be able to draw a substantial number of visitors to your site and earn money from promoting affiliate programs on your site. It has been my experience that many affiliate programs just take a shotgun approach and welcome just about anyone into their program. It's easy to sign up, but then you will probably get distracted by the other things that compete for your time and interest. If you'll sign up for a program and then spend a reasonable amount of time learning about it and determining how your visitors may benefit from their services or products, you may do well. However, you must take the additional step of selecting the appropriate links and then adding them to your website so you can effectively presell them to your visitors. It isn't your job to sell the products or services, it's your job to present the links to your visitors in a way so they'll click on the link. That's your MWR (most wanted response). You must presell the product, and then let the merchant close the sale after your visitor becomes their visitor. Many of these affiliate programs offer little or no training and support for their affiliates. There is an exception that sets the standard for all other affiliate programs -- Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Club -- and that's why I present them next. They stand much higher than any other affiliate program I've found for training and supporting their affiliates and they offer great products and lifetime commissions, as well. If you're interested in any affiliate program, I urge you to read the following section and take the steps necessary to become one of their affiliates and to learn from their excellent collection of training materials how to succeed with their affiliate program, and with just about any other affiliate program. It will take work, but it is possible to earn an income from your website, if you can develop the correct mix of your own products and products you recommend through affiliate links. Ken Evoy is happy to show you how to do this in his free Affiliate Masters Course which I'll discuss in the next section. But, first, I'd like to talk about the scourge of Internet promotions -- spam email. This is simple advice: don't do it. I get hundreds of spam messages every week, and I have a simple rule that I just won't violate. I don't do any business with someone who sends me unsolicited spam emails. It's just that simple. Don't ruin your reputation by adopting this approach. You will never gain respect or repeat customers. It just isn't worth it. Plus, most reputable affiliate programs will cancel your affiliation if you decide that spam is your vehicle for success. Sure, it may sound tempting to send free emails to hundreds or thousands of recipients at a very low cost, but please don't fall for that temptation. No spam. Ken Evoy's Five Pillar ClubThe Best Affiliate Program on the Planet - This is a two-tier program with lifetime commissions. Not only do I like this affiliate program, I have learned more than I expected by purchasing his products which always have much more value for the price than any other competing products I've found in two years. I purchased Make Your Site Sell! and Make Your Net Auctions Sell! and I'm very pleased with each of them. I've also taken all of his free email courses, and I've learned more from him and his associates than I have from any other source. As soon as I get the time, I'm going to purchase a copy of Make Your Knowledge Sell! and work on that book I have brewing in the back of my mind. Highly recommended. Editor's Pick! For a free, no obligation, course on choosing proper keywords, getting listed in search engines, building traffic to your site, and building a website that sells, download the Affiliate Masters course. For more information on Ken, his products, and why I recommend them so highly, you're invited to visit my Does Your Site Sell? page. ClickBankClickBank - the online billing and marketing solution used by thousands of web businesses that deliver unique products and services over the Internet itself (via web pages, files, or email). Their payment technology lets any web business (a seller) automatically pay sales commissions to any other web business (an affiliate) that links a paying customer to the seller. ClickBank bills the customer, pays the seller, and pays the affiliate. Click on the link to learn more about becoming a seller or an affiliate. CBmall - Jeff Mulligan created this database-driven front-end to about 1,000 or so of the top selling InfoProducts offered through ClickBank. I heartily recommend this as a way to find the quality products from ClickBank. I recommend Jeff and CBmall highly.
|
