affiliate marketing tips

Affiliate Marketing

What Is Affiliate Marketing And How It Works

If you’re new to blogging community, you might have heard about making money with affiliate marketing. Maybe you asked yourself: what is affiliate marketing and how it works?

what is affiliate marketing and how it works

Affiliate marketing can be a great avenue to increase traffic to your website and generate additional income. However, you shouldn’t start affiliate marketing without doing your research first. Just adding affiliate links willy-nilly won’t help much. you’ll end up spending too much time on something that won’t work for you.

Many bloggers think affiliate marketing will make them a quick buck without doing much work or preparation. The truth is that in order for affiliate marketing to be profitable, it’s going to take time, effort, research, and perseverance.

If affiliate marketing is something you are interested in, take this quiz and evaluate the responses so you can learn more about what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to your advantage.

Ready to make some affiliate income? The Affiliate marketing masterclass by Robin and Leslie will show you how!

1. Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based method of marketing that…

a) uses one website to drive web traffic to another website
b) is based on revenue sharing
c) both a and b

Answer is C – In affiliate marketing, a business offers compensation to affiliates for each lead or customer that comes as a result of the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing includes search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and display advertising. In order to be compensated, the majority of affiliate programs use revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS). Other affiliate programs use cost per action (CPA) or cost-per-click (CPC).

2. The affiliate marketing industry has four key players:

a) the merchant, the network, blogs, and web banners
b) the merchant, the network, the affiliate, and the customer
c) the retailer, the publisher, search engines, and text advertisements

Answer is B – The merchant is the retailer or brand. The network acts as a liaison between the affiliate and the merchant. The affiliate is the publisher. And lastly, the customer is the person who experiences the marketing.

3. In order to be a successful affiliate marketer, you will need the following:

a) your own website and a newsletter
b) an e-book and your own product to promote
c) multiple e-mail addresses and your own product to promote

Answer is A – In order to be a top-selling affiliate marketer, you will need to have both your own website and a newsletter. The website is your affiliate marketing ground and it will also help you collect e-mails addresses (build a client list). Once you have a list, you can stay fresh in your customers’ minds,  earn their trust and bring them back to your affiliate offers.

4. True or false: You don’t need a product of your own to promote as an affiliate marketer.

True – It is not necessary for an affiliate marketer to have their own product. An affiliate marketer is free to promote virtually anyone’s product.

5. True or false: As an affiliate marketer, you are in charge of handling product shipping, support, and refunds.

False – Product shipping, support, and refunds are never affiliate marketer’s responsibility. The merchant takes care of it all.

Now that you know a little bit more about what affiliate marketing is and how it works, you can use this effective money-making model to grow your business.

One of the best guides I’ve come around that teaches affiliate marketing is the Affiliate marketing masterclass by Robin and Leslie: it’s what helped me make affiliate income 😉

Wonder what affiliate marketing is about? Learn all about it here.

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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

Learn Affiliate Marketing: Top 10 Free Resources for New Marketers

There is a lot of information on the Internet to help newbies learn affiliate marketing. Nearly everyone who’s ever earned a dollar online has something to say about it, but if you’re new to the field, how can you know what’s good advice and what’s not worth the pixels it’s written with? Here’s my pick of the top 10 free resources for new marketers to get you started.

1. WordPress. If you’re going to work online, you’re going to need a website, and WordPress is the easiest to use content management system available. Most web hosts offer one-click installs, which means you can have a professional site up and running in just a few minutes. Since WordPress is open source, there are thousands of developers busy building plugins to extend the functionality and make it even easier to use. No matter what your niche, you’re sure to find a free theme to fit. But if you want something custom designed, there are lots of talented designers out there who can help.

2. Google. Yes, Google. Not just the search portal, though that’s important. Google also provides analytics tools for webmasters and the best free keyword research tool online. They also have extensive help files and tutorials to teach you how to use the tools they provide.

3. Twitter. Twitter is not just for selling. It’s also a great research tool. If you use TweetDeck you can set up searches on your keywords, use the results to find new people to follow, new products to promote, and new topics to write about.

4. Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge. If you are starting at the very beginning and need some hand holding, you can’t do better than Ed’s 30 Day Challenge. Much like the Problogger program, Ed gives you daily tasks to complete beginning on day one with choosing a niche. He provides videos, software (free for 30 days), a forum, and lots of encouragement. He says his goal is for you to earn your first buck on line, but a lot of 30 Day Challenge graduates do much better than that.

5. Problogger.net. Darren Rowse blogs for a living, but don’t make the mistake of thinking all he does is sell ad spots on a high traffic blog. He is also an affiliate marketer. He promotes products directly on his blog and via email to his list, all while teaching new bloggers how to build a better blog. His 31 Days to a Better Blog program will give you step by step directions for an entire month of blogging. Finish the program and at the end you’ll have a great start on a sustainable blog, and 30 days of blogging momentum to keep you going.

6. Nicole Dean. As it says on her site, “Nicole Dean jumps out of bed every morning, excited about teaching others how to make money online.” Listen to her podcasts and you’ll know it’s true. Nicole is truly excited about what she does and is thrilled to share. She talks about service businesses, information products, affiliate marketing, blogging and just about every other business model out there.

7. Lynn Terry is one of the most down to earth, girl next door affiliates out there. She spells it out for newbies and veterans alike on her blog, and is always available in her forum, Self Starters Weekly Tips, to provide good solid advice. She also hosts a weekly webinar each Tuesday at noon Eastern.

8. Copyblogger.com. Copyblogger won’t teach you how to blog or how to be an affiliate marketer, but it will teach you how to write compelling copy that sells. Nearly all affiliate marketing models – blogging, email marketing, even selling via Twitter – require some form of copywriting to make it work. Brian Clark of Copyblogger is the master of online copy, and he and his writers freely share their knowledge with the world.

9. Warrior Forum. The Warrior Forum claims to be the oldest community of Internet marketers online today, and one look will tell you why. Most any time of the day or night you will find more than 2000 users online reading and posting and helping each other learn about all aspects of online work. Warrior Forum has a paid membership option as well as free. A warning, though: you could waste a lot of time in there, so be careful to only spend the time you need to learn.

10. SEO Fast Start. If you’re not sure what keywords are or how to use them, SEO Fast Start by Dan Theis will give you all the information you need. Dan has developed a system that will not only help you determine your keywords, but teaches you how to use them to drive targeted traffic to every page of your site.

There are thousands of sites online that promise to help you learn affiliate marketing. It pays to do your homework, and only take advice from those who are affiliate marketers first, and instructors second.

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