Affiliate Marketing

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

super affiliates handbook

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing system in which merchants reward affiliates for each visitor or customer that comes to the merchant website as a result of the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is considered one the best ways to make money online (read an amazing success story here), and affiliates can be rewarded in a number of different ways: cash, gifts, coupons and discounted merchandise are just a few of them. Of course, most prefer cash, but other incentives are nice too.

There are many different types of affiliate programs from which to choose. Some of these include:

Pay Per Sale – Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage or commission is deposited into the affiliate’s account or paid directly to them through online payment methods such as PayPal®.

Pay Per Click – Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by clicking on a banner or text link that leads to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account.

Pay Per Lead – Every time a potential customer registers at the merchant’s website as a result of an advertisement on the affiliate’s account, the merchant deposits a set amount into the affiliate’s account.

For many website owners this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having their own product.

This type of marketing is also beneficial to the merchant. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on websites all over the Internet, the merchant gets free advertising and does not need to do as much marketing. The more websites with which a merchant is affiliated, the more exposure products get.

All affiliates should do thorough research on the merchant before applying to the program. Not doing so can mean ending up with a merchant who refuses to pay commission fees, merchants with very restrictive terms, and even merchants who couldn’t care less for the affilaite

Of course, most merchants and affiliates have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement, but research is an important first step.

Another important aspect that an affiliate should consider is the placement of the affiliate links, and /or banners. It’s important to choose placement wisely: just slapping a banner on your page will not help you in most cases, but weaving links to affiliate offers in your content usually works well.

One of the best guides I’ve come around that teaches affiliate marketing is the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner. Have you read it? Implemented it? What kind of success did you have with it? I’d love to hear about your affilaite marketing success.

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Affiliate Marketing, Work at Home

Winning Web Design Tips for Newbie Webmasters

Good web design is an art form.  A web page that is easily accessible, easily navigated and creative will attract more customers than one that is complicated and cumbersome.  Most people assume that to create decent web pages, they must use the most advanced graphics, flash techniques and other sometimes “expensive” tools.

In reality, good web design relies more on simplicity.  Best web design practices actually are simple to master.  First and foremost, a web designer should look at color.  Color is one of the simplest tools that a designer can use to attract surfers to their website.  Good web design uses just two or three complementary colors that are bold enough to send a message, but not so bold as to send the image “cheesy” to customers.

Good web design also requires appropriate utilization of text.  One of the biggest errors failed web sites have in common is inappropriate use of text.  Text for example, should be uniform.  Try using the same font if at all possible throughout a web page.  Additionally, ensure that text is big enough for a surfer to read, but not so big that it detracts from the message of the main web page.

The best web designs also take into consideration the ease of navigability. A web page that is difficult to navigate will cause surfers to flee before they have had enough time to decipher the message you are trying to sell.  Far too often, novice web designers attempt to design complicated and flashy websites.  While visually appealing, these websites can sometimes be difficult to navigate.

Make certain that when designing web pages you select navigation buttons that are easily understood and readily available.  Navigation should also be uniform throughout the website: that way a surfer once they ascertain the navigation method used does not have to guess how to go from one page to the next.

Large web sites should ALWAYS provide surfers with a search engine or site map, so that visitors can easily navigate through the many pages.  Also helpful to surfers would be buttons that would provide customers with information related to where they currently are.

Perhaps the most critical web design practice is ease of download.  Pages that are large and cumbersome or those that download too slowly will cause surfers to turn away before they ever have the opportunity to see what you have to offer. You want to ensure that all surfers have easy access to the information you are providing.

How does your website design stand up to these guidelines? If you have trouble designing your own site, why not outsource it to someone who does this every day?

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Work at Home

What Are The Advantages And Risks of Outsourcing?

get an extra 8 hours

When you first start out in any business, especially online it’s easy to do everything yourself. But there will come a point when you have to outsource if you want to grow the business. And just like everything else in life there are advantages and risks of outsourcing. The main advantages of outsourcing are freeing up your time and masking any weaknesses you may have. But there is one major risk which is sloppy work. As this can cause you any number of problems.

There are only 24 hours in a day and you spend 8 of them sleeping which leaves 16 hours for working, leisure and spending time with friends and family. So by outsourcing your most time consuming tasks you free yourself to focus on more high paying work. Or just give yourself more time to spend with your family.

We can’t all be great at everything and being a jack of all trades master of none isn’t that helpful. Instead of wasting time and energy learning a new skill which you hate doing it’s much easier to just get someone else to do it for you. Not only does this prevent the frustration that can come with learning something new but it also allows you to focus on what you do best.

When deciding who to outsource a job to you need to be careful. As a sloppy job can not only mean you waste time but at the worst can cost you thousands of dollars, if, for example, the guy/gal you got to do your graphics used a copyrighted image. So before you hire somebody to do work for you take a look at what other people say about them. Maybe even do a Google search on them.

No matter what the advantages and risks of outsourcing you will have to do it at some point in time. As no one can do everything and if you try you’ll just run yourself into the ground. The advantages of saving time so you can focus on the more high paying work and avoid any weakness you may have are great reasons why you should outsource. But to avoid the major risk of sloppy work you’ll want to pay close attention to feedback and not just hire someone because they are cheap. To be certain of getting a good job done you’ll probably want to get recommendations from people you trust.

Recommended Outsourcing companies:

Outsource Weekly – A 52 week course by Jimmy D. Brown & Nicole Dean, which will teach you everything you wanted to know about outsourcing.

outsource unpleasant tasks

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Free Niche Research

Free Niche Research: GPS Navigation

free niche research

Today’s niche was inspired by a gift I received from my husband this past Christmas.

I get lost easily, and would never leave home without written directions. So, I got a portable GPS navigation system for my car, so I can feel more comfortable going places.

Let’s look at the possibilities for this niche, as I am sure there are lots of other people just like me, who really need a GPS Navigation system.

Top 10 Highest Paying Keywords(from the Google keyword tool)

tom tom gps navigation $3.79

truck gps navigation $3.50

portable gps navigation systems $3.11

gps car navigation systems $3.00

gps navigation systems $2.85

gps navigation units $2.68

tomtom gps navigation $2.66

vehicle gps navigation $2.50

gps vehicle navigation system $2.50

gps navigators $2.46

 Top 10 Most Searched Keywords(all phrases are exact matches in Google)

gps navigation 450,000

gps navigation system 14,800

tom tom gps navigation 14,800

garmin gps navigation 12,100

gps navigation systems 8,100

gps navigators 3,600

tomtom gps navigation 3,600

portable gps navigation 2,900

car gps navigation system 2,400

gps car navigation 2,400

Bonus Keywords (1,300 -2,400 exact searches /month)

gps navigation systems for cars 2,400

gps car navigation systems 1,900

best gps navigation 1,600

garmin gps navigation system 1,600

pioneer gps navigation 1,600

handheld gps navigation 1,300

magellan gps navigation 1,300

portable gps car navigation systems 1,300

Resources

Probably some of the best resources will be found in automotive specific magazines & forums.

Also, create Google Alerts for your keywords and see what others are writing about GPS navigation, and use that as brainstorming juice.

Possible Affiliate Programs
Amazon.com has GPS systems  of all types: , garmin GPS, gps navigation for car, gps garmin, gps accessoriesand many more!

CJ.com has a few merchants offering these GPS systems, but the payouts are low: 3-5%, so I would stick with Amazon.com for this niche.

Monetization Suggestions

This niche has some great payouts for AdSense, so if you’d like to create a review type site, you could use AdSense, as well as affiliate links.

Here are some domains available now for this niche:

PortableGpsCarNavigationSystems.com, net, .org  & .info with 1,300 exact searches/month. If you get this, you could add pages for all other keywords presented here, plus more, and have the possibility to rank for hundreds of keyword combination, searched for thousands of times.

HandHeldGpsNavigation.net: 1,300 exact searches monthly.

CarGpsNavigationSystem.net, & .info with 2,400 exact searches monthly each.

Some great opportunities with this technology, and definitely something people need.

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Challenges, Work at Home

Do You Have Systems for Your Business?

I am in the middle of organizing my home business office, as well as my virtual office (desktop, email, etc.) and realize that even if you organize from time to time, unless you create systems, you’ll soon be back in your old habits and get disorganized.

I am speaking form experience. For example, I started by working on my inbox which had over 1500 unread messages, and managed to get through & remove several hundreds of unread emails. But in the past few days, my unread email is climbing back up. I don’t yet have a good system for my email, and I desperately need one.

As entrepreneurs, our systems are the processes and procedures by which everything in our business runs. When our systems work, everything runs smoothly, or as smoothly as possible when running a business!

Systems are essentially a step-by-step process written out for each aspect of your business. They help you stay on track, they make you more efficient, they streamline your business and they help you see where you can improve and where your business is excelling. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly. When they don’t work, however, all heck can break loose.

Here are some of the systems you could create:

* Customer service
* Marketing
* Sales
* Product creation
* Product development
* Purchasing
* Production
* Producing a newsletter
* Billing
* Invoicing
* Outsourcing

Systems are particularly useful when you’re outsourcing a task or if you’ve hired an intern or an employee. Then, you’ll have everything written down from the very first step to the very last step, and your contractor or employee will know exactly what is expected of them.

Creating your systems

The first step to creating systems is to realize what processes your business uses. Simply make a list of the processes you go through on a daily or weekly basis. Once you have your list, it’s time to actually create your systems. They’re created initially by simply writing down the steps to accomplish a task. As new processes are added to your business, you’ll simply create a new system for that process.

Once your systems are created, the processes can be fine-tuned by using several steps. Firstly, you may want to simply evaluate the process you’ve written to see if it works and if there are any loopholes or steps you’ve missed. Secondly, you may want to include goals and measurements to determine whether the system is a success.

For example, if you have a customer service system and your goal is to have 100% customer satisfaction, and you end up losing 20% of your customers due to an inadequate customer service policy, then you know the system needs to be tweaked.

Storing your systems

Because you’re an internet marketer, you’re probably on your computer at least 50% of the working day, and more than likely you’re on it 100% of the working day. This means it makes sense to organize your systems on your computer. A simple file with the date and the name of the system will make them easy to access. You’ll also want to organize your goals and how you’re going to measure the goals.

Systems are a business owner’s best friend. They’ll help keep you on track and running smoothly today, tomorrow and for years to come.

What has worked for you? And what hasn’t. I’d love to hear your thoughts, while I am working on getting myself better organized.

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